How to Build a Home Gym That Your Entire Family Can Use

4 min read

“DAD, HOW CAN I build muscle?”

For the past few years I’ve been thinking about building a home gym, and every time I came close, something stopped me. I didn’t have the space. I didn’t have the money. I was never really home—and when I was, disappearing into another part of the house to grunt and sweat for an hour felt … selfish. There’s a long tradition of dads creating a private iron paradise where they can throw heavy shit around and listen to music from high school, but something about that didn’t sit right with me.

Then, last summer, my 12-year-old daughter—a strong, determined string bean of a kid—asked me the question above. And suddenly, the whole “home gym” idea flipped. Maybe what I needed wasn’t a home gym but a family gym. A place where everyone (my wife, my three kids, me) could work out—together or apart—and find some joy and satisfaction in the hard work of building muscle.

And so, this fall, with help from Men’s Health fitness director Eb Samuel, I built that space.

It needed to start with strength training. (I am not a big indoor cardio guy; if I want to run or bike, I go outside.) But because we didn’t have the space to recreate an entire commercial gym, I needed equipment versatile enough to support the 20-25 push-and-pull moves that make up my weekly training. I’ve always been suspicious of companies that promise one machine that replaces literally every piece of equipment known to mankind. (My working theory: If a product claims to do 28 things, it does none of them especially well.) But Eb introduced me to the Ares 2.0 from REP Fitness. Somehow, this Colorado-based company figured out how to combine a free-weight rack (for squats and bench presses), a pull-up bar, and a dual-cable system into a package that can easily fit almost anywhere.

Justin Steele

Here’s where the Ares surprised me: it’s not a “machine,” exactly. It’s more like someone took the logic and layout of Life Time’s strength floor and folded it down into something that actually fits in a room. The cable arms move with a smooth, controlled resistance that makes it easy for my kids to learn face pulls and rows without the herky-jerky momentum you get from cheaper home cable stacks. The safeties on the rack are intuitive; I don’t have to hover when my 15-year-old son tries a light squat. And nothing rattles. There’s no clank, no wobble, no “This is the rep when the entire structure collapses on us, goodbye family.” It’s solid. Purposeful. It does fewer things than the “28-in-1” infomercial towers, but it does what it does well. Add in REP’s dumbbells (adjustable and traditional) and kettlebells, and our tried-and-true TRX system, and we were basically set—for the adults.

But kids need something different: variety, guidance, novelty, and a level of feedback that doesn’t come naturally when you’re still figuring out your limbs. Which is why the Tonal 2.0 became the centerpiece of the “teach them how to move” part of the gym. The new version has increased max resistance (250 pounds, up from the previous generation’s 200), plus a Smart View camera that lets you monitor your form. I’ve been honing my squat mechanics with a program that has forced me to confront the hard truth that, despite being a grown man, I sometimes move like a baby giraffe. Meanwhile, the kids are learning the basics of pressing and pulling—slowly, safely, and under adult supervision—from Tonal’s enormous library of training videos. There’s even a Pilates program I’ve started doing on days when I want to get away from heavier lifts.

Between the REP setup and the Tonal, the functional part of the gym was covered. I just needed to figure out the right vibe.

Enter: Flavor Paper. I am not a “favorite wallpaper company” kind of guy, but I’ve loved Flavor’s witty, maximalist patterns for years. And when I saw their “Ali-Water” print—based on Andy Warhol’s portrait of Muhammad Ali, one of my personal heroes—I knew it would be the room’s visual anchor. The pattern alternates with cobalt-blue walls. Walking into my home gym now feels like stepping into energy. Like stepping into purpose.

Now, on Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons, some combination of all of us will stream a family playlist through our Sonos speakers, grab the med balls, fire up the Tonal, and start moving. Sometimes we work together. Sometimes we do our own thing. But we’re there, in the same room, having fun.

This, I tell my kids, is how you build muscle.