Minimal Equipment, Maximum Results Tips and Suggestions for Designing and Implementing a Home Gym Workout with Nothing but a Barbell You really don’t need much equipment to get great results from training. In fact, sometimes the more equipment you have—an array of barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, benches, racks, and other implements—the worse your results. Why? Too many choices. After all, you can go to almost any big, corporate gym anywhere in America—gyms with all of the machines and weights you can imagine—and see that most trainees aren’t getting good results. So, yeah, I often think this is because lifters have too many choices. You could cancel your gym membership today, head to your local sports store and buy nothing but an Olympic barbell set with no more than 300 pounds, and get great results with only that barbell. Oh, you’d also save a lot of money in the long run, too. Yo...
Balancing Life, Work, and Lifting In 1998, I was heavily invested in powerlifting. I loved it. I was dead-set on being one of the strongest powerlifters in the world. I was willing to do whatever required of me, training wise, to achieve that goal. At the time, I was also writing a lot for Ironman magazine and MuscleMag International , two of the largest and most popular bodybuilding magazines of the day. I had an article in one of them, sometimes both, almost every month back then. But it wasn’t enough to pay the bills. And powerlifting, like a lot of underground, niche sports, didn’t pay anything. Nope. It was, in fact, quite the opposite. It cost money—payments to enter meets, along with travel and food costs associated with them, not to mention the money I poured into nutrition, training gear, and, at that time, setting up my own garage gym replete with everything a world-class strength athle...