Home Gym Wishlist

To most people my home gym seems complete.  But to be honest there are still a few toys I would want to get my hands on:

1.  Trap Bar

I've been eyeing one of these babies for a long time.  But Malaysia being what it is, no one supplies it here.  I did check out a few Chinese suppliers and their asking price is pretty reasonable.  But once you add in the shipping cost (which is actually more expensive than the cost of the bar itself), the figure is a bit on the high side.

In any case you're interested to get one as well, let me know.  Maybe we could get a discount.

2. Medicine Ball

Now these you can get at your friendly neighbourhood Fitness Concept.  Off the top of my head I'd definitely be using it for medicine ball slams (at least its an outlet for my anger issues).

3.  Bands

I have only one at home and I need at least 2 more of various strengths.  It'll also make it easier for me to sub in cable-centric exercises like lat pull downs if I have more than 1 band.  I can also use them for pre-hab stuff.

4.  Lifting Platform

Yeah this would be so cool to have.  Actually you can just DIY this.  But of course I am a DIY klutz and I'm not sure how my living room is going to look like if put this up.

5. Olympic barbell set

I've actually asked around and a 140kg set would set me off for RM2,100.  I was tempted.  Really tempted.  Although at this point I would omit the olympic barbell, get the trap bar but just buy the weight plates.

Dealing with Distractions

I needed a change.  Badly.

Work's been shitty.  But I can't change things up at work.  So I changed how my living room looked like.  I was also starting to have some trouble moving around and exercising in the apartment.  But it was mostly because of my inefficiency in arranging my furniture.

But now I have allocated a dedicated area to do my training.  As you can see in the pics below:

The dining table was initially at the place where the squat rack is.  The rug is anti-slip and is sufficient to absorb the impact of deadlifts.

Previously the dining table created a barricade effect to the doorway.  Now everything is clear and neat.

Me and my friend looking oh so proud after a whole day of supervising the paint job and moving around furniture.

Maybe I should charge an entry fee...

So after much deliberating, debating, calculating and re-calculating I finally decided to get myself a squat rack. This time, it's for real - as you can see in the pictures. I'm still not used to having a big chunk of steel placed right smack in the middle of my living room but over time it won't be so glaring, I guess.

Along with the squat rack I got myself a 7ft barbell, since the 6 footer is to short to fit into the rack. Minor problem. Got that fixed pretty quickly. The asking price for the squat rack was RM1,900 (including delivery and installation charge). Bought it from Weider. I almost purchased one from Transmark but they are charging RM2,300 for something similar. So I count myself lucky that I could save RM400 overall.

Besides, I can always get a tax rebate next year for buying sports equipment.