Gym Membership vs. Home Gym

The Cost of a Gym Membership in 2019

The average cost of a gym membership in the United States is as much as $600 a year. This is for your run of the mill average gym. Then if you get into the specialty gyms like CrossFit or PureBarre that you need a coach and classes for, your annual cost goes even higher. If you are a member of one of these gyms, I challenge you to make a working list of the equipment that you use at your gym and, in a separate column, whether that equipment is critical to your routine or if you could do without it. 

Building a Home Gym

After you have made this list of what is critical to you and what isn’t, you can start looking at the cost of this equipment. I recommend looking for secondhand equipment on resale sites like Facebook Marketplace, EBay, Craigslist, etc. I personally built my last home gym for only $250 solely on Facebook Marketplace. This was my breakdown:

• Bench press/leg press with about 300lbs of free weights: $100
• Power Tower Pull-up and dip setup: $50
• Adjustable Bench: $25
• Adjustable Dumbbells, jump rope, sandbag: $25
• Padded Tiling: $50

This allowed me to do everything I wanted from bench press, squats, curls, pull-ups, and more. There was only one problem I ran into... I got bored.

Programming

The boredom came from not having a plan when I worked out. I would make my own routines but then I’d be wondering if I was doing it correctly or doing the right exercises/reps/sets for my goals. This will quickly lead to burnout. Thanks to the power of cell phones and the Internet now, tons of fitness apps and websites have been created with workout videos, routines, meal plans, and even A.I. trainers. The one that I use now and plan to keep using is BeachBody on Demand. I use the 6 month plan and you can pay it all up front. I paid $60 for 6 months and now have access to all of their videos from P90x to Insanity, and all sorts of others that I didn’t know existed. Programs like this allow you to pick new program after new program and try new things without getting locked into anything. You can try new programs and apps until you find one that you love and want to stick with. This will also help you decide what kind of equipment you’d like to have.

Build as you Go

As you see a need for new equipment, add it to your gym. This will allow you to make the purchase when you want to make the purchase. It also allows you to sell your equipment that you may not be using as much anymore and replace it with something that  you will continue to use. As you build, you will be acquiring depreciating assets. As you use the equipment, the value will go down, but it will still have more value than your gym membership will at the end of the year.

Cost Comparison

Home Gym

In 2013, the average cost of a home gym was about $650. If you are able to find used equipment or want to buy brand new equipment, Then chances are, you could end up spending as much as $1000. For comparison purposes, this is the cost of 1 to 1.5 years of a gym membership. Even if you went really big on the gym and spent $5k building a home gym with brand new equipment, this would still be comparable to one year of going to SoulCycle 3 days a week or a couple years of Orange Theory and you’d have money leftover for a streamed workout program. 

Or you could do what I did and buy used equipment for a couple hundred bucks and do some heavy cleaning before using it!