Ever walked into a gym to have the sales guy show you through the 30 treadmills and a million machines and wonder what the hell am I supposed to do with all this equipment?
I remember when I was 14 and walked in and signed up at my first gym. I was amazed at all the brand new equipment, the sauna, the crazy monsoon shower, it all looked so good I thought I would never leave!
A few years later as I learnt more about training and found guys like Joe Defranco and Zach Even-Esh I realised most of the equipment in that gym was useless in helping me actually reach my goals and was a waste of space.
I began to wonder if I had all that space to fit out a gym, what would I put in there? What equipment would be necessary to have epic workouts and get awesome results. Pretty quickly the vision started to look drastically different to what you see in many commercial gyms.
Fortunately the shift in the fitness industry has drove the commercial gyms to begin to follow suit to save their members from leaving and now there’s a lot more gyms fit out with tonnes of awesome equipment like the LIFT Performance Centre and J-Train Athetic Performance.
At Newstrength we had the luxury of setting up our facility based on this vision, including equipment that most people won’t ever get to play with in a normal gym because it requires time to teach people how to do the movements properly.
So we thought we would put together a list of the equipment that should be in EVERY gym plus some bonuses we love here at Newstrength that help us get the most out of training for our clients.
Essentials (If your gym doesn’t have these, QUIT)
1. Quality Olympic Barbells – I remember buying my first Olympic Barbell for my little home gym. It cost me $180 and I thought at the time it was expensive, a few years later I bought a nearly $1000 Barbell from Pendlay for doing olympic lifts. Sadly most gyms you go to have bar’s that wouldn’t even cost what my first one did. What are you looking for in a barbell? Grippy knurling that doesn’t tear your hands apart, free spinning of the sleeves and a little bit of flex that doesn’t stay that way once you finish the lift.
2. Bumper Plates – Bumpers plates back when I first started training were basically non-existent in gyms. Now most gyms will have at least one set, for weightlifting and being able to drop the bar without damaging the floor or the bar itself. Good luck snatching any reasonable amount of weight when you can’t drop the bar when you miss.
3. Squat Rig or Power Rack – The first gym I ever went to had 1 squat rack in the back corner but had 2 flat bench presses, an incline bench press and a decline bench. Only takes 2 seconds to figure out why nearly nobody trained legs at that gym. Rigs made by companies like Alphafit and Rogue make it way more space effective to for people to squat, bench press and even using the top bars for pull-ups and to hang rings and ropes from. There’s no reason for gyms to not have one setup.
4. Rings – For all things rows, facepulls, dips, pull-ups, muscle-ups, advanced push-up variations rings are so versatile and give your elbows and shoulders a break from all the straight bar work while challenging shoulder stability to build bulletproof shoulders.
5. Bands – I remember having to take my own bands to the gym so I could do band pull aparts, crab walks for glute activation. Bands like rings are super versatile and can even replace large cable setups for many movements. Thick bands are also awesome for conditioning with band sprints or helping people get a few extra reps on their pull-ups (although we don’t promote always relying on the bands for pull-ups)
6. Sled – Every gym should have a sled, period. Sleds are awesome for conditioning, lower body power and speed work plus as an added bonus even though they suck at the time, the reduced eccentric in the movement means you won’t be nearly as sore the next day. We love attaching a climbing rope to ours and using it for upper body pulling work.
7. Adjustable Bench – Too many gyms have stand alone bench presses, unless you are training for competitive powerlifting, they could be way better utilised for space by having a rig setup with adjustable benches that can double as a bench press but also allow for multiple other pressing angles.
8. Trap Bar – We love the trap bar for teaching beginners to pull from the floor, plus trap bar jumps are an awesome exercise for developing explosive power for athletes that doesn’t require the same learning curve as the traditional olympic lifts. If you don’t know what these are they are a hexagonal bar that you stand inside which shifts the centre of gravity back in line with you whereas a conventional deadlift is slightly in front which can load the lower back more.
9. Dumbbells – Now you can’t rely on purely barbells if you want to stay in the game over the long term, dumbbells are an awesome compliment to barbell strength work to round out imbalances and to target certain movements which can be restricted by a barbell.
10. Climbing Rope – I don’t think there is much better of a test of upper body pulling strength than strict legless rope climbs. They train the core, upper back, arms and grip in a unique way that is hard to do with anything else. Just make sure to learn how to descend on the rope under control before you get to climbing any 7m ropes.
11. Chalk – If you aren’t allowed chalk in your gym… Quit. Most of those gyms that don’t allow chalk also have shitty bars with shitty grip that makes it even more of a no brainer as to why they should allow you to use chalk.
12. Movement Space – This one’s a little underrated in most places, many gyms pack machines down into nearly every square of floorspace and leave you no room for sprints, plyos, sled pushing and pulling or crawling and general gymnastic fundamentals.
