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Mondays with Matt
Home Gym Essentials for Beginners: You Don't Need Fancy Equipment to Get Strong
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You're listening to Mondays with Matt. I'm Matt Reynolds, the founder and CEO of Barbell Logic and Turnkey Coach. Each week I share lessons from decades of lifting, coaching and business to help you get stronger, coach better, and take action. Let's dive in. Happy Monday, everybody. It's Mondays with Matt. Welcome to Mondays with Matt. I hope you're having a great day. We're gonna dive in today, talking about home gym essentials, what equipment you need. The reality is you don't need fancy equipment to get strong. So let's talk about equipment. We talked about barbells and why they are awesome last week. Today we'll actually talk about the type of equipment that you should put together to build your home gym. Coop will be proud. Let's talk a little bit about why. So as we've, as we've said in the past, first off, I really got lucky here and then I never went to a commercial gym growing up. I didn't use machines. I didn't have one of those big universal machines or something that I was using. I just like everybody else, I started with a basic garage sale set that was like the Sears and Roebuck concrete, vinyl dip, concrete plates and the cheap barbells and just a bench press. Because that's what you do when you're 12 years old is your bench press and you curl and you don't know how to squat and you don't care. But that's still. I started with free weights and that's all I've used my entire life. I think it had a leg extension, leg curl on the end. You guys know the type, really cheap. So Sears or Sam's or something. Man, equipment has come such a long way, especially with COVID When Covid hit, you just saw this massive explosion because everybody wanted equipment. Demand was so high. And so the other thing that we look at is over the years, if we look at, we've got some great literature at this point now on the subject and we just see that it gives you the best bang for your buck. As I talked about last week, just basic barbell training gives you the best bang for your buck. The vast majority of world class athletes in any sport, not just in weightlifting or strongman or powerlifting or whatever it is, most top tier athletes, and I'm not talking about like the Tom Brady's and the ones that are like two terrified to hurt themselves, but true world class athletes, think about the sprinters in the Olympics. Obviously some of your best football players, especially the ones that are, you know, the running Backs, the, the offensive and defensive linemen, the D backs, the, the baseball players, all of this stuff, it's huge for them, right? Even basketball players, you've seen them put on a tremendous amount of muscle over the years. Most of them are doing free weights. It's because it gives you the best return on investment. These things are simple, hard and effective. We know the easy doesn't work, so I need it to be hard, but it also doesn't have to be complicated. And that's certainly true for those of you who are just starting in your fitness journey and your strength journey. If it's early on, that's definitely you. But I would argue that for all of the athletes that I've coached over the years, even for myself, no matter how advanced you become as an athlete, the vast majority of training that you're going to do is still with free weights, it's still with barbells, it's squat racks and barbells and presses and things like that. And you might do some additional things or some sport, little bit, not literally sports specific, but stuff that trains some of those more isolated muscles or works on mobility, whatever. You might need that, but in the beginning you don't. You just need the basic lifts. And so we talked about last week doing those basic lifts, the squat, the deadlift, the bench press, the overhead press. What equipment do you need to get started? One of my favorite stories is that for people who don't know, they walk into a gym, just a, you know, a big box gym, and there's just thousands of things they could do and they become overwhelmed with what to do. And if they just understood the basic criteria that we talked about last week, they would understand that these, these big four lifts and maybe a few body weight movements, like a, like a chin up or a pull up. This is really all you need. And if that's all you need, then you don't need much equipment. And if you don't need much equipment, then it doesn't take up much space. And if it doesn't take up much space, you don't have to go to the big box gym. You can do it from your home, from your garage, from your basement, from a spare bedroom, any of those things. I was thinking about this before this, before the Mondays with Matt. Today I really have three home gyms. I have one in a bedroom with my big squat rack. I posted a picture on that today of that on Instagram. Today I've got a gym in my garage that has another squat rack, a mountable squat rack to the wall, it just has two vertical uprights, but has the safeties on it and the J hooks and everything. Got a bench out there. Then I've got accessory stuff out there like a glute ham, raise and reverse hyper cable machine stuff out there. And then at my cabin, I truly have what I'm going to talk about today, which is the just the basic setup. I have the same mountable rack that I have in the garage. I have another one out at the cabin. It's mounted