Home Gym Archives

Home gym for men over 50: half rack with an adjustable bench and plates, a road bike on an indoor trainer, a rower, and a dumbbell rack.

Rowing Machine or Bike for a Bad Knee? I Own Both. Start With the Bike.

Gunnar / September 5, 2026

Both machines live in my garage. With a bone-on-bone knee, the bike gets most of the work, and the knee-loading studies support that order.

Stacked bar chart, where the $40,000 Equinox Optimize fee goes: about $1,000 of tests and gear (green), $5,000 gym access (amber), and $34,000 of coaching, concierge, massage and the room (rust), next to a roughly $3,000 garage version with the same ~$1,000 of biological inputs

Home Gym, Medicine 3.0, Preventive Health

Health Is the New Luxury. The Biology Costs a Few Thousand Dollars.

Gunnar / June 30, 2026

Equinox sells a $40,000 longevity membership with a thousand people waiting. I run the same core protocol out of my garage for a few thousand a year. Here’s where the other $39,000 actually goes, and why some of the most expensive testing can leave you worse off.

My garage gym, where I train five days a week

Fitness, Home Gym, Strength & Conditioning

How I Started Lifting at 50 After 30 Years of Doing Nothing

Gunnar / May 31, 2026

I started lifting at 50 after thirty years of nothing: the dumbbells in my office, the gym that scared me off, the coach who made it stick, and what the evidence says a beginner actually needs.

A rack of individual fixed dumbbells in my home gym

Fitness Journey, Home Gym, Training

The One Home Gym Mistake I won’t make again after 50

Gunnar / January 3, 2026

I admit I like toys, whether it gadgets, cars or gym equipment. When I started setting up a “home gym” (really just a corner in my office), I thought more was better. More machines, more wearables, more gadgets, more choices… After a year I realized that more equipment doesn’t exult better training, especially as your

Before and after: a two-bay garage of raw studs and junk, and the same space finished as a home gym with a half rack, bench, bike on a trainer and dumbbells.

Fitness Journey, Home Gym, Training

I Turned Two Bays of Junk Storage Into a Garage Gym

Gunnar / December 17, 2025

I am not a fan of going to public gyms and prefer to work out at home. I really only occasionally use hotel gyms or my office building’s gym. Our house has a big-ish two car garage that was totally unfinished (raw studs) and full of junk. This fall I finally decided to do something

A crated PRIME Fitness leg extension and leg curl machine on a pallet jack in the driveway after delivery

Home Gym, Training

Best Black Friday Sale Deals on Home Gym and Fitness Gear 2025

Gunnar / October 22, 2025

Black Friday is traditionally the best time to buy home gym or fitness gear. Many manufacturers have sales with significant discounts. I used this to stock my home gym with gear that is joint friendly. Sites to watch: Get the next one in your inbox I write about longevity, training, and preventive health weekly —

Home Gym, Strength & Conditioning, Training, Weight loss

Fitness Journey Part 3: Establishing an exercise habit (May 2025)

Gunnar / October 19, 2025

After starting GLP-1s, I knew I had to work out to avoid losing muscle mass and to help with general fitness. Alas, I had never really worked out… ever. So, I started slowly and bought an indoor bike. This seemed like a good choice as I hate running (I blame a bum knee!) and I

My home office set up for lifting: an indoor bike, an adjustable bench and a small rack of dumbbells in the corner

AI, Home Gym, Longevity, Training

AI Can Write You a Great Workout Program. It Just Can’t Make You Show Up.

Gunnar / September 7, 2025

I tried building myself a workout program with AI. It took about five minutes in Claude, and what came back was a genuinely reasonable three-day strength program scaled to a 50-year-old beginner. That’s not really in question anymore. A 2026 study in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine had nine certified personal trainers and