If you’re looking for home gym advice and tips, you are in luck: The internet is full of great resources from (mostly) independent YouTubers, TikTokers, bloggers and the like. Pages like Garage Gym Reviews, the home gym subreddit, Gluck’s Gym, Basement Brandon, the list goes on and on…
But if you are based in the UK, there’s a big catch – the biggest content creators are all United States-based. And if, like me, you are in Britain, you will quickly learn – when trying to follow their advice – that it’s impossible.
Here are the reasons why – and what you can do about it as an aspiring UK home gym owner!
Equipment Suppliers
The biggest difference by far between the US and the UK home gym market is the suppliers. Most of the same no-name Chinese products are available on Amazon UK and Amazon USA alike. But that’s where the similarities end.
North Americans have brands like Rogue, Titan, Rep, Bells of Steel and so on. But most of these bands don’t have much of a presence in Europe, let alone the UK. There is such a thing as Rogue Europe. But just take a quick look at the prices on there. Remember that much of their stock is made in the USA, so needs to be shipped across the Atlantic.
Apparently, their HQ is in Finland and they have a distribution centre in Belgium. So, er. Yeah.
That all drives costs up, and also means you have to wait quite a long time for any stock they don’t have in their (relatively small) EU-based warehouses.
As such, you might as well just forget buying big, heavy gym gear from American brands. It’s not cost-effective, and you’re going to instead have to buy from British brands, or continental European suppliers at a push.
And that means that while I love watching Garage Gym Reviews’ Coop and co reviewing the latest Rogue or Titan gear, I know I will probably never get the chance to use that stuff in my entire life, let alone have the chance to buy it.
That might all change if Rogue and friends ever decide to open a UK franchise. But in the current climate, I wouldn’t be holding my breath on that one.
Instead, you need to get to know the local brands, the local manufacturers, the local products, and see what they are selling and developing. Sure, they will all be heavily influenced by US trends.
However, their products and those offered by the American companies are not the same. More on this in another article.
Suffice it to say that equipment advice from across the pond is almost 100% inapplicable to the UK home gym owner.
The US and UK Secondhand Markets Are NOT Alike
More on this topic in another video/article, too.
But, in a nutshell, if you get home gym advice from Americans, they will almost universally tell you to buy secondhand. I am pretty sure this is very sound home gym advice in the USA. However, in the UK, it doesn’t apply very well at all.
And I know all this firsthand. For almost every piece of gym equipment I own, I have first checked for secondhand options. Americans will say “Buy everything used!” They will invariably direct you towards Facebook Marketplace” or Craigslist, eBay or the like.
And I say: Go ahead. Take a look at all that, and Gum Tree, too. And if you find any bargains on there, you have my heartfelt congratulations.
However, in my experience, the UK secondhand gym equipment market is extremely expensive, even if there’s supposedly tons of unused gear around.
In most cases, you are looking at a difference of a few pounds for something that has been used before.
On top of that, secondhand stuff may have problems you can’t identify from low-quality photos online – and you have to drive across town to pick it up yourself.
I don’t see much value in the secondhand market here at all.
Of course, there are always rare gems and exceptions. But it’s unusual that I will find the exact item – or even something similar – to what I want in the secondhand market at a price that makes it worth considering.
If you are UK-based, unless you get very lucky, you will probably be buying most of your gear new.
UK Homes Are Different
#In a big country/Dreams stay with you…# OK, 80s pop music references aside, there’s no escaping the fact that everything is much bigger in the USA – particularly homes. Even the apartments I’ve visited in the United States are giant compared to British flats.
The British Office for National Statistics noted in 2017 that a new English home is nearly a third of the size of the average US home.
You can really feel this difference if you go to the American suburbs, where you see ordinary folks living in the kind of house that might cost a couple of million pounds if it were in an upmarket part of the UK.
And you can really notice this if you look at the houses a lot of American home gym YouTubers live in.
There’s a LOT of space: Big basements, large reception rooms, multi-car garages, football pitch-sized gardens – and plenty of space to spare.
That means that for many US families, it just isn’t a big deal to turn a room or a garage into a gym. There’s space in the garden to build a dedicated cabin or an oversized shed to house a gym.
Compare that to your average two-up, two-down British house.
Some of us don’t have garages. Some of us don’t have spare rooms. And if we do, chances are they can’t realistically be 100% converted into gyms.
If you do have a garage, it’s probably a single-car garage. And you likely have other things you want to keep in there besides gym equipment. The ceilings may be low.
Your options are likely limited, so the idea of filling some massive space with huge, top-end gym equipment just isn’t viable.
American YouTubers and Redditors may have three-car garages they can happily convert into a home gym without causing a massive domestic tussle. But, chances are if you’re a Brit, you don’t.
So the same rules don’t apply.
Imperial versus Metric Units: A Petty But Noticeable Difference
This may not seem like a big deal, but it will irk you after a while. Americans love their freedom units, as we all know. And while some Brits are happy with imperial measurements, they even do those different in the US.
Everything in the is measured in pounds (lb). And not stones and pounds…just pounds. That means American gym equipment is also measured out and marked in lb, and all the gym advice you get from across the pond is pound-denominated.
In fact, American YouTubers will often score a product down if it is kg-denominated or designed to meet a round number in cm or metres.
For instance, if an adjustable dumbbell set goes up in 2.5 or 5kg increments, that will infuriate them.
And I don’t blame them for that. I prefer kg, and trying to calculate lb equivalents would drive me mad, too. Imagine a set of adjustable dumbbells that goes up in 5lb increments. Well, you can if you want. That level of mental arithmetic makes my head throb.
Even if you, for some reason, prefer or don’t mind everything being in lb and inches, you have to deal with the fact that all measurements you will find for gym equipment, plates and the rest in the UK will be in kg and cm.
The kilogram and centimetre are the undisputed kings of Europe, and the UK followed suit some time ago. For most of us, Brexit or otherwise, there’s just no going back.
So, Where CAN Brits Turn for Home Gym Advice?
Well, the short answer is – here! The whole reason we launched the Home Gym UK YouTube channel and website was precisely this: British home gym owners don’t have any central resource or community. So it’s high time one was made.
Hopefully on this site and on the channel you will find lots of UK-focused home gym advice, resources, tips and pointers about building a home gym. And you’ll find it all directly relevant to you.
My experiences will, I hope, be helpful for you – so you don’t have to make the same mistakes I made, and you can learn what I learned without the trial-and-error steps.
And I hope that what you will help us create is a community of like-minded people who can share their own UK home gym advice and experiences.
Together we can build better home gyms, tailor-made for British houses – using equipment that doesn’t cost you the earth!
