Commercial Gym Equipment Must-Haves

[Preal1956]

Are you looking at starting a gym? Or maybe you are considering expanding your existing gym?
Do you decide what gets added into your high school or even even college gym? Maybe you make decisions about what goes into an apartment or hotel gym?
Whatever the case may be, when we talk about commercial gyms, we are certainly including more than just Planet Fitness Gold’s Gym, and Lifetime Fitness. We are instead talking about any gym not primarily for personal use - a gym built for a group of people and one that expects more traffic than just you and your spouse and that one neighbor.

Maybe you are the type of person that knows exactly what you want to purchase. You’ve had the gym design finalized for months, you placed your orders and your gym is going to be set to perfection. You even know exactly what services you are going to offer your customers. Congrats! That is a huge process to undergo, and you’ve crushed it.
However, I would guess for most people reading this article, you are in the beginning stages of looking at fitness solutions for your school, gym, or community fitness center.

There are so many options for types of equipment. You’ve got dozens and dozens of different treadmills. There are dumbbells, adjustable dumbbells, and plate-loaded dumbbells. Then there is the question of space. Where do you even put everything and how do you know what will fit in your facility? Not to mention, what are the needs of the people at your gym? What are some common workouts that will be performed at your gym? It goes without saying that the needs of a local gym versus a high school weightroom versus a 55+ living community gym are going to vary significantly.

There are some pieces of commercial fitness equipment that I believe almost all commercial gyms will benefit from in their facility. This list includes dumbbells, barbells, power racks, kettlebells, benches, weight plates, treadmills, sleds, ellipticals, plyometric boxes, bikes, and rowers just to name a few.
While we aren’t going to dive into all of these today, let’s take a look at three specific pieces of equipment on this list.
We will start with the bench.

I think the bench may be one of the most underrated, underappreciated pieces of gym equipment there is. The bench is constantly ignored and disrespected. It’s often an afterthought when designing a gym and taken for granted for all that it truly does.
After all, aren’t all benches pretty much the same? What’s the big deal anyway?
The answer is no.
Hopefully, this doesn’t take too much explaining to do if you are including power racks and bench press stations in your gym. It’s pretty hard to bench press without a bench. I mean there’s always floor press, but still. Anyways, you know that workout benches are necessary for bench press, but what other value do they provide? Benches are important for any seated variation of an exercise - think seated strict press, seated curls, seated rear delt flys. Benches are important for leg exerciseslike Bulgarian split squats, step-ups, and single-leg squats. Benches are used in tons of pressing exercises like incline bench press, dumbbell bench press, and even bench dips. This is just the beginning, honestly. Benches are used for mobility exercises, core exercises, and so much more.

Benches are absolutely critical for commercial gyms.
Let’s consider the smaller gyms really quickly. If you are considering purchasing equipment for a hotel or apartment gym, I can imagine this may be the only commercial gym that may push back on the idea of benches due to space. However, no matter how much room you have, a bench has to be at least the second piece of equipment purchased. The first piece, you might ask? Dumbbells. Dumbbells allow for almost every strength exercise you can think of to be performed, and by adding a bench you dramatically increase the potential uses of the dumbbells.