out on the porch outside, underneath a covered porch to the wall on a 4x6 horse stall mat, there's a bench that hangs up. I've got a mount that hangs it on the wall. I've got a barbell that I keep inside so it doesn't get, you know, all, all gross and rusty. And I've got bumper plates that are just attached to the wall as well. Just hang on the wall and are attached. And so the question is, what do you need? Well, you need those things. You need a squat rack first, you need a bench, you need a barbell, preferably a good barbell, but man, there are just thousands of options. Now you need weights. And of all the things that you buy cheap, you should try to find cheap weights because weights are weight. There are times certainly if you are a high end power lifter and you want like really perfect plates, steel plates that are calibra last gram, that's fine. But I also think it's perfectly fine to go get some weights on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace or garage sale. Buy them used, buy them cheap. They're going to be used once you use them anyway, not a big deal. So you just need a squat rack, a bench, barbells and weight. Right. And I think something like a horse stall mat is really nice, especially if you live in rural America at all, or 4 by 6ft. They used to be 30 bucks, now they're like 50 bucks. So you can sometimes catch them on sale for 40 bucks or so. You really just need one of those. And everything you need to do can essentially be in an 8 foot wide. Because the barbell's 7ft, you need a little bit of space to put the weight on by 4ft deep. And if you have an 8 foot by 8 foot platform, that is truly all, all that you need and probably enough for two people to train at the same time. If your rack is deep enough. That's what Rachel and I do. We've got a rack that's nice and deep. It's four feet between the the two main sets of posts, we've got a sixth, fifth and sixth set of posts that we put our weight storage on, but you don't need all that. And we'll talk about some really good priced options here later on in the show. And so all you really need to check on on the rack, most of these racks that are going to be sold even from places like Walmart or Amazon, they're not going to sell them if they're going to kill you. So they're going to be heavy duty enough, especially in the beginning to handle 300, 400, 500 pounds. It's fine if you're squatting 800 or 900 pounds, you probably want a nicer rack, but that will be fine. You want to make sure it has safeties so that you can squat heavy enough or bench press heavy enough that you don't have to worry about missing a weight, bringing a bar down on your chest, not being able to get it back up, that's not very fun. So we want to make sure it has safeties. And I really want a squat rack. It could be mountable. It doesn't have to have four posts, although I like them better. But something that has safeties so that you can use those and something that has a pull up bar so that you can pull ups and chin ups. Because I'm going to walk through some of the exercises that you can do with that basic setup of essentially really three pieces of equipment and weights. So four maybe pieces of equipment if you count the weights itself. The other things that you might want to consider, that you probably would want to consider, they're very cheap, are just some safety clips to hold the weights on. I don't tend to use those if I'm bench pressing myself by myself because I want to be able to slide the weight off if I need to. If I've got a spotter, I typically put the clips on. It's fine. Some chalk I have converted to the chalk ball. Just a little ball of chalk. You can keep it in a Ziploc bag or keep it in a bowl at home. That allows you to help with grip. And it's a great way to get started. Now because of the explosion in equipment and equipment manufacturers and we have so many. There's these, there's the big ones, right? You've got Rogue Fitness, which is the biggest one that's out there. They make super high quality, high end goods. It's fantastic. It's expensive, it's great. You've got Rep Fitness, which is probably the Biggest up and comer that's coming along. That's fantastic. Titan has been around for a long time. They are essentially like a rogue knockoff. They are American owned, but their stuff is manufactured in China. Certainly somebody like Coop from Garage Gym Reviews, which I'll talk about more, he knows this stuff far better than I do. He knows every single. Every single equipment manufacturer. He can see any piece of equipment that's ever been made and know who. Who made it and the backstory and who the owner is and all that sort of stuff. The reality is, though, you have a ton to choose from today. You can get squat racks up in the 5, 6, $10,000 range. But I was looking before the show earlier this morning, Walmart has racks as cheap as $160 right now. And I have several of my clients that actually have those exact racks. And they work just fine. They're like, if you see them, they're yellow or red. You know, they're just basic racks and they. And they work just fine. And actually, I've got a guy that's using them. He's squatting 400 for reps. He's doing rack pulls with 450 or so on it. I mean, the guy's pretty strong. It's had no problem whatsoever. It's got the safeties on it. Even his came for just a little bit more. I think for $200 total, it came with a pull. He's got a cable he can. A high cable, low cable he can use on there. And then. Let's talk about barbells for a second. So