Awesome Gyms Have This Stuff
13. Jerk Blocks or Pulling Blocks – We use these for everything; push presses, jerks, deadlift and olympic lift variations, belt squats, step ups, box squats and many more exercises. About the only thing we don’t like these for are box jumps (mainly because we want our clients to still have their shins intact if they miss the jump).
14. Glute Ham Developer – These are one of the most valuable pieces of equipment that you won’t see in many gyms. Before I bought the GHD I used to feel my hamstring tendons pull on the back of my knee on any deadlifts over 160kg, after 6 weeks of using the GHD I deadlifted 205kg (25kg PR) with no pulling in my hamstrings. Most people just stick to RDLs and hamstring curls but if you want to lift big weights you better get on the GHD.
15. Dead Balls (not just those little baby ones) – Most gyms have a handful of small dead balls, don’t get me wrong they are awesome for stuff like slams and throws but some big boy deadballs (40-80kg) are an awesome way to build functional strength using squats, lunges, over the shoulder lifts and carries. They’re kinda like the atlas stones you see in world’s strongest man and minus the chance of crushing your foot if you drop it on yourself.
16. Kettlebells – Kettlebells are an awesome tool for conditioning and general strength. We love them for deadlifts, lunges, squats, carries, swings, presses and occasionally clean and presses. The shape and position of the load changes the way you handle the weight unique to any other tool.
17. Swiss Bar – If you’ve spent enough time benching chances are you’re going to come across a shoulder niggle or two. The swiss bar having neutral handles puts you in a more natural position for the shoulder and doesn’t beat up the joints nearly as much. Meaning you can put in more work with less pain and get better results!
18. Safety Squat Bar – This one’s a new one for us at Newstrength that was on the wish list for a while. The safety squat bar is awesome to take stress off the shoulders and shifts the load anteriorly which will load the quads and core more. Great if you like me rely on posterior chain strength for your squats.
19. Dip Belt – For loading up dips, pull-ups and our favourite belt squats, helping to take load off the lower back and smash the quads.
20. Ski, Bike, Rower – Even though we love strength work as the priority in most people’s training, it’s hard to go past these erg’s for off legs conditioning work.
21. Soft Plyo Boxes – For box jumps, hurdles and to help with mobility work. We prefer the soft boxes to take away the risk of injury.
22. Ab Wheel – These things are just awesome when it comes to developing core strength. Only problem is most people use them to train their hip flexors and not their abs.
23. Fat Bar or Fat Gripz – Using a thicker grip forces you to grab the bar tighter and increases muscle recruitment through the whole kinetic chain. Don’t believe me? Try and flex your bicep with an open hand, now try with a closed fist… See what I mean, now think about how much more of a pump you will get using a thick grip bar in your arm session.
The Newstrength Way
24. Farmers Walk Handles – Once you start to get strong with farmers carries kettlebells and dumbbells get really uncomfortable (and hard to come by for the really heavy ones). There’s something uniquely challenging about carrying 120kg plus in your hands and good luck finding dumbbells for that. These heavy carries will challenge your core, grip, back and hip strength like nothing else.
25. Yoke – Ever thought a back squat felt heavy on your back? After carrying 300kg on your back it won’t ever feel that way again. The yoke is awesome for developing core and hip strength, just be careful as it can be very stressful on the nervous system to recover from.
26. Log – How often are the weights you have to lift in real life as comfortable as barbells? Chances are never, the log and strongman equipment challenge your body to lift loads in ways more similar to that of real life. With the log, the weight sits out in front of you much more than an olympic bar requiring way more core strength to control.
27. Big Tyres – We’ve all seen those videos of beastly guys flipping tyres, guess what it’s just as tough and fun as you think. We love the tyre as a milestone for clients to shoot for and as a conditioning tool for our athletes that have to move heavy loads at high heart rates like league players.
28. Kegs – Same as the tyre these things just look damn fun, once you’ve been through a few keg workouts you will never feel the same way about beer again.
29. Sliding Discs – Awesome for ab work, hamstring curls and functional prehab work. These are surprisingly some of the toughest toys in the gym even though they look so simple. Sliding disc push ups variations will challenge even the strongest guys.
30. Tumbling Mats – We use these for a bunch of things, handstands, cartwheels, occasionally crash mats when we start trying to do fun lifts with other people. Tumbling mats are just straight up fun and there needs to be space for that in a gym!
31. Stall Bars – Stall bars are awesome for core strength and mobility training. Sadly the last time most people would have seen these was back in their old high school gym.
32. Landmine Unit – Most pressing work is all done with shoulders locked down. But if we want to have strong healthy shoulders the landmine is an awesome variation to allow our scaps to move in a more natural range. Plus these can be great for core work and T-bar row variations.
What Equipment Does Your Gym Have?
There’s our list of what equipment you would see at all gyms if we had our way. Sure there’s a few things that didn’t make the list but could be useful but, we believe these lay the foundations of an amazing training facility.
If you know a gym that has all these things and more, we would love to hear about them.