I f#cking love building muscle.
There are so many benefits to muscle building beyond just “getting stronger.”
For instance, building muscle:
- Improves heart health
- Boosts your confidence
- Reduces the risk of diabetes
- Supports your joints and bones
- Burns 3-times more fat when at rest
It’s crazy what building muscle does to your body, and believe it or not, exercise is an important millionaire habit. Author Tom Corley found that over 3/4ths of successful people exercise at least 30 minutes a day.
Ever since I shed 70 lbs of fat nearly 12 years ago, fitness has been a big part of my life. It’s one of the reasons why I achieved financial freedom at 35.
About a year ago, we spent over $10K building a home gym on our 7 acres of property in the Arizona desert, and it’s the best money I’ve ever spent.
Here’s exactly what our gym looks like.
What a $10,000 home gym looks like
Our gym is inside a 200-square-foot TuffShed building we bought and finished. I’m in this gym almost every morning, usually between 8 and 8:30 am.
Custom-built TuffShed with dual barn-style doors so we can get all the gym equipment inside! Keeping the doors open provides a ton of natural light.
Let’s go inside. 👇
My gym is equipped with all the essential pieces of equipment:
- Dumbbells (3lbs to 60lbs in 5lb increments) – $1,000 used
- Torque Fitness cable machine (150lbs) – $1,500 used
- Fitness Reality 810XLT Power Cage – $271 new
- Weight plates (2.5lbs to 35lbs in pairs or 4x) – $600 new
- Amazon Echo Dot (for music) – $30 new
- Olympic barbell – $197 new
I bought two different weight racks for my dumbbells, pictured below.
👉 Pro tip: A horizontal weight rack like the one on the left makes it much easier to access heavier weights than the vertical stand on the right.
We also added some cushy gym flooring that is sooooo comfy if you’re working out with bare feet (not advisable if you’re prone to dropping weight!).
And the rest of my equipment, below.
You don’t need a big box gym or expensive equipment to get into the best shape of your life. You need the basics and a little motivation to keep after it.
And let’s face it: You could do this much cheaper than I did.
For instance, many use their garages or spare rooms as their gym space. Buying the TuffShed was the most expensive component of our gym, by far, because we don’t have a garage or a spare room.
Buy used equipment when you can, especially off Craigslist. We found our dumbbells, used, for a fraction of the new price. Be careful at used sporting goods stores like Play It Again Sports, though. I found their prices to be almost as high as buying new! Don’t assume used prices are lower.
You also don’t need a cable machine, but it’s nice if you have the room.
Music during my workouts is essential, and the Amazon Echo Dot is a perfect solution. “Alexa, play music like Disturbed“. Boom, I’m rockin’ and rollin’.
Note: If you have a gym membership and you use it, that’s a great solution. I also have a gym membership for those days when I’m around a major city.