barbells, there are really three styles of barbells. I'm sure there's more, but the three primary styles, you've got the really cheap, crappy ones that have the hex nut at the end, like the Allen nut down at the end. You want to try to avoid those. Now, look, if you're brand new and you've never lifted and you just get yourself a set and you get a cheap barbell at a garage sale and it's $5 or $10, it's fine. Get it? It's fine. It'll be good to be a beater bar for later. You can beat it up and do rack pulls with it and whatnot. And so you have those. Those are not great bars. They tend to rust pretty easy. The, the. Not the colors, the sleeves don't. They'll. They'll kind of tighten up and not turn really well over time. But what's crazy is you used to only have that option and then you had to go to bushing and bearing bars and bars that have bushings inside would start at about 300 to 400 and bearing bars tended to be 800 to $1,000 or more. And now I was looking again. Today Walmart has a thousand pound power bearing bar ball bearings for $69. Now I don't know how great it is, but I can tell you this, it's a lot better than the really cheap crappy one that's got the little nut at the end. So the first thing I do if I I was in a gym this past week, I was telling you last week I was going to Dallas, had a good trip in Dallas, stayed at a hotel that had a really nice gym and the first thing I did is walk around, looked at the barbells, looked at the end caps of the barbell and found a barbell that was I, they had a Texas power bar but they also had a bunch of them that had the little hex nut at the end. So I made sure to get a good barbell and use that one. So you have lots of options. I think it's perfectly fine to go with something like Walmart or Amazon if cost is prohibitive for you. I think just spending money where you buy once, cry once is still a really good idea. This stuff holds its value really well. Even the stuff from Walmart and Amazon you're going to be able to turn around. If you buy it for 160 bucks, you're going to be able to sell it for 1:25 a couple years later. It's not going to be a big deal. Most stuff is going to hold 90% of its value forever. If you can afford one from Rogue or Rep and they've got some incredibly nice ones or something in middle tier like a Titan, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with those. I've got racks from really all of those top end companies. I've got them from my nice one at home in the, in the bedroom here is from Rogue. I think my mountable racks are from Titan if I remember correctly and I've used all of them and they work just fine. So one of the things I wanted to point out is that in just thinking I did this in about five minutes, maybe less. Exercises that you can do with this basic setup, squat rack, bench, barbell plates, right. So squat rack can be as basic as you want it, as fancy as you want it. The bench kind of the same thing. Although for the most part I want to get a bench. It's got a wide enough pad on it, right? So something that's, you know, somewhere in that ballpark of 10, 11 inches wide and is in is kind of got a sticky pad. Most of the pads now are some combination of like a rubber and marine vinyl. And that works really well because you stick to the bench. You don't have to have super fancy. I just don't like a slick vinyl or slick kind of vinyl covered bench that's very narrow. And so you also want to make sure it's, it's high enough so you can check the specifications for what the height of a bench needs to be. If you get one that's low to the ground, really narrow, your shoulder blades don't both fit on it. You want to try to find one that you can comfortably lay down on and bench press. And so that's the deal with the benches. Same thing you can get, get them cheap from Amazon or Walmart. You can get really ones that are priced pretty well from a company like Titan or even Rep Fitness. And certainly they can go on up into the 5, 6, $7,000 range if you decide you want to pull the trigger on that. So with that basic setup and then weight weights are weights, right? You can get iron plates, old school iron plates. You can get bumper plates. I've got the thick prison bumpers. They're like the black crumb type bumpers made I think by RB Bumper company have been made for years or RB Rubber company. You've got the, you've got the really nice competition bumper plates that have the, the hub in the middle. I've got those two downstairs. I've got all of them iron. I've got the, the kind of crappy bumpers that I have outside at the, the cabin so the weather doesn't mess them up. Any of those are fine. Weight is just weight. And so at some point you'll get a little more particular about what you use. But for now, I would just get weight and it'll be fine. Just make sure the inside diameter of the plate matches the outside diameter of the barbell. So it's I think about 1.9 inches for a standard. You don't want to get something that's got the little tiny hole and doesn't fit. That's pretty basic. With that basic setup, you can literally do this squats. You can do squats front squats, pin squats, pause squats, box squats that you could buy. You can squat down to a bench or a box or stacking plates up. I've got Lots of clients that do that. You can deadlift, Romanian deadlift, pause deadlift, deficit deadlift. You can do rack pulls as long as you got the safeties. Snatch grip deadlift, straight leg deadlift, and I'm sure I'm missing some. You can bench press, close grip, bench