Nice!!
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That material is 2x2 interlocking tiles from American Flooring. Their 3/8” Warrior product, 10% color in mocha.
They also have a tile called FitLock which Coop at garage gym reviews rates highly. Along with rolls or cut lengths 4’ wide up to 100’
My review on the Warrior tiles would be about a 6 of 10. This flooring is good material and no smell after a couple days outgassing, and will work well. But it is not perfect. The interlock pattern is not as uniform as I’d prefer and it was difficult to install the final 6-7 tiles.
The order was also not correct. Short on edges by ten and sent corners instead. Fortunately, made it work as returning heavy tiles and waiting for replacements would be suboptimal. I’m forgiving on this stuff though. Poop happens and people make mistakes. Communication was good and they would have made the order 100% correct if I had asked.
We have some similar flooring by SuperMats called Superlock. It is also a 3/8” dense rubber product. The tiles are 19.5” x 19.5”. It interlocks perfectly and have used the same 25 or so tiles for years in various configurations under different equipment.
If you can make it work, consider rolled flooring. You may get it more quickly and it makes for a nice install. It’s heavy to move in though and you may want to glue or tape it to the floor and tape over the seams. I went with tiles as I couldn’t get rolls into the gym easily whereas tiles were easy to move in and install without help.
3/8 is fine but you can go thicker. It just gets heavier and more costly. If dropping weights on 3/8 (rare for me) or pulling off the floor, just add a platform or some additional mats where the plates hit. I find it useful to have some sections of horse stall mats for deadlifting or releasing dumbbells.
Finally, consider shipping and moving the flooring inside. Our 70+ tiles came on a single pallet shipped freight. Anticipate a good size truck and pallet jack offload.
Overall, I think this 3/8 stuff is much nicer in a home gym compared to horse stall mats.
Hope some of that detail helps.
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it’s part of my living room. The floor is carpeting
Very nice. Mine is a sub zero hell, piled with post-Christmas junk at the moment.
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Caution - Long Post
Progress on the strength training area of the pain cave. May move things around a little bit, and walls need some decoration.
Goal was to create a clean and relatively open and welcoming space to workout. Wife and I have moved on from being 100% bike racers to being avid bike riders but with a much larger focus on fitness and strength and overall health.
Expectation in building this gym area is that we’ll use it almost daily and for a long time.
In addition, we wanted to lift safely when alone and have a large number of movements available for variety. Some of the gear is new, some we have had for many, many years. It’s not all matchy-matchy but iron don’t care.
When fully completed the gym will eventually have:
- Strength Zone (shown here)
- Aerobics Zone (cushy mat area mostly for wife)
- Cardio Zone (C2 rower and spin bike (wife) and maybe a treadmill later)
- Roller TR Zone and Bike Repair area (me)
The Gear !!!
The area is roughly 14 x 19 feet and fully covered with 3/8" rubber gym floor tiles (see up thread).
The first focus for the strength area is a power cage with barbell, plates and incline bench. The cage enables safe solo lifting. Have had the same Rogue 390F cage for many years. It’s short as I chopped it for a prior basement gym. A couple photos:
The second focus was a functional cable column (FCC). We wanted:
(a) An adjustable pulley machine
(b) Selectorized stack
(c) Lat/Row capability with same column
After a ton of research, over thinking it, watching every video review I could find, and general perseveration, we (OK me) choose the Sorinex FCC. Sorinex is not a typical name in home gyms as they mostly do University sports team stuff (think NCAA Div 1 strength rooms) and professional team strength rooms. Sorinex isn’t a low price manufacturer, but they will make whatever you want and work closely with each client.
For us, the Sorinex FCC ticked all the boxes. It is also modular. Meaning if we want to add a second column down the road, it is an easy bolt on. Importantly, it fit the ceiling height. Many of these FCC columns and Lat/Row machines are too tall to fit in a normal home. Finally, it is very easy to take apart, move inside and reassemble.
Having selected the Sorinex FCC, we took a look at their storage systems. The Iron Bear is a sweet piece of kit and we could fit an 8 foot long system in the space. That’s enough storage for all our stuff. It’s significantly overbuilt for a home gym, but once you commit to shipping an FCC, adding some additional parts works out.
Final bonus to going down this road: I was looking for ways to do additional leg movements and to add squat volume without loading the spine. Sorinex offers a belt squat alternative called a J Squat. It does more than belt squats and we decided to add it to the Sorinex rack and FCC.
Enough text, some pictures:
Side view of the FCC set up for lat pulldown with seat and thigh pad attached to column. Thats a tricept strap on the pulley and the J*Squat is in the foreground with a couple plates and the Spud belt / chain.
Side view of the storage rack. The bottom shelf is flat and someday might have a few kettlebells. The second shelf up is tilted and made for dumbbells. Third shelf is also for dumbbells but we mounted it flatter for light dumbbells and other stuff. The top shelf is flat. There is barbell storage on the far end and various pegs for bands, belts, etc. Also shown is an adjustable plyo box and flat utility bench.
