Setting up your own home gym is one of the best investments you can make in your training — if you plan it right. The most expensive mistake almost always happens at the start: people buy equipment first and only then work out what for. The result: a room full of gear that doesn’t fit together.
We’ve been building training spaces in Switzerland for over 13 years — more than 2000 home gyms, from a corner of the living room to a full HYROX garage. Garage, basement or a fitness room at home — the logic is the same. Here are five things we explain again and again, plus the checklist you walk into the planning with. The complete knowledge — including 5 ready-made setups and the flooring strategies in detail — we’ll send you free as a PDF at the end.
1. Concept first, equipment second
Before you think about racks or plates, answer three questions: Who trains (just you, partner, kids)? What do you train (strength, HYROX, functional)? Should the setup grow with you?
Almost everything else follows from that — including the floor area. A basic setup with rack, bench and barbell needs 8–12 m². A functional family wants more like 15–25 m² with free space for several people. HYROX training starts around 20 m² (sled track, wall ball, cardio). Equipment follows the concept — never the other way around.
2. Measure the room before you order
Sounds obvious, often goes wrong. Ceiling height decides what’s possible: Olympic lifts ideally want 2.70–3.00 m, box jumps 2.60 m plus clearance. But a lot works much lower — pull-ups work under 2 m too (your chin has to clear the bar, not the bar the ceiling), and many of our racks can be shortened.
Factor in that the floor takes 15–25 mm of height, more with a multi-layer build. And think in zones — strength, cardio, free space — not just in square metres. Cram everything into one corner and you end up with a storage room, not a gym. Rule of thumb: before you say „won’t fit“, send us the measurements.
And if the room is small: a well-thought-out home gym in a small space beats a cluttered garage any day. Even a small fitness room in the basement or next to the living room becomes a full training space with the right planning — it’s about the selection, not the square metres.
3. A thicker floor isn’t automatically quieter
Myth no. 1. Past a certain thickness, more rubber barely adds anything — that’s the physics of structure-borne sound. If you’re at 25 mm and the impact is already noticeably dampened, 40 or 50 mm won’t move you into a different league.
What actually helps in an apartment block isn’t more thickness, it’s the right combination: a multi-layer build with decoupling (reckon 5–10 cm of build-up) or a targeted drop zone exactly where the bar lands. And yes, rubber smells — for the first few weeks. ECO recycled rubber clearly more intense, the finer HG lines more subtle. In small rooms we almost always recommend HG. We tell you that before you buy, not after.
4. Buy in the right order
Spend money in the wrong order and you’ll regret it later. This order works for almost any setup:
Better to buy the right thing and grow piece by piece than everything at once — and half of it sits unused. Buying twice costs more than buying once, well.
5. Start small and grow modular
That only works if your setup can grow with you. A wallmount today, a power rack in two years, a rig in five — with compatible components, no investment is lost. That’s exactly what our modular A-Line is built for: you start where you are today and add on instead of rebuying.
✅ Your checklist: 9 points before planning
Come into the consultation with clear answers and you save time and get better recommendations. This is the basis for every conversation — let’s tick it off together:
We don’t sell equipment. We build gyms.
That’s the difference from any online shop. You send us your room measurements — length, width, height, plus specifics like pillars, sloped ceilings or doors. We model your room in 3D and show you how the equipment stands in it: walkways, clearances, safety zones. You can see whether the bench really fits behind the rack — before you spend a single franc.
📥 Get the complete Home Gym Guide free
These five tips and the checklist are the start. The complete Home Gym Guide (30 pages, PDF) has the rest: the 5 typical setups with concrete recommendations, the flooring and noise strategies in detail, the full equipment guidance — and how we plan your room in 3D before you spend a single franc.
Hooked and ready to really get going on your planning? Then grab the complete guide — we’ll send it your way right now. Free, honest, no sales fluff.
Why a guide at all?
Because a good home gym doesn’t start with equipment, it starts with the right questions. We don’t sell equipment — we build gyms. The guide takes the mistakes off your plate that we’ve seen in over 2000 projects, and gets you consultation-ready: when you talk to us after, we’re straight to „here’s what your setup could look like“.