press, wide grip, bench press, pause bench press, Spado bench press, which is a bench press where you take it down until it's about 2 inches off your chest. Hold it, fire up pin bench press, incline bench press. I have clients that incline bench press and just have a bench that's just a flat bench. Doesn't turn into an incline. They just take a couple big plates as long as they're sturdy and put the back end or the head side end on the plates and get a 15 degree, 20 degree angle and turn it into a low incline bench press. You can do board press. If you have a piece of lumber where you put a board on your chest or have somebody hold a board on your chest, you can bring it down and press that way. They also make them now that are. They didn't have these in my early powerlifting days. They're like the blocks, bench blocks that attach to the barbell and then you bring it down. You do a partial range of motion that way. You can do a JM press. If you don't know what a JM press is, you should look it up. It's a great movement. For triceps is a really heavy tricep supplemental lift. You can do standing press, you can do seated press, you can do pin press, you can do push press. I feel like I'm the guy talking about shrimp on Forrest Gump. You can do snatch, you can do clean and jerk. You can do good mornings, you can do barbell rows, you can do lying tricep extensions with a barbell. You don't even have to have an easy bar to do it. You can do chin ups or inverted rows. So chin ups, straight up and down. Inverted rows are kind of the same thing but more in a horizontal plane. Do French press over the head, barbell curls, walking lunges, Bulgarian split squats and hip thrusts. That's within just a couple minutes of just typing down the things that I do. And I would say again, this, this grouping of lifts of squats and all their variations, deadlifts and all their variations, bench press press and all their variations. The Olympic lifts, Good mornings rows, tricep work, bicep work and unilateral work like a walking lunge. Bulgarian split squat, hip thrust for hips for those of you guys that want to actually make that movement in front of other human beings, it's up to you. You can do all of those with those basic movements, and all of those should make up about 90% of all the movements you do forever. From the time that you are a beginner to the time that you are extremely advanced. That's gonna be the bulk of the lifts that you do. You might add accommodating resistance, you might add bands or chains, things like that. You can certainly mix it up a little bit. You might get some different barbells over time. Safety squat bar, a cambered bar or something like that. Those work fine. But in the beginning, those basic four pieces of equipment will get you all of those movements. I didn't even count this up. That's probably 40 movements I just laid out. And it works really well. So everything you need to get strong you can do with a rack, a bench, a barbell and plates, and again, a horse stall mat. And if you. You don't have access to, like, farm supply type stores, Costco is now selling this kind of stuff, rubber flooring for gym. You can buy like a pack of them. They lock together and they're pretty good. Coop reviewed them not too long ago on Garage and reviews. You can do that. You can order them online. The shipping's a little bit expensive sometimes when you do that, but that gives you everything you need. After that, if you already have those things, you're like, what should I buy next? I still really want to focus on barbell movements and the big barbell movements. But the next step that I tell most people is to get some adjustable dumbbells. They don't take up much space. It adds all the dumbbell variants that the barbells that you could do on the barbells as well. So dumbbell presses, dumbbell bench press, dumbbell lunges, Bulgarian split squats, things like that. Potentially a single kettlebell, something in that 30 pound range and something in the 50 pound range, depending on whether it's in pounds, kilos, poods, which is a Russian weight increment. I think it's like 32 and 53, something like that. I like a mountable dip station. You can put. You can do dips directly on the rack. You can also, if you have two barbells, you can put those in the safeties on the rack. You can do them there. I like the mountable matador type system a little bit better. And you can get a cable pulley system, anything from a cheap DIY cable pulley system. That you just build yourself from Lowe's or Home Depot all the way to something like a power Vultra, which is, you know, $2,200 or something, or any kind of like mountable or freestanding, higher, low cable machine that gives you like literally everything you'd ever need. You really don't need anything else. At that point you start buying machines that are like a one trick pony. You're buying machines that are a leg extension, leg curl, leg press, glute, ham, raise, reverse hyper, things like that, or a machine press. They take up a lot of space. So for space, the best thing I can get is that squat rack, barbell bench, weights combo, and then maybe add a few little side pieces like the dip station, a cable attachment to the rack, something like that. And you can do everything that you need to do, which means you can train at home, you can train at home with your spouse, you can train at home with your friends, you can train at home with your kids, you can model it for them. And so that's a great way to start. And it's pretty