The client and the space
Anna lives in a terraced house in Bielany (a residential district of Warsaw) with a double garage and one car. The second bay had been standing practically empty for years — the usual accumulation of things nobody needs but nobody throws away. A classic situation that will be instantly recognisable to anyone who’s looked at their spare garage space and thought: there must be a better use for this.
After the first consultation it became clear we had exactly 18 m² to work with (6 × 3 m), low entry doors, and one significant structural constraint: the garage ceiling height was just 2.2 m in the clear. That’s 30–50 cm lower than a typical basement or standalone outbuilding.
The challenge: low headroom
2.2 m is the lower boundary of comfort for a gym. A standard power rack with a pull-up bar and a 185 cm user? Not a chance — the bar would clear the ceiling by centimetres, but safely getting your chin above it while hanging freely is simply impossible.
We solved it two ways:
1. Compact rack — we specified a model with a maximum height of 200 cm rather than the standard 213–230 cm. This rack is purpose-built for lower rooms, with modified safety arm geometry, and covers every standing and seated barbell exercise without compromise.
2. TRX instead of a fixed pull-up bar — rather than a bar bolted to the ceiling, we installed a beam-mount anchor point with TRX suspension straps. Suspension training delivers equivalent pulling-pattern work to pull-ups, and Anna — as she puts it herself — uses the TRX at every single session.
This low-ceiling solution translates directly to the UK context: many UK double garages have similar or even lower clear heights, especially in older terraced and semi-detached properties.
Garage adaptation works
The garage needed no major structural work — that’s its biggest advantage over a basement conversion or loft build. What we did:
➜ Pressure washing and priming the concrete floor — clean and dry before any matting goes down ➜ 20 mm rubber interlocking mats — covering 16 m² (the training area, leaving a transition strip by the door) ➜ Additional electrical circuit — the garage had a single 230V socket. We ran a dedicated 16A circuit with four sockets plus USB points ➜ Flush-mount LED panels — ceiling-mounted flat to the surface, losing zero headroom. Delivers 400 lux across the full room ➜ 1500W electric panel heater with thermostat — sufficient for a well-insulated garage
Equipment
At 18 m², every centimetre counts. We selected multi-functional equipment with minimal floor footprints.
➜ Body-Solid EXM4000S compact rack — full-function in a small frame: high and low cable, moving arms, pull-up bar lowered to 195 cm. Enables dozens of exercises without requiring anything additional ➜ Dumbbells 2–40 kg — rubber hex set, 2 kg increments to 30 kg then 5 kg increments above. Two-tier rack, 90 cm wide, against the left wall — doesn’t block movement through the space ➜ Adjustable folding bench — 0°/30°/45°/60°/90° positions. Folded and stood upright it takes 30 cm of wall space ➜ TRX system — beam anchor, two complete strap sets. Hung close to the ceiling, they don’t interfere with floor or barbell exercises ➜ Exercise mats — two 180 × 60 cm EVA roll mats for stretching and core work ➜ Mirror 2 × 1.5 m — on the front wall. In a tight space, a mirror does double duty: technique monitoring and making the room feel significantly larger
Timeline
2 weeks — the shortest build in our portfolio. Adaptation works took one day; the rest was equipment delivery and installation.
The financial case
£4,000 for a garage gym is one of the best investments you can make as a regular trainer. A quick comparison:
| Option | Monthly cost | Cost after 5 years |
|---|---|---|
| Gym membership | approx. £50 | £3,000 |
| Garage gym | £0 (after year 1) | £4,000 |
At four sessions a week, you break even somewhere around year seven. But that calculation ignores the time saving — at 20 minutes each way and four sessions a week, that’s over 110 hours a year you’re not spending on the commute to a gym.
And it ignores the fact that you’ll actually train more consistently when the gym is ten metres from your back door.
What the client says
“The second bay just sat there. Now I go in every morning — no commute, no queue for the rack, no need to look presentable before I’ve even started. I train better than I ever have. And it cost less than four thousand pounds — not twenty months of membership fees.”
Related case studies
➜ Basement Home Gym in Nadarzyn — full basement conversion tackling the same low-ceiling challenge at larger scale
Useful resources
➜ Custom Garage Gym Fit-outs — compact designs for single and double garages ➜ How Much Does a Home Gym Cost? — garage, basement and outbuilding costs compared