littlest library on the side of the road

A 0.5 cubic foot gym

I’ve long sought a time-efficient, space-efficient, and money-efficient alternative to going to the gym. This question has risen in my mind most strongly when I’ve lived in city apartments (Montreal, currently New York City), where space, time, and discretionary spending money are at a premium. It has not been a huge issue in the suburbs, where cars are life, and life is cars, and going to a cheap, big-box gym is just another stop on the endless cycle of shifting into drive.

Gyms are great for access to many different types of exercise equipment, group classes and other social elements, and are a motivating factor for getting out of the house. However, they are often expensive, include transit time, can be crowded, and are bad for the environment.

So what is the solution to the problem of gyms? There isn’t one. There is no single tool or exercise that can replace the versatility and ease of use of a large room full of specialized fitness tools, especially for beginners. Home gyms are often unpleasant and lack key fitness modalities (have a treadmill, but no space for a squat rack), and yoga classes and sports groups are excellent for pleasantness (environmental and social) but are missing the full-body fitness experience we’ve come to appreciate from pumping iron.

One option that stands out to me is a home gym that does not take a lot of space, thus making it less cramped and more pleasant, while still maintaining 80% of the exercise versatility that you might find in a large commercial gym. The exercise versatility question is not one of cost or some new-fangled digital mirror gym, but one of creativity. There’s always a way to hit most, if not all, of the body-part targeted exercises that you’d want, at a fraction of the space.

A front-runner for a home gym has got to be calisthenics. Requiring only your bodyweight, with adaptive difficulty and extensive programming online, calisthenics is an excellent option for a home gym. The equipment requirements would likely be a dip station and pull up bar, which can cost less than $100 and take up only a few square feet of valuable apartment space. That being said, a 6 foot black chromed jungle of bars is not the most aesthetic choice in a studio apartment, and is not easily tucked away. You can layer in resistance bands and weight jackets to help with progression for a very limited increase in space.

However, I’ve found that calisthenics are not great for me. The exertion required to complete some bodyweight exercises leaves me red in the face, and not feeling like I’m having fun. The fun aspect is key to sustainability in a fitness routine (something I’m admittedly not great at), and calisthenics will work for some, and not for others. Another weakness of calisthenics is the limited difficulty progression for leg exercises, which jump from bodyweight squats to some version of single-legged squats, which present limiting factors in mobility and stability.

Enter the kettlebell. A cast iron cannonball with a handle on top from Russia, the kettlebell is a masterclass in minimalism. Whereas a pull up and dip tower might take up a vertical slice of your space, an adjustable competition kettlebell at just over $200 is where I’d recommend starting. Kettlebells can be tucked away behind a chair or in a closet, and take up the space of a small backpack. That’s about as good as a home gym can get, space wise.

The bread and butter of any kettlebell program is swings, cleans, snatches, rows, and squats. These basic exercises cover a broad majority of covered body parts, and place a ton of emphasis on the grip, back, traps, core, and hamstrings. It’s a perfect antidote to the hunched over posture issues of the modern day office worker. An adjustable bell from 12-32kg provides enough weight for significant progression, and being able to complete a kettlebell program like "Simple and Sinister" at 32kg will kick your butt. Best of all for me, I really enjoy swinging around a kettlebell. It’s more fun to my taste than calisthenics, and more fun is a strong motivating factor to work out.

Simple and Sinister:

This program, when completed, takes 10 minutes, and it’s a solid base for full body conditioning and fundamental movement work. I doubt there are many people in the world who can say they can get to the gym, do a full workout, and get back home in less than 10 minutes. That’s some serious time efficiency.

Detractors of the kettlebell will mention that it’s not great for body building and sculpting, which you’d need to go to a gym for, and that it doesn’t build huge legs, if that’s what you’re aiming for. These are valid and understandable, but from my point of view, kettlebells are an excellent all-around alternative for gyms for most people.

They’re small, fairly cheap (single life-time investment of $200 vs an annual gym membership of $1800), and produce rapid results with minimal time investment.

My current training plan with kettlebells - a variation on the Armor Building Complex but with only 1 kettlebell:

Set the timer for 20 minutes - I’m trying to work up to 30.

Repeat the following as many times as possible in the allotted time:

Side 1:

Side 2:

-shake it out

Side 2:

Side 1:

Enjoy your swinging!