My home gym circa May 2018: martial arts and free weights

One of the first things we did when we moved to a house with a semi-finished basement was to declare that the basement would be a workout room.  And our primary exercise that time was taekwondo along with bodyweight exercises for DS5 (then) and I.  In addition, I had some lightly used exercise equipment (dumbbells, a weight bench, and a Total Gym exercise machine) and this became the start of the workout room.

First, we got 1" thick tatami foam puzzle type mats from IncStores that we laid on the floor.  The thickness was for normal martial arts (i.e. some impact, but we are not wrestlers or judoki.)  This was used to cover the larger portion of the basement floor in a checkerboard pattern (gray and black squares)  These mats were not difficult to cut with box cutters, so we cut them to fit the basement and the way the walls were laid out.  This was a good way of covering a concrete floor.  The way the basement is laid out, it is big enough for me to cover half a Songham (ATA style taekwondo) square for forms.  So as long as I start in an appropriate place, I can do a form with full extensions. (which I could not do at the old house).  So this floor gets used for TKD practice, forms, and drills, along with bodyweight exercises.

Taekwondo training gear

For Taekwondo we have a assembled a fairly extensive list of practice gear.  For my son and I, we both have our gear bags with uniforms, bag gloves, sparring gloves, foot pads, chest pads, and head gear.  We also have sang jae baang (nunchucks), ba maang ee (escrima sticks), and jaang baang (bo stick).  (we have declared that jaang baang is not for indoor use because of the ceiling).  But we also have a junior standing bag (Wavemaster weighted with 80 lb of sand in the base), a double kick pad (claps when struck correctly, now we have 2), a small target, large kick pad, and a pair of focus mitts.  The matted area is good enough for pretty much any standard or sparring drill.

For bodyweight exercises, we are used to this from taekwondo, but our real use is based on a fitness cards based on Stack 52 Strength decks. (review)  So (now) DS 7 and I will draw 7-10 cards (he uses both beginner and intermediate cards) and we will do them.  DD 4 also joins in and does her analogue of the exercises as well.

Weights and Total Gym

For weights, from my pre-grad school days I had a cheap dumbbell set (the standard 4x5lb weights, 4x3lb weights, 2 handles with spin locks for a total of 40lb of dumbbells).  I had added the bench when I moved to my apartment when first started working after grad school.  Again, back then running was my primary workout, then the Total Gym for cardio.  I was not trying too hard with the dumbbells, but I knew a few exercises from when I did a few sessions with a trainer back in grad school.  And while I was not so concerned about strength, I pretty much maxed these out on the stronger exercises (e.g. bench press) soon after getting these.  Combined with not having a good place for this in my old house, I did not use this much.

After moving to the new house, I added a pair of medicine balls (6 lb and 10 lb) to the mix.  These were good complements to the bodyweight exercise, as they could be used with pretty much any bodyweight exercise to add more of a challenge. In fall, I decided that I would use the winter to add strength to my conditioning and I purchased 4x10lb weights and additional handles, which more than doubled the weight I had and allowed for switching between heavy, medium, and low weight exercises much easier.  More recently, I got the weight tree for the plates (which used to live on the mat underneath the weight bench) and a lot more weight plates (taking advantage of coupons and a sale from Dick's sporting goods), improving both the maximum weight and the range of different exercises I could be set up for in a workout.  Another use of the weight plates is for conditioning.  I have a military grade Camelbak HAWK backpack that I will load with 20 lbs of plates for rucking when going on walks with my family (so what is good exercise for the kids is also good exercise for me).  One big thing, weight training has gotten much more interesting and enjoyable once I got enough weights for it to be a challenge.  Working with the 40lb dumbbell set was essentially a messed up conditioning workout.  I could not go fast enough for a proper conditioning workout, but there was not enough resistance to actually get stronger.

For exercise equipment, I had a Total Gym from many years ago.  It was an incline based equipment that I have had from my apartment days.  It was always lightly used, generally it got the most use during winter when I ran outside less than before.  And after kids it got a little problematic because the track that the pad rolls on is an obvious pinch hazard.  And I probably had it on its steepest (hardest) setting from basically the time I bought it, so it really only was good for making my muscles move, not really for building strength or endurance.  To give me conditioning equipment to go along with the strength equipment, I got a suspension trainer (no longer available when the dominant company, which will remain nameless, used to court system to push them out of the market).  Since we have a semi-finished basement, the beams in the ceiling were exposed and I used one of these to mount the suspension trainer.  Similarly to the bodyweight exercises, I have a set of suspension exercise cards from Stack 52 to provide variety in my routine. This takes over from the Total Gym as it is easier to set up the exercise to be more difficult even as I am getting cardio in from lots of reps (at the end of the day, these are slightly harder versions of bodyweight exercises, but not as hard as using my dumbbells, so I use this for cardio as I am doing a large number of reps.  With the Stack 52 cards I have a range of exercises for upper body, core, and lower body.  And I can generate a fairly long circuit for conditioning.

Rep Fitness Sandbag with 15lb and 35lbs in filler bags

To the TKD, bodyweight, and cardio equipment, I recently added a sand kettlebell (20 lb) and sandbags (currently set at 15 and 35 lbs).  These are in the category of freeweights and along with dumbbells, were the featured equipment in the book Push, Pull, Swing by Myatt Murphy published by Mens' Health. The goal of the book was to explain that strength came from three types of motions (push, pull, swing), across three planes of motion. And if you did this, you would have all muscles in the body engaged (the contrast would be isolation training focusing on specific muscles, which is the principle behind the exercise machines you see at fitness clubs and home gym equipment).  The comparison between this and the dumbbells is that they are more unstable, so in addition to lifting the weight, you have to deal with the instability of the sand.  A second advantage is that they are made of sand, so I don't worry as much as the kids hitting or tripping over them since they have some give compared to iron plates in my dumbbells.  More recently, I've been building up my strength training so that in addition to the obvious presses and lifts, I learned more complex moves such as cleans, presses, and swings so that I can use strength training (dumbbells, kettlebell, sandbags) in exercises that hit a wide range of muscles and types of motion simultaneously.  Again, I also have Stack 52 decks for dumbbells and kettlebells. While I don't think the randomness is useful here, I have used the cards, the Push, Pull, Swing book, and YouTube to learn how to do even technically difficult exercise that require stability of the cores along with strength.