The last piece of gear is a GHD. I went round and round and round about buying this. It’s big and while we do a lot of core, don’t really need it. Finally, my wife decided to order it. Her decision was based on four factors:
- Tired of the discussion
- Tired of the discussion
- Tired of the discussion
- If you buy Rogue, with their brand recognition, you can always sell it
Oh, and eMotions peeking out there. Best rollers on the planet.
Finally, if you made it this far, thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed the tour.
If you got bored and just skipped to the pictures that’s cool too.
Either way, enjoy this picture of our gym dog. Every gym needs a great dog! (OK, shameless ploy to get more likes for this post. I admit it)
On Edit 2/9/22
We love the Sorinex FCC (functional column). Its smooth as butter and just works for a ton of movements. Major improvement over our prior plate loaded Lat/Row. We might add a second one at some point. Definitely not a need though.
Wife is using the J*Squat for multiple movements and likes it.
On Edit 6/08/2022. (Rather than starting a new post will just add the evolution)
The Rogue cage is gone. Good friends wanted a cage for their basement and had low ceilings. Long story short I was working with Legend Fitness on a purchase and decided we would get their Pro Series Half-Cage and sell them our custom cut Rogue (#3226, Pro Series Half Cage | Legend Fitness | Racks & Cages).
After adding a custom Black Widow Training Gear pull up bar to the Legend rack, we are extremely happy. Both companies were superb to work with.
The rack is shown better on the Legend site than my photos (except ours is black and orange) but here is the custom pull up bar:
The second Legend piece is their leg curl / leg extension bench. (#3135, Plate-Loaded Leg Extension/Curl – Legend Fitness). This is a well built piece and gives us two additional movements for the gym. Total leg we know have all the basics: Dead lift area, squat in the rack, belt squat with the J*Squat, leg curl, leg extension and all the movements one can add with a cable column. There is no excuse to skip Leg Day!!
We are officially done. For now, because we are out of space in current configuration!!! There are a few things I might do differently if starting from scratch, but overall we are happy campers with how this turned out.
Edit on December 19, 2022
It’s been about a year since we moved into the home and started building out the pain cave. Mostly for my note keeping, but thought to post how we like it and how some of the selections have worked out.
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The main rack. We switched from Rogue to Legend. The Rogue was fine but a friend wanted it. The Legend is a level up in terms of look and feel. With the landmine and dip attachment and plate / bar storage it does everything we want. Adding the BlackWidow pull up bar was a good choice. Much better than the stock cross member / bar.
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The Sorinex storage and cable stack. This was a high $$$ purchase and I was worried it wouldn’t live up to expectations. But it has. Wife uses it a ton and I love it. It’s smooth and the selectorized stack makes it very easy to use (compared to plate loaded). It also works very well for lat/rows. All in, great piece of kit.
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Sorinex J*Squat - beautiful attachment for squat volume and keeping load off the spine. Wife loves it and I use it too. She does squats and lunges with it.
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Legend leg curl and hamstring bench. Another great piece. Selectorized would have been nice but too much money and too much space. This bench does exactly what it is supposed to. Built like a tank.
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Rogue GHD - I like it, but it takes up a lot of space. In retrospect, I do hypers more than hamstrings and could have gone with a smaller piece of gear here.
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Rouge Adjustable Bench - very nice piece of kit. Heavy but super stable for many different movements. We like it.
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Wife bought herself a NordicTrack x221 treadmill. It is an awesome piece of gear. I’ve started running again for variety and remember why I stopped running - LOL
Only things left to do are: (1) replace the wife’s aerobic mat with something new (the current pads are hammered) (2) clean out a few boxes that are taking up space from the move and set up the TV/stereo
Rock on and happy holidays home gym / pain cave fans!!
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Love it! Cute dog too.
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I skipped to the gym dog. Then scrolled up to learn that your wife’s decision-making process is a lot like mine.
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Wow 
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Apparently, The UK average house size is the 3rd smallest in the world. My Turbo is in the loft as I have no garage. Mrs. Mgalex is threatening to convert it into a room leaving me with nowhere.
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If you have a garden or yard, then I guess there are a always the option of a small shed? Not the most salubrious of pain caves but I’ve seen plenty of people make it work 
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What kind of wood is that on the wall? I’d like to do a similar thing
I do have a shed but it’s full of camping gear, lawnmower etc. I did consider it but there 's no electric in it and totally the wrong place to get electric. I may have to put my foot down, assert my authority over my household and tell the wife how it is. You know… .beg.
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Basically any or all spaces that are currently “storage” otherwise known as junk, are your potential paincave sites. You just have to convince her that the junk is just junk…took me years.
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I’ve cleared my crap from them but apparently she has no time to do hers. Apparently the children come first…
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Don’t those monsters take care of themselves after a year or two? 
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Pfft! Priorities!
I binned a bunch of stuff she would’ve wanted to keep but hadn’t seen in five years. The trick is, don’t tell her. 
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Forgiveness > Permission 
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WTG @DarthShivious - you absolutely win the internet today!
My gym dog is a Corgi. He is in the cave with me every single morning (then stays down there with my wife when she is on her Peloton). Dogs in the gym are great – but they do need to stay in a pen/kennel as you’ve done.
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Don’t forget, there’s a fun place to see and share all your puppy love:
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