There are many products available for home gyms and garage gyms, so it can be hard to know which ones you should buy. In this tiny room in a small house in the middle of Tokyo, I've collected a lot of training equipment and built quite an impressive home gym. In this series, I'm going to review all the home gym products I’ve purchased based on cost, effectiveness, versatility and practicality, and tell you which products you should buy, which products you should consider, and which products you should avoid.
Contents
Cost
Effectiveness
Versatiity
Practicality
The Verdict
Cost
You may wonder what a foam roller has to do with bodybuilding. Not having one of these could be the biggest factor that's holding back your muscle gains. I bought this one for ¥1,800 from Amazon. Even for just the foam roller that is extremely cheap, but it also came with this carry bag.
For cost, I rate foam rollers five stars.
Effectiveness
There are three pillars to building muscle: training, diet and recovery. A foam roller is the most effective training equipment you can buy to improve recovery. By doing 10 minutes of foam rolling every night before you go to bed, you will notice a vast improvement in your quality of sleep and how quickly you recover between training sessions. Foam rollers are also really good for improving muscle flexibility. If you're experiencing tightness in your muscles and it's impacting your exercise form or preventing you from using a full range of motion, using a foam roller to relax the muscles before your workouts will help fix this.
For effectiveness, I rate foam rollers five stars.
Versatility
Besides just massaging and relaxing the muscles, foam rollers can be used in one specific exercise: the board bench press. This bench press variation focuses on strengthening the lockout. The shorter range of motion also has less wear and tear on your shoulders, making this exercise an excellent choice if you perform bench presses multiple times a week. With a foam roller, you can achieve the same effect without placing an actual board on your chest. Just slip the foam roller onto the bar before placing the weights on the bar. The point in the bench press where the foam roller touches your chest is the bottom of the movement. But in terms of uses for a foam roller, beyond actual foam rolling, that's pretty much it.
For versatility, I rate foam rollers two stars.
Practicality
Foam rollers are extremely compact and light. You can store them anywhere without taking up much space. When you store them in normal rooms in a house like a living room. They don't really look out of place. They're also really easy to take with you when you want to do foam rolling on vacation or when you want to train somewhere outside your house. The carry bag that comes with this one makes that even easier.
For practicality, I rate foam rollers five stars.
The Verdict
These are the results for this foam roller. But now it's time for the big question: should you buy it, should you consider it, or should you avoid it? This one is probably really obvious, but a foam roller is a product you should buy. It's cheap, it's practical, and it will make a big difference in your ability to recover, which will help you build more muscle. If you don't have a foam roller already, you need to buy one.
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