cheap. And certainly if you factor in the cost of not just the gym membership, but the time gas that you'll spend driving to and from and also being in the ridiculous fitness market with a bunch of half naked people and trying to fight for different racks and equipment and barbells and whatnot, you can just do it all at home. And you don't have an excuse saying you just walk out to the garage or walk into the basement and knock out a great workout. So once you have those things, once you have the four basic pieces of equipment that you need, the question is, how do you train? And this is where I want to share with you. We have a great Novice Linear Progression ebook. It's totally free. If you're still training mostly on machines or kind of guessing in the gym, you're leaving a lot on the table. Barbells and free weights are how you build real strength. And the best way to start is with a simple, proven plan. That's exactly what our Novice Linear Progression ebook gives you. If you're new to lifting or getting back after time off, this is definitely where you want to start. Go to Barbelogic.com Novicelinear Progression Barbelogic.com NovaCityProgression and download the Novice Linear Progression ebook today. That's a great place to start and you know how to train and you are often running. Again, let's be people of action. Don't just think about this. Make that Purchase today. Check out, check out Facebook Marketplace, check out Craigslist. Go check out the garage sales in your town, in your area. Look up the deals online. And again I'll throw Coop Abone. He's got great recommendations on his YouTube channel, Garage Gym Reviews. And then he also has a second channel he's opened up in the last year or so called Budget Gym Co Op because his name's Coop. That, that is kind of often similar videos or even almost like the same videos but specifically for very budget minded people. So if you're like, hey, I want to get the best bench for the price and sometimes he just says here's the cheapest one. So here's the cheapest one and it's not that bad, go with that. That's a great place to start. Okay with that I'll take questions. As always, you can feel free to ask any questions. Also, if you have ideas of other movements you can do with a barbell that I didn't name, I would love to see them in the comments. As usual, we brought some comments in over the past week. First question is, I hear bad things about Titan Fitness. What's your experience here? I guess if I hated them that would not be, not be great. I've heard those same things. I can only tell you from my experience. I've had no problems with Titan whatsoever. Titan I think got a bad rep rap for a long time because they were clearly purchasing rogue equipment. They were drawing up the specs and then they were sending the specs off to China to be made and then they would just make rogue knockoffs cheaper. They even named them the same, really similar. I think there was a lawsuit. I don't know all the details, but Titan's fine. Titan's fine. Again, I like American owned and American manufacturer type companies. If you have the money to spend it, spend on that. But if you don't, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with buying something from Amazon or Walmart that you know is probably made in China as well. And so no problems at all for me with Titan Fitness. I'm sure some people have horror stories. They probably have horror stories about companies even like Rogue or Rep. So at some point, you know, you piss somebody off. But I've never had a problem really with any fitness company. I've had a few things I've ordered from Titan that appeared that it was in stock. It wasn't in stock. It was on a boat coming from Mars evidently and it took a while to get there. But they often would offer me to a refund on my money. Or I could just stay in the queue so that when I think that happened with my. I've got the titan leg press, leg press hack squat combo. It's a pretty nice machine and it was a really good price and I think I just had to wait a little while for it and so it wasn't that big of a deal. Never had a problem there. So one question I've already answered so far, but I'll touch on it again. I'm super low budget. I'm looking for stuff on Amazon and Walmart. Any recommendations there? That's fine. Just see where the deals are. Right now there's constantly these deals going on. I'm Damon. I think the deals that I noted today with the barbell, the bearing bar for 69 bucks, the squat rack for 160 bucks, I don't even think those are on sale. I think that's a regular price. Walmart and Amazon both put these things on sale all the time. You can watch that and pull the trigger if that's, you know, if that's all you have to spend is a couple hundred bucks. A couple hundred bucks is a pretty cheap way to get strong and fit and improve your quality of life. So great way to go. I'll answer Mr. Dahl's question. I like a few sets of bands to hit some accessories, not just for accommodating resistance. I do too. I love bands. These are big rubber bands. They're very long, right? And they come from like very, very narrow. The usually the smallest one, I guess what's called the mini band. It's like. I think it's a little over half inch, 5, 8 of an inch somewhere in there. I love those. The light bands are about an inch and a quarter. I think they're typically green. If you get them from Rogue, I think the purples are the next one up. But a few sets of bands, especially a set of mini bands, the red ones and the