Working out in your own home gym can get a little noisy, especially when you are dropping and reracking weights. In order to stop annoying my roommates and neighbors, I decided to investigate different methods of gym noise reduction.
How do you soundproof a home gym on a budget? Here are a few affordable tips and tricks to help dampen gym noise:
- Use bumper plates
- Use rubber-coated dumbbells
- Use rubber-coated kettlebells
- Workout with a sandbag
- Incorporate suspension training into your routine
- Build an Olympic weight training platform
- Use weight-lifting drop pads
- Build sand pits
- Pad your weight racks
- Install carpet on the walls
- Install acoustic panels in the room
The loud sound from dropping weights and reracking dumbbells are very disrupting. Don’t be surprised if you get complaints, especially if you like to workout first thing in the morning or late at night!
I will discuss these simple solutions on how to soundproof a home gym in detail throughout the rest of this article. Your workouts will be quieter and still enable you to reach your maximum lifting potential.
#1 – Use Bumper Plates
Before you start soundproofing the walls, floors, and ceilings, make sure to use these rubber bumper plates I found on Amazon for barbell exercises. You will find similar weighted plates in Crossfit gyms. This will drastically reduce the clanging that you would normally make with iron weighted plates. These will also help to keep your floor protected when you drop them.
#2 – Use Rubber Coated Dumbbells
When soundproofing your home gym make sure rubber coated barbells are part of your strategy. This will keep your workouts very quiet. Using iron dumbbells create unnecessary noises when you hit them together, re-rack, or drop them on the floor. Using rubber dumbbells will not only reduce noise but protect your floor.
#3 – Use Rubber Coated Kettlebells
Similar to using rubber dumbbells, using rubber kettlebells will make a huge difference in regards to noise reduction. Typically, this piece of gym equipment is swung around and dropped. Heavy kettlebells can make quite the racket. Therefore buying kettlebells with rubber coating will keep your kettlebell workouts quiet.
#4 – Workout With A Heavy Sandbag
If you have never used a sandbag to workout I suggest you try it. using a heavy sandbag for fitness training will take you to the next level while keeping your workouts quiet. This is a great alternative to kettlebells or dumbbells.
#5 – Implement Suspension Training
Bodyweight exercising is very important. Since it is good to constantly switch up your workouts, try using a TRX training kit. Suspension training is an excellent way to keep your workouts silent while building up a sweat!
#6 – Build Your Own Olympic Lifting Platform
If you plan on doing a lot of Olympic lifts then building your own weightlifting platform is one of the best things you can invest in when soundproofing your home gym. Dropping heavy weights can certainly make a lot of noise and also crack your floor. The best way to minimize sound and protect your floor is to build a soundproof platform for weightlifting. It is fairly easy to do. It includes buying some durable hardwood and thick rubber matting. This will create the ultimate quiet drop zone for your deadlifts, snatches, cleans, and whatever else your workout routine requires.
#7 – Install Soundproof Flooring Tiles
Your floor should be the first place to soundproof in your home gym. If you plan on doing deadlifts, cleans, snatches or any type of kettlebell exercises, I highly recommend you invest in some interlocking anti-fatigue flooring mats. These are great because they allow you the flexibility to cover up a lot of floor space and look amazing. They not only help to quiet your gym but give your feet better grip and also protect your floor from cracking.
Gym floor soundproofing is essential if you plan on dropping some serious weight. These tiles should help mitigate the noise.
#8 – Use Weightlifting Drop Pads
In addition to the soundproof floor tiles, you may want to invest in some weightlifting drop pads. If you plan on doing some heavy deadlifts, you can try these deadlift deadeners to soften the weight dropping on the floor. These should provide some additional soundproofing.
#9 – Create Sandpits
If you don’t like the deadlift deadeners mentioned above, an alternative is to create a couple of small sandpits to dampen the noise when you drop your weights. This is something that you can add to your weightlifting platform instead of using rubber mats. You simply create square frames to hold the sand. The sandpits will act as the designated drop zones. Sand does a great job of absorbing vibration and will not allow your weights to bounce after dropping, which will keep you safe.
#10 – Cover Weightlifting Racks With Cloth or Padding
Have you ever noticed the loud noise when dropping the barbell on the weight rack after completing a grueling set of bench presses? You can soundproof your weight rack and weight trees with a few layers of this cloth bar tape. This will reduce unnecessary clanking of the bar against the support rack when putting the weight down after heavy lifts. Simply wrap this tape around the support arms or around the bar where it rests on the rack. You can also apply this tape to your weight trees as well.
#11 – Put Carpet On The Walls / Floor
Usually, home gyms are empty rooms. The walls are typically bare. This can create additional reverb when lifting.
To help keep your gym quiet you need to cover your walls. If there is a lot of surface area to cover, consider installing carpet on the walls. This is easy enough to do even if you are not a handyman. Plus you can find some really cheap carpeting online or at a local department store.
Installing carpets will absorb sound and also protect the integrity of your walls and floor. You would be surprised how much damage can be done to your floor without this extra padding.
#12 – Install Acoustic Panels
You can either purchase some acoustic panels like these online or build your own like I show you in my soundproof panel guide. Installing a few of these on the walls and ceiling will drastically reduce the amount of echo and reverb in your home gym or garage gym. If you like to videotape yourself working out or make instructional fitness videos, these will greatly improve the overall sound quality.
A good tip for installing acoustic panels on your ceiling is to leave a 2-inch gap between the ceiling and your panel. Allowing it to hang slightly lower than the ceiling will enable the panel to absorb more sound.
What to expect
It’s difficult to make a home gym 100% soundproof. However, the tips mentioned in this post will help to significantly reduce echo in a gym and dampen the overall noise level. Your workouts will be much quieter and you will still be able to achieve your fitness goals.
I know weightlifting equipment is not entirely soundproof but any action you can take to minimize the sound will be greatly appreciated by your roommates, family, members, and neighbors. If you have any more ideas make sure to share them with us!
