Are you looking at starting a gym? Or maybe you are considering expanding your existing gym?

Do you decide what gets added into your high school or even even college gym? Maybe you make decisions about what goes into an apartment or hotel gym?

Whatever the case may be, when we talk about commercial gyms, we are certainly including more than just Planet Fitness, Gold’s Gym, and Lifetime Fitness. We are instead talking about any gym not primarily for personal use - a gym built for a group of people and one that expects more traffic than just you and your spouse and that one neighbor.

Maybe you are the type of person that knows exactly what you want to purchase. You’ve had the gym design finalized for months, you placed your orders and your bulk gym equipment is going to be set to perfection. You even know exactly what services you are going to offer your customers. Congrats! That is a huge process to undergo, and you’ve crushed it.

However, I would guess for most people reading this article, you are in the beginning stages of looking at fitness solutions for your school, gym, or community fitness center.

There are so many options for types of equipment. You’ve got dozens and dozens of different treadmills. There are dumbbells, adjustable dumbbells, and plate-loaded dumbbells. Then there is the question of space. Where do you even put everything and how do you know what will fit in your facility? Not to mention, what are the needs of the people at your gym? What are some common workouts that will be performed at your gym? It goes without saying that the needs of a local gym versus a high school weightroom versus a 55+ living community gym are going to vary significantly.

There are some pieces of commercial fitness equipment that I believe almost all commercial gyms will benefit from in their facility. This list includes dumbbells, barbells, power racks, kettlebells, benches, weight plates, treadmills, sleds, ellipticals, plyometric boxes, bikes, and rowers just to name a few.

While we aren’t going to dive into all of these today, let’s take a look at three specific pieces of equipment on this list.