light bands, the green. You could do all sorts of banded accessory movements. I have clients that have adjustable dumbbells that only go to 50s. They can take a mini band and put it in their hand or around the dumbbells, put it around the bench and then they can bench press with their 50 pound dumbbells. When the 50 pound dumbbells are not heavy enough anymore and essentially turn their 50 pound dumbbells into 70 or 75 pound dumbbells by adding banded resistance. But I also like it. Just like Eric said, things like banded pull aparts Rear Delt face pulls. Good mornings with just the band works really well, both as a warm up, as a cool down, as just a. Just to get some blood pumped into the muscle after the main lifts. Those things work really well and they're great to travel with. You can take bands, they don't weigh anything, throw them in your gym bag. You can take them in the hotel. You could do a lot of stuff with some bands, just some basic bands. You can put them around your back. You can do push ups with them. That works really well as well. So yeah, bands are a great accessory piece to have. Another question. Opposite of the Titan or opposite of the Amazon and Walmart. Question is, I want the best items regardless of budget. If that's you, I would love a new gym. You can buy one for me. Any change for those looking to get the absolute best items? No, it's the same thing. I mean, Coop always has this. I was talking to Coop the other day at church. I was telling him I'm kind of looking for a new leg extension. I do have a Titan leg extension leg curl and I got the original one they made. Their newer ones are a little bit nicer. And he said, you know, what's your budget? I go, I don't know what anything is anymore. So I was like, I don't know, like a thousand dollars. He's like, oof. I don't know that you can get a very good leg extension leg curl for a thousand dollars. And he said, there's a really nice one I love, but it's like five grand. I was like, I'm not spending five grand on a leg extension leg curl. Again, that's a two trick pony. That's at least a little better than just, than just one exercise. But if you want the best items, I would get the best squat rack. I think rep probably makes the best complete system of like squat rack, cable, double pull downs, weight stack, all of that stuff. And again, you can spend ten grand if you want to on it, or a really nice rack and a couple power Vultures. You're going to spend $4,500 on two of them. Something like that. That thing is amazing. It does all sorts of. You can load on that Power Vulture, which I think I've talked about this before, you can set the how much it loads concentrically and then it can increase the eccentric load as you're lowering so you get additional kind of tension on the muscle and potential hypertrophy activation there. That stuff works great. And then the other piece, with the budget Coop loves to do this, and he does this some on the side. He'll consult with people who tend to have a pretty high budget. But you often still have the space limiter, right? And so one of the things I love to do that I've played around my main gym in the bedroom is I've got an 8 foot wide by 12 foot deep platform. So multiple people can train at the same time. And I've got about two feet on each side of that, so it's not a huge room. And so I'm always trying to figure out what is the best way to, to maximize space. So I hang everything up the, the little mountable. It's like these little mountable racks that are made for the dip stations for the Matadors also work for me to hang up my safeties on. I hang up, I have monolith attachments, if you know what those are. The, the hooks that swing out. I love those as well. And so I just try to get everything off the wall. I hang my trap bar up on the, on the wall. I've got a bar holder to hold all my barbells. Because once you become a bar, it's like being a gun guy. One's not enough and then five's not enough. And you got to have 10 or 15 barbells at some point. And by the way, that's not for you to worry about right now. Just start with your $500, $300 purchase, build yourself a home gym and then just look, you just buy stuff for Christmas, you get gifts. Over time, you see a piece of equipment, they put it on sale. Black Friday, you pull the trigger on it. You know, you add a set of adjustable dumbbells or a kettlebell or two cable pull down, things like that. It works great. And so as far as budget goes, if you don't have any budget, I would stick with the high end companies primarily. So the rogue or rep, something like that, there's several other good ones out there. And get the best you can. And then it's just really the space. It might not be the money that is your limitation, it's the space. So you gotta figure out how to build the best you can with the space you have. For me out at the cabin, I only had, I think it's a five foot, maybe six, maybe six foot deep, six feet deep porch. So I couldn't have a platform that was 8ft deep. So I had to build everything. A mountable rack instead of a big four post rack. And you just look at that and you say, okay, what's the space that I have to deal with? It makes, it's kind of fun. It's like being a kid, you know, drawing houses like you're pretending you're an architect as a kid. It's kind of the same thing, only now you get to draw out your gym. Design your gym for the highest efficiency amount of space. You know, how much work can I get done per square foot is a pretty cool metric to keep tabs on