How to have a home gym in a tiny house

Whether you just live small or you have a tiny house, you know there are serious considerations to every single thing you bring home. In a small kitchen you need to limit the amount of clutter on your counters and your appliances need to be multi-purpose, and in a small living room you’ve got to focus on furniture that’s comfortable and used for storage.

Living small has its challenges, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up everything. If you like to work out, you can still have a home gym in a tiny home. All you need to do is focus on the essentials and choose space-saving gym equipment.

Stow and go your home gym

When you have a large house with a lot of space and light, you don’t always think about storage. With a small house, it’s all you think about. In order to get a clean, open space to live in, you have to be clever about how you hide your gear. If you want a home gym, that guy will include large cardio equipment.

Thankfully there are foldable treadmills available for those of us who live small, and although they are full featured, they will fold up easily enough for you to stash them under a bed or in a closet. Take the FreeMotion Smooth Fitness 800 treadmill as an example. It has a 3.25 continuous-horsepower motor, 32 pre-loaded workout apps built right in, and a suspension cushioning system. When you’re finished working out you can fold it up and store it away until you need it again.

If you’d rather use an elliptical to get your cardio, you can also choose a space-saving model. The NordicTrack SpaceSaver SE9i Elliptical has a 7″ Smart HD touchscreen and integrated tablet holder. You can workout to movies or your favourite scenery using 30 built-in workout apps and 24 digital resistance levels, and when you’re done you can fold it up and move it to another room or store it away.

Gain strength without using space

You’ll have seen big weight benches or weight training equipment at your local gym, and while they do the job of boosting your strength, you can’t always have the same set up at home because of space constrictions.

But you can gain strength without having a lot of equipment around, and the key is keeping it simple. Add a Soozier pull up bar above a doorway and you can strength train isolated areas like your shoulders, arms, chest, and back.

You can also choose a set of dumbbells that store in a compact way. The Bowflex dumbbells will replace a set of 15 weights. You can switch them out with adjustable weight from 5 lb. to over 50 lb, and they are easy to use as you progress.

Build your core, not your clutter

Core training is one of the easiest things you can do at home, and there’s no end to the number of different easy-to-store pieces of gym equipment you can pick up and use to build your core strength.

The TapouT’s balance ball trainer builds your core using latex resistance bands. The PVC inflatable ball blows up and deflates as you need it. A yoga mat can be rolled up and put in a drawer when you aren’t using it, and an Indo Board Original Training Pack works out all of your muscles using a roller and cushion. When you’re finished working out you can slide it under your bed or put it in your storage closet.

Having a small house doesn’t mean you can’t have a home gym, and as long as you focus on all of the store-able fitness essentials you can find on Best Buy, you’ll be able to enjoy a full workout without leaving the house.