Your favorite gym and sports equipment can get lost, wear out faster, or receive unnecessary damage if you are not careful about taking care of them in the proper manner. This applies irrespective of whether you are working out at a CrossFit center, a traditional gym, or a specialized sports gym.
Maintaining Your Gym Equipment
So, how should you go about maintaining your gym equipment? That’s exactly what we will discuss next.
1. Checking and Maintaining Machines
If you have a home gym, chances are that you have at least a treadmill and a multi-gym machine in there. Follow the quick tips below to keep them in perfect condition for a long time to come:
- After every session, wipe off all touchpoints (seats, bars, grips, backrests, etc.) on the machine with an alcohol-based sanitizer
- Every 1 or 2 weeks, check for frayed cables, cracked grips, cracked machine body parts, loosened nuts, etc.
- Lubricate the belts, bearings, and joints every 2-4 weeks, preferably before you start to feel the friction
- Get a pro to check the equipment if something is wrong inside the machine and it fails to function as it should
2. Carrying Your Equipment: The Right Bag
Not all our fitness needs can be met at home, which is where public/private gyms come in. Get a waterproof, easy-to-carry gym bag, if you only need it to carry regular stuff like clothing, gloves, gym shoes, resistance straps, sanitizers, etc.
However, you will have to be more selective with your choice if you have plans to carry and store specialized sports equipment.
For example, you would need a good baseball bag to store and carry your bats, mitts, uniform, caps, guards, etc. when needed, whether it’s a practice session, a match, or a pre-training gym session for strength conditioning.
If baseball is on your mind, then you can’t go wrong with any of these bags. The best part is that some of these can also double as your regular gym bag or even as a great backpack for small trips.
3. Plan, Organize and Maintain Your Strength Training Equipment
Heavy dumbbells, barbell rods, weight plates, kettlebells, and other heavy weightlifting equipment can get damaged easily, in addition to causing damage to the floor.
In case of unfortunate accidents, heavy equipment may even cause dangerous injuries if you are not careful about keeping them well-maintained and organized. Try the few tips shared next for best results:
- Install rubber flooring on top of the original flooring material in your home gym room, as this is the very first and the most important step
- Do not leave weightlifting equipment on a bench or scattered on the floor
- Buy a dumbbell and kettlebell rack, then make sure that each item used in a session are replaced back in their respective positions afterward
- Buy a weight rack and don’t leave the gym unless all the plates have been replaced back into their designated positions
- Try not to drop heavyweights from a height, unless necessary
- Check every often to see if any of the sandbags have come loose if you have any
- Don’t let dust and moisture gather on any equipment
Wrap-Up
Last but not the least, try to avoid buying too much of anything because quality trumps quantity when it comes to a personal gym and sports equipment.
It’s more sensible and economical to use a neat set of cleverly chosen gym equipment in various different ways than to have more fitness equipment than you really need to achieve your fitness goals.
Besides, the less you have, the easier it will be to maintain all that equipment.