and, and go that route. So it's a great place to go. Let me look. I had a other few come in. Um, are the main lifts a squat press, deadlift, bench press and what's the fifth lift? There isn't a fifth lift. Although if I had to choose one, I'd pick chins over barbell rows. But barbell rows are excellent. They're both in the top 10 for sure. Um, chins or pull ups. And I like, by the way, I like a variation on all those chin ups pull ups. People ask me all the time which one's better. I don't really care. We know that chin ups will work a little more muscle mass than pull ups do. I really like being good at all the different grips. Wide grip, pull ups, narrow grip pull ups, relatively narrow grip chins, neutral grip, towel grip, throw a towel over and try to do them one side of your head, then the other side of your head. I like, I just like being good at pull ups. As I've gotten lighter in body weight, it's become more fun to be able to do pull ups so I can actually knock out a fair amount and so. So I love that stuff. So Sorenex is often. We also got a comment. Sorenex is a great company owned by great people. They started really pretty commercial more like in the D1 and professional sports space. I know for a fact that Sorenex has completely outfitted Air Force One with a full squat rack and gym in the airplane, which is nuts. I assume they can't deadlift or drop weights in there. It would I assume cause some sort of problem. But Sorenex is a great group of guys and they're great to purchase from as well. They also had we did a podcast with. Is it Bert is the son did a podcast with him back during COVID They came out with a pretty cheap when nobody could get equipment because demand was so high. They came out with a great little mountable two post squat rack that people could have that didn't have access to gyms because all the gyms were Closed down because Lord knows it was the worst disease ever to hit humanity. Wink. And so they came out with that. They're a bunch of good dudes. So definitely support Sorenex. They're. They're great people. And last one, what is. Who is the best personal website to look at for recommendations? No brainer here. It's Coop from Garage Gym reviews again. Great buddy of mine, lives in my town, goes to my church teaching through the Westminster Confession. Did an outstanding job on Sunday, yesterday morning during Sunday school. Great dude. I bet you guys would love to hear those. It's great to hear Coop actually walk through the Westminster Confession or preach. It's fantastic. He does a great job at Garage Gym Reviews and Budget Gym Co op. Anytime I get ready to look for equipment, if I'm getting ready to buy a new bench, if I'm getting ready to buy a new rack, a barbell, adjustable dumbbells. He's done tons of videos. The first thing I do is I go to YouTube and I search Garage Gym reviews, adjustable dumbbells or whatever. The thing is, he always has multiple videos on it. You can check the dates. Things change so quickly that you can kind of see what the best thing is. He also does a lot of of ranking system, right? So like, so D, C, B, A, S tier, all the best adjustable dumbbells or all the best benches or all the best barbells and, and things like that. So that works really great. So he's a great one to go to. He's a great source of, of knowledge and a great resource, but he also has a lot of written stuff on the website. So if something immediately on YouTube, go to the Garage and reviews website and see if they've got a blog post about it because they often do. He's got a big staff that works for him now and they're constantly putting out really good content on equipment and so he does a great job. All right, last question and then we'll cut it off from Lee. I have to have a rack in my bedroom for now and the ceiling height is too low to press. Just sit down, it's fine. So you can still squat, you can still deadlift, you can still bench press and then just sit down on your bench and press and do seated presses out of your bench. I like taking the bar off of the safeties instead of out of the J hooks as the J hooks will be out here and you got to bring the bar back. Just put it on the, on the safeties where they're down here and you sit up and you press. That works really, really well. You can also experiment some with having a back support and non back support. If you don't have a bench that actually comes up into an incline or a military press type piece, you can actually Westside, in their old videos, they would just take like a 2 by 8 and they put the 2 by 8 board across the rack. They would sit on their bench, they would lean against the board and they would press. And then you've got a back supported overhead press which you ought to be able to press more that way. And so you have to take that into account. It's not exactly the same thing as just a pure overhead press where you have to stabilize yourself and you have less stabilization seated than you do standing, but it still works just fine. I think seated presses are 95% as effective as a regular standing overhead press. So that works well as well. So man, infinitely scalable, infinitely changeable, infinitely titratable. This is what we love about barbells and basic barbell equipment. So if you haven't pulled the trigger on it, do it. Now's the time to do it. Find that little spot in a bedroom, in your garage, in your basement, in a carport, in a storage facility and get to training on your own. That's another Mondays with Matt. We'll see you guys next Monday.