When you’re playing a sport, especially at a professional level, you need your home to serve as a gym. Even though it won’t be your primary workout spot, your home gym should be designed for optimizing workouts to make you stronger and a better athlete.
Design Your Home Gym to Make You Better at Your Sport
Your home gym should be designed to help you get better at your sport. Many professional basketball players have basketball hoops in their homes.
Some even have full-size or half-size courts. Some ice hockey players have their own ice rinks. Tennis players have their own courts. The list goes on.
No matter what sport you play, make sure you have equipment at home that sets you up for success. This will give you a chance to practice and work on skills solo.
Sometimes this is the best time to work out a weakness in your game. It’ll also give you more time to practice since you won’t have to commute to get to the court or the ice.
Have Strength and Endurance Equipment On Hand
Optimizing your home gym goes beyond the specifics of your sport though. You should also have equipment for the basics of strength training and endurance training.
Items like a barbell, squat rack, and heavy dumbbells can serve you well when you need to get in some extra weight training. In addition, endurance equipment like a rowing machine or even a swimming pool can provide extra cardio opportunities when you’re outside the gym.
Many pro athletes invest in pools no matter their sport. Pools are great for both recovery and endurance work because swimming gets the heart rate up but is not stressful on the body.
Swimming is an active form of stretching and certain strokes may even relieve muscle pain before and after swimming. For grand ideas of what is both efficient and architecturally unique, look at some of the custom pools in Las Vegas that are owned by professional athletes.
Invest in Your Recovery
To take your rest days a step further, make sure your home gym involves recovery equipment aside from a pool. Items like foam rollers and resistance bands can help you go deeper as you stretch and provide a self-myofascial release for overworked muscles and joints.
Having this type of equipment and regularly using it will go a long way in making you a better athlete on the court. This is especially true because the more time you spend on recovery, the better your overall performance will be, and the less likely you are to run into injury.
Invest in cold and hot therapy as well. Cryotherapy via ice baths will reduce pain, swelling, and inflammation. A sauna for heat therapy will help muscles relax. Using the two in tandem will do wonders for your body and for your performance.
Make In-House Massages Easy
A massage table or physical therapy table is beneficial to have. It’s important to regularly get medical massages and regularly seeing a physical therapist can have a huge impact on tight muscles as well.
Having the equipment at home offers you the luxury of seeing these professionals in your home gym rather than having to travel to them. This will mean you're more comfortable and relaxed. Plus, it will give you more time in your day to focus on other aspects of your game.
Invest in Air and Heat
Finally, make sure your home gym is temperature-controlled. If you’re dealing with extreme heat or cold during any part of the year, it’s exceptionally important that you can control the climate in your gym.
You need your body to work hard due to the exercise and fitness tests you’re doing, not because it’s trying to stay at a normal temperature in extreme weather. This will also help to keep any equipment you’ve invested in from wearing due to weather.
On this same note, any sports-related courts should also be indoors, if possible. This way you can practice out of season and when the weather is too poor to practice outside.
When your sport is your life, it’s important to invest in your home gym so you can optimize performance on and off the court.
