Make Your Own Home Gym
- August 2020
- Simple Living Training
I really like weight lifting, and I try to keep it in the mix at least once a week. My husband Ian also likes lifting, and squats and deadlifts are an important piece of his rehab from his accident 18 months ago. Our local gym is the Moab Aquatic Center, conveniently located two blocks from our house. But we started to wonder if and when it would reopen this spring, and if we’d even want to go there if/when it did.
I started looking for Olympic weights to buy and was shocked at the prices. Moab is a bit of an outpost in normal times, so you can’t just go to a store for specialty items like weight plates, and I figured shipping might be an issue with iron. But I quickly figured out that everyone in America was creating or expanding their home fitness set-ups, and prices and availability of all fitness gear reflected that. Even if I could find available weight plates, they were priced at 4 times what I’ve seen them for in the past. In the course of all this internet searching, I came across someone selling plastic forms to make your own cement plates from. Genius! And then I came across people making their own forms to make all the different plate sizes for just a fraction of the price of buying a single plastic form… I watched this youtube tutorial and purchased the specs PDF for $6.99 and then got to work on the forms.
Making the forms was the slowest part of the project, it took me a couple of days to get them all made. I had lots of scrap plywood around, but I had to buy the flashing, 2″ PVC and the epoxy. Still, the cost of materials for a full set of plates was about $40 (plus the cement, which was another $15). I ended up cutting the entire roll of flashing with a miter saw which was a little scary (you have to be especially working with the cut edge of the roll that’s like razor wire once it’s been cut) but that saved hours versus the score/snap option. I used the miter saw for cutting the PVC too.
Once the forms were done, the concrete mixing and pouring went quick. We were a little undecided as to how wet to make the cement, and when the weights were all finished and dry, we found that the 5 pound and 10 pound plates were exactly the right weight. But both the 25 pound plates were actually 23, both the 35’s were actually 32, and both the 45’s were actually 40.
I was extremely careful when making the molds (the instructions go to a sixteenth of an inch on measurements), and they were exactly the right size, so I suspect that we mixed our cement a little too wet and lost some weight due to evaporation, which fits in with losing more weight as the surface area of the plates get larger. Since both plates of each size are equal and we know what they are, it doesn’t matter. But I am thinking of doing another pour, just out of curiosity. And once the forms are made, it’s so easy and cheap to make more plates. We only used 2.5 bags of cement for the full set of 5’s, 10’s, 25’s, 35’s and 45’s. I’m also considering spraying some Flex Seal on them, but I think the cement is kind of pretty so I’m leaving them au natural for now and they are holding up well so far.
We toyed with the idea of some sort of DIY bar, but I found one at a reasonable price with 2 day shipping (kind of unbelievable right now) on eBay, and figured it would really be best to have a proper 45 pound Olympic bar.
Now we were just missing a squat/bench press rack and a bench. Ian had gotten fully into this whole DIY project once the plates turned out to be so cool, and started perusing Youtube for some home built racks. Talk about a rabbithole….it seems like literally everyone in America is making racks, benches and plates right now, and people are making some amazing stuff! Ian got really excited about the idea of using 4x4s and notching the joins, mainly because he’s never built like that and thought it would be fun as well as solid. He took inspiration from a 4×4 bench press rack he saw on Youtube, and decided to make one tall enough for a pullup bar and to use as a squat rack.
He also made a hinged bench for it, and added some pipe for racking the cement plates.
So if you’re wishing you had some weights to work out with, consider making your own!
