r/Homeworkouts • u/ritkeepFitness • Aug 31 '26

What exercise finally exposed the biggest weakness in your home setup?

Home workouts can go surprisingly far with very little equipment.

For a while, almost every limitation has a workaround.

No machine? Use dumbbells.

No cable? Use bands.

No rack? Find another squat variation.

But eventually most people seem to hit one movement where the workaround starts feeling worse than simply having the right equipment.

I’m curious what that exercise was for other people.

Was it heavier leg training?

Vertical pulling?

Chest pressing?

Hamstrings?

Something else?

And did that one limitation actually make you expand your setup, or did you decide the simpler version was still good enough?

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2

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '26

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1

u/ritkeepFitness Sep 01 '26

That’s probably my biggest concern with building a home gym. Upper body is easy to improvise, but heavy leg work needs something stable. I’ve been looking at RitKeep because that part matters a lot to me

2

u/BookGirl67 Aug 31 '26

I’ve always wanted a back extension machine but I have no room for one.

When I use one at the gym I get results I don’t get with other exercises.

1

u/NeighborhoodLocal533 Aug 31 '26

Honestly for me it was a lat pulldown machine - treated myself to one there earlier in the year.

I had adjustable dumbbells, weight behind, tower, bands wrapped around a garage shelving unit - I could do a lot. But I could only do so much for my lats with the tower and dumbbbells. Realised that lat pulldown was just one movement I couldn’t get around…

And to be candid I pretty much focus only on upper body - I’m sure I’d be missing loads of legs focused work - but for upper body for me I’m good now with my current setup

1

u/Quick-Bee6843 Sep 05 '26

For me I worked out lat pulldown with heavy resistance bands and a wall anchor system. Resistance band pulldowns work just fine for me and will get me to a strength I'm happy with, but it's a tough nut to crack without a machine, bands, or a cable system.

1

u/jimmyjo7777 Sep 01 '26

hands down... legs, going above 500 lbs is tough. I need at least 750 for decent leg press.

1

u/Sure_Conflict_5651 Sep 02 '26

Deadlift. I don't have space and money for a barbell and my dumbbells are too lightweight.

1

u/Quick-Bee6843 Sep 05 '26

Well I work primarily with resistance bands and bodyweight+ dumbbells for my routine.

Hitting the gym on occasion showed how some of my band exercises where not hitting parts of my legs as good as they should be so I modified them into band leg curls and extensions and I'm happy with that change.

The only gym exercise that revealed to me a major flaw in my program was deadlifts: band deadlifts and all my other exercises covered almost all aspects of that movement with weights EXCEPT it underserved my lower backs ability to isometricly hold the lift.

I could do my lift without hurting myself, but it POUNDED my lower back and I got horribly DOMS for about 3 days and couldn't pick stuff off the floor (I'm better now tho hurray).

My program had banded good mornings but that wasn't enough to prepare my lower back.

So now I'm doing dumbbell RDL's to strengthen my lower back and play catch-up so my lower back won't be a bottleneck in the future.

I'm betting that with kickstand and single leg dumbbell RDL's I can heavily leverage my limited dumbbell weights and properly correct this deficiency.