Training in your own garage gym has it’s ups and downs.
- Up: it’s easy to get there because you’re already there.
- Down: but it’s cold in winter and too hot in summer.
- Up: you can leave your equipment set up as you want it.
- Down: but nobody clears up after you and you have to keep it clean and tidy.
And so on, and so on.
One of the challenges we face as garage gym goers is motivation and one of the best ways to keep yourself motivated is to get a training partner. A training partner is also helpful to keep us honest with the quality of our reps and the technique we are using.
But two people training in one tiny garage gym can be challenging. In this post, I’m going to have a look at some of the strategies we can use to make it easier to train two-up in a garage gym.
Strategy 1: do the same exercises at the same time
If you have enough plates and bars and your exercises don’t require any other equipment, you can do your exercises at the same time. This is the least likely option as it only works for deadlifts, cleans (assuming you have the floor space), clean and presses, glute bridges, hip thrusts and bent-over rows. However, it can be very motivating to match rep for rep so it’s worth considering if you have the facility to do it.
This is a picture of our deadlift set-up on a Sunday evening.
Strategy 2: alternate training the same exercise
If you’re using similar weights or you’re training pull ups or dips then you can alternate training the same exercise. So if you’re using a clock, then one of you goes on the top while the other goes on the bottom and you each do your reps every minute.
It works for pull ups and dips because you just use a sling and a harness (assuming you both have a harness!) to attach a small amount of weight each time. You probably have at least 100kg in weights plates kicking around and if you each need more than 50kg then you’ve probably got more than 100kg in plates anyway.
This doesn’t work for exercises where you have to change the weight on the bar (like bench press or squat) as you get really hacked off changing weights plates backwards and forwards every minute. In fact, you probably get a better workout moving the plates than lifting weights!
Strategy 3: alternate 2 exercises
This works really well if you’ve got 2 main exercises for the day, say a big pull and a big push for the upper body. So for me, that might be pull ups and dips but for my training partner, it might be military press and bent-over row. I can do pull ups while my partner uses the rack for the military press and then I use the rack for my dips while they do bent-over rows.
Strategy 4: write similar training programmes
It sounds limiting but it isn’t that bad if you’re going to be training together for a long time. Simple things like setting exercises to take the same length of time make a lot of difference. What doesn’t work is when one of you wants to do 10 sets of 3 on a minute but the other wants to do 3 sets of 8 on 1minute 30s. In that case, one of you is going to end up sitting around getting cold for ages.
It also works better if you plan to do the same number of exercises in each workout. This stops one person trying to set up for another exercise and getting in the way of the other, who is lifting.
It’s not rocket surgery
Well, not exactly rocket surgery but I hope it gives you a few ways to train with other people in your garage. I’ve certainly found a training partner has helped my motivation and improved my technique.
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“This is a picture of our deadlift set-up on a Sunday evening.”
Guess which one is mine…
That photo has really incentivised me to improve my deadlifting weight!
[...] need to change slightly. We arrange our workouts to mirror each other so that we can conveniently workout together in our tiny garage and we’d both like to move to doing some outdoor Strongman-type exercising [...]