The home gym

When we were first house hunting, one of our big priorities was finding a place with room to put in a home work out area. I had had pretty good success with getting access to equipment in commercial gyms in the City and on the peninsula, but here in the south bay we had a hard time finding a gym where you could both get access to a power cage without too long of a wait and also reliably find plates. By the time we actually moved, I was established at Catalyst, but I was still interested in having equipment at home so I pitched in.

The thing is, now that my training has changed, what I want to have at home has changed, too. While my sweetie is happily squatting, deadlifting, and benching in our little power cage, my spoiled little hands long for a ladies' bar and I basically want to do the new movements I'm trying to get down all of the time. I have used our bar for deadlifts and front squats, and attempted hanging knee raises at one point (the pull-up bar is *knurled*...who at the factory thought that was a good idea?).

So at this point I'm waffling over buying a nice spinny ladies' bar and some droppable bumper plates. At heart I'm a miser, so it's a little hard for me to pull the trigger on it; I also have some concerns about my recovery ability, particularly in the upper body, and whether I could make good use of it without causing my arms to fall off.