Assembled 50 lb Rep Fitness sandbag

So, the current state of the home gym.  I know have 132 lbs of plates, and I am up to 86 lbs on bench presses and squats (the hightest weight exercise I do)  The dumbbells, kettlebell, and sandbag also  makes conditioning workouts more time efficient than the running or Total Gym used to be for me, with the suspension trainer and a range of kettlebell swings filling in for cardio.

I can see adding another sand kettlebell to round out my medicine ball and kettlebell weights, and I have room to add more weight to my sandbags.  My son has started using freeweights too.  I have him doing bodyweight exercises with the medicine ball (and I join in using the kettlebell) so this adds resistance. There are a few exercises designed for the kettlebell that medicine balls also work with so this will add to strength while maintaining stability and balanced development of many muscle groups at a time.  To add to the bodyweight exercises, I recently purchased an agility ladder, which both of the kids enjoy immensely.

Product review: Stack 52 strength (bodyweight), dumbbell, and suspension trainer workout cards

Currently, my main exercise has been taekwondo.  And on the side I also run.  As part of taekwondo training, we use a number of bodyweight exercises as part of warmup.  I've wanted to start doing workouts at home, but I was not terribly interested in joining a gym, as strength workouts for me were a secondary workout.  But I really did not have much variety and lacked a trainer (other than the workouts we do in taekwondo class).  The Stack 52 workout cards proved to be a great way to both try new exercises, see how they are done, and generate workouts so they don't get old.

The Stack 52 cards have a series of 52 exercises per deck.  Some of the exercises are familiar, but then there are variations on a theme.  The thing is (and the weightlifting types already know this) that small variations in form will change which muscles are the most challenged.  So the 52 exercises, if done correctly, will challenge different muscles so they are in fact different.  There are three levels of difficulty (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and the primary muscle groups are identified.  However, these are not isolation exercises, so you will not get diagrams that identify specific muscles.

The Strength cards work as promised.  I use them to create random sets for warmup workouts.  And they are fun.  My kids (3 and 7) like to use them with me (when I'm with my kids I only use the beginner and intermediate cards).

With the suspension trainer deck I was in a similar position of not knowing many exercises.  One thing that is different about the suspension trainers is that the exercises have different positions: facing the mount, facing away, on your back facing up, on your front facing down.  So it is not convenient to constantly switch.  When I use the deck I would pull up cards, then I would reorder them in groups so that I would only do minor changes in between exercises, and major position changes as few times as possible.  But I still see a lot of value as I learned how to use my suspension trainer in new ways.  Here especially, the videos that are linked on the cards via QR code were very useful.

The dumbbell cards were probably the least useful set.  I quickly learned that there really needed to be an indication of how much weight should be used, low, medium, high (where low medium and high could be defined by the number of reps you can do a specific exercise)

Great for quick workouts. The many cards add to the variety in my warmups and for conditioning. I find that I can do the basic and intermediate cards, but the advanced workouts stretch me, and having them mingled keeps things interesting. My 7 yr old son loves them to. When we have workouts together, we use the beginner cards, and he flips over 7 and he leads us in the exercise. My 3 yr old daughter also likes to join in. She looks at her cards and does her own thing while I do the workout for real. I also enjoy taking these on travel. I usually take the extension deck and use these for morning and evening workouts in my hotel room or in their exercise room.

I already had the Strength Stack 52 cards and got these to add more variety to my workouts with dumbbells and suspension trainers (I have not broken open the resistance band or kettlebells decks yet, because at this point those are supplements for me). Note: I primarily run and do martial arts, so these decks for for strength and conditioning, but these are not my main workouts.

PROS: variety and instruction. For me, whose primary workout is not strength training, I don't have good access to trainers who could give me a workout and instruction, so these cards are good for giving me ideas on what exercises to do and basic instruction on how to do them. I had a set of dumbbells before getting this deck, but I really did not do much with them or my suspension trainer. These decks made both of them interesting.

CONS:
1. Unlike the bodyweight exercises of the Strength decks, the dumbbell and suspension exercises can actually require setup between exercises. So while I would use the bodyweight exercises in whatever random order they came up in, with the dubmbell and suspension decks, after I flipped the cards, I would reorder the cards to be in a natural order to reduce the setup (body position, position in the suspension handles, weights on dumbbells).
2. the dumbbell exercises probably require a range of weights (i.e. a low, medium, and heavy set) as these exercises are not meant to be at the same weight (e.g. you would not do circles with extended arms at the same weight that you would do presses or other high weight exercises) Given that part of the appeal of these decks is for those who do not have a large repertoire of exercises, it would have been useful to classify the dumbbell exercises by the type of dumbbell needed (I use light, medium, and heavy as these are specific to the person, and you can help people define them appropriately)

Overall, for general fitness and conditioning, I recommend the bodyweight cards without reservation.  I think that the suspension strap cards also work out pretty well.  I don't think the dumbbell cards would be helpful if your goal is strength or building mass, but could be useful as part of a general conditioning routine if you have a few pairs of hex dumbbell's available to you.

My kids, also give the bodyweight cards an unqualified endorsement.