How to Move a Home Gym Without Losing Your Mind

The most common question we get about moving equipment is about moving a home gym. If you have one of those old rubber band gyms, it is just like moving a piece of furniture like a dresser but if yours has a weight stack it is “Katy bar the door” time! Moving a gym that easily weighs between 500 and 1,000 pounds is not something that sound like what you would want to do on your day off.

Before your head explodes thinking about it, let’s think about how easy this would be to move in an easy to follow manner. When we move these, the first thing to do before you start any disassembly is take pictures of the machine from a number of angles and in the past, we have drawn a diagram of the cable and how it goes around each pulley. With the cost of photos being essentially free, some of our techs just take dozens of pictures with their smartphones but we still have some old school guys that draw a diagram

Once you have documented how the machine should be assembled, how the cables run, how to unplug elliptical power cord, and how to grasp the treadmill console, remove the weight stack from the machine.. Although I’ve seen guys remove the entire stack and move it as a single unit, we recommend against this because #1- it’s very heavy and #2 you can damage the rods or in some cases, the inserts in the stack weights. If you don’t want problems later, removing the weights plate by plate makes the most sense.

Next, you want to determine how to take the machine apart in as few sections as possible. The key is to make each section as light as possible and reduce the bulk as much as possible because typically these have to fit through a doorway and you want to make sure that you do not make the section too heavy to carry. A great tip on the sections is to insert the bolts back through one side of the ends where the metal meets so you will know which hardware goes with which section. These bolt sizes and lengths differ quite a bit so knowing which parts go where is a big plus.

Before you move the treadmill parts, elliptical parts  or bicycle components remember that some of the pieces are designed to move so if you have a section that has a bench press arm, leg extension, cable attachments, pec deck, etc. make sure to use something like a tie down or even use rope to secure the parts so they don’t move and change the balance of the part when you are carrying it.

Once you have the home gym moved, simply reassemble using your drawings and/or pictures in order to assemble it properly. Following these simple steps will save you a massive headache and make the moving of a home gym easier than it might be otherwise. If you prefer to have someone else do it, contact us and we can locate a qualified technician to move it for you.