Bad space planning… Not equipment, is responsible for the failure of most home gym. So what happens?
You drag your new gear into garage or living room, then find yourself using your coffee table as a dumbbell rack. Your weight bench become the first victim of this spatial optimism. Compact-looking in the catalog photo, it never seem quite so manageable when it’s blocking access to the kitchen.
Know your bench’s true footprint, and you’ll know if you’ve got a training zone, or an obstacle course. On a product page, the size are frequently misleading; it’s the size of thing itself, not the thing you’re trying to use. On paper, your forty-eight-inch-long bench may occupy six feet of actual usable floor space when you considers safety clearance and swing room.
How Much Space Your Home Gym Bench Needs
The Hidden Footprint of Your Gear
Consider not only the bench, but the area surrounding it, that’s what most people miss. The thing fit, but the activity doesn’t. In tight spaces, standard flat benches is the most forgiving.
Standard Flat Benches
Eighteen to twenty-two inches by about forty-five inches (that’s about as big as a twin mattress) is typicaly what they’re like, consisting of a simple steel frame with padding. The tradeoff are lack of versatility; you’ll be limited to lying flat or keeping yourself up-right with exercises. This applies unless you plan on doing squats or using the bench for something different than step-ups.
In that case, you want some extra room all-around the bench. Because if you don’t have any, you’re just moving obstacles around the room, you want a clear circle of movement, not a rectangular box of furnitures. Adjustable benches makes all the difference.
Adjustable Benches
Most adjustable benches adds six to ten inches of length beyond the seat when they’re raised to an incline position (and thus also have a backrest that juts out). It doesn’t seem like much until you attempt to bench press while having a wall or mirror smack dab behind you. Your safety will be the limiting factor here; you’ll need at least two feet of clearance between your back and the wall in order to safely roll back during a lift gone awry.
Anything less, and now you’ve converted a strength tool into a potential hazard. You pay price for this adjustability in both your peace of mind and your square footage. The other wrinkle come from Olympic benches.
Olympic Benches
These benches is built to fit into racks. With a rack, the footprint are determined by the rack; the bench fits within the rack’s footprint. Bench slide in and out, but the rack set the parameters.
To use most full racks and half-racks effectively, you’ll want at least 7 feet by 6 feet of floor space. That allows you to get under the bar and rack, step away to squat, and move around for cleans. Any less then that, and an Olympic bench is not something you should of bother with.
You won’t lift much, and will end up moving stuff around too much. It is not a big deal, but it is worth thinking about, so do not buy a pro set-up for a closet gym. There are foldable benches.
Foldable Benches
They are appealing because they save space. They fold up into a thin profile and can be stored under desks/beds etc. But there’s a catch with the mechanism. It takes time and effort to unfold/fold down, which is very inconsistent.
You’re less likely to do a workout if you need to set up a piece of furniture first. Besides, most folding benches aren’t as stable as their fixed counterparts; they’ll wobble under weight, especially if you’re pushing your limits. You’ll regret going convenience-first on this one.
Save folding benches for light dumbbell workouts; don’t try to press heavily with them. The space savings come at the expense of performance. But there’s one more number on the calculator: Yours.
Measuring Your Actual Training Zone
How much ground do you take up? How far out do you extend when sitting down? Where are your hips going to go?
How far should your feet reach when you’re laying down? To determine your actual footprint, add two feet to each dimension of your bench. Then measure that space.
Put some tape around it. Now walk through it. Does it block the TV?
The doorway? Because while it may not feel crowded now… try doing your workout in it. It won’t be pretty.
Give your weight bench its due. Respect the zone. And the workout will follow.
