Opinions on Home Gym Setup

Hey all,

I'm looking to set up a home gym in my garage on a budget of approximately $2k. Current stats are 100/155/185 (Bench/Squat/Deadlift) and I'm also looking to start doing some Olympic lifting as well.

The items I'm looking at right now include:

Rack:
Either the Cyberfit LC2 Power Rack
OR
The Muscle Motion MMPRS2 Power Rack


Barbell and Weights:
I've seen the ABC Power Bar being recommended most heavily, but since I'm on a bit of a budget I was looking at the Muscle Motion Needle Bearing Barbell

Would this barbell be suitable for both the slow and fast lifts?

I'm also looking at getting a set of Muscle Motion bumpers

Bench:
My current local gym has a 25cm bench, which I keep falling off so want to get a wider bench, preferably 30cm.
Currently looking at this Muscle Motion Commercial flat bench

Flooring:
The garage floor is concrete, and I'm planning on building a lifting platform out of a few sheets of plywood and the rubber tiling for a total area of 2.4m x 2.4m.
Since the garage floor is concrete, should I place rubber tiling under the rack, or just push off the concrete?

Hopefully I'm not missing anything!

Any recommendations on the current list I have now? Thanks in advance!

I wouldn't recommend that ABC power bar for any olympic type lifts.
In regards to tiling and the rack, why do you need the rack on the platform?

I wasn't planning on putting the rack on the platform, but rubber tiling underneath the rack was just an idea I was having to protect the floor. The platform was only going to be for deadlifts, and the Olympic lifts so that the floor beneath and the plates wont get damaged. Thanks for the reply!

Be careful buying cheap bars for Olympic lifting, the shitty cheap ones are usless, the best of the cheap ones in my opinion are the alfafit bars $380, I used them at my last comp and had a great feel to them, otherwise spend a little more, my favourite of the not super expensive bars are the Force USA bars, lifetime warranty and feel awesome to lift with, the grip isnt as grippy as the alfafit bars which is better for longer workouts as it wont tear your hands apart as quick, as for bumpers some of the cheaper ones can be out over 1kg, we weighed some cheap 20's and some were 19 some were 21, also with a platform, get 2 sheets of 15mm ply and same with rubber matting, I had a platform at my house for a while and use to rattle the whole house when dumping 100 plus kg from over head, 30mm of rubber matting makes a big difference

Don't put rubber matting in your squat rack. You need a solid surface to produce force. Either leave it bare or put in a large square of carpet. Not the fluffy domestic sort, the thin hard commercial stuff.

Spend big on bars. You will not regret it. Buy a cheap bar, you will regret it. I do powerlifting, not olympic, but when I bought my bar from Australian Barbell Company they had a showroom with a huge range of bars. Check out their web site. I bought the BOP220 with the aggressive knurl option. You would probably want to go with an olympic bar.

http://www.australianbarbellco.com/barbellsPublic/home.html

From memory my bar cost about $400. That was a couple of years ago. Aside from a very sexy chalk patina, the bar has worked faultlessly, is not bent and is constantly borrowed by the PT's at my gym.

Thanks for the replies guys.

I take it that either rack will be suitable? I'll probably just put it on the concrete floor. At the moment my platform design is like this. @ride29er: did you mean to add an extra sheet of plywood and rubber tiling on the top face? The bottom two layers are 18mm thick, and the top face is 15mm thick. Thanks for the heads up for the bumpers, I'm considering now the "Elite" set from Cyberfit or similar: example here. A friend has these ones, and seems to like them.

Are there any recommendations for an all-rounder bar? Not looking to buy two bars right now, considering it'll blow my budget out considerably. I would prefer one with centre knurling for squatting.

Can I assume that the rack and the bench are suitable? Thanks for the replies!

This is the style I intend to one day build my platform like. 2 ply side by side, 2 ply on top rotated 90 degrees, then the rubber and one piece of ply in the middle on the very top

Building an Olympic weightlifting platform for a home gym by Randall Strossen IronMind

That's the same design as mine, I read that article a few days ago! Pretty sure it should be sufficient. Does anyone have any personal experience with the Muscle Motion bumpers?