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Put some D-I-Y into your G-Y-M. Alloy Wire
Outfitting your home with a full-scale gym is a dream for many dedicated strength athletes, and there’s no better way to start construction than by building from the ground up, i.e., installing worthwhile gym flooring. However, purchasing this feature can easily begin to add up, especially if you’d like to elevate (literally) your setup with a dedicated lifting platform.
Fortunately, there are other, cheaper options out there, and all that’s required is a trip to the hardware store, some well-charged hand tools and a free afternoon schedule.
Building your own lifting platform can be a great way to upgrade your home gym without spending a fortune on pre-made structures. Plus, putting a DIY spin on your fitness environment allows you to cater your setup to your needs through aesthetics and dimensions.
To get a better understanding of how to construct these simple yet effective training platforms, we spoke with Alan Thrall, owner of Sacramento’s Untamed Strength. With the help of this experienced gym owner and entertaining YouTuber, we've nailed down everything you need to know about this training-born DIY project — from materials and steps, to helpful tips and more.
Think you're ready to clock in for this project? Let's jump right in.
While constructing a lifting platform of your own may seem like a tall task, there are only a handful of materials and tools needed for the project itself. All of the items should be readily available at your local hardware store, too, which eliminates the need to wait for shipping.
Editor’s Note: The following materials list outlines a DIY lifting platform measuring 4 feet wide by 8 feet long, your typical measurements for a deadlifting platform. According to Thrall, this is a good beginner size that should fit most garage gyms. If you’re looking to anchor a squat rack to your platform, or want to utilize your structure for Olympic lifts, consider building an 8’ x 8’ platform and adjust the material needs accordingly prior to gathering your items.
In addition to the outlined materials above, you can take your project a step further by opting to stain and treat your top plywood sheet. In order to complete this extended process, though, you'll need a can of wood stain and polyurethane as well as a paint brush. These extra steps can help boost the aesthetics of your build, but they aren't entirely necessary. "I think that bare wood works fine unless you wanted to keep a squeaky clean garage gym," Thrall says, "Then, the polyurethane is a good option because you can actually clean that and make that deadlift platform shine a little bit for a more polished look."
The plywood will be your most expensive material, but rather than opting for the cheapest available particleboard, Thrall advises investing in cabinet-grade sheets.
“The main benefit to buying cabinet-grade plywood is that it is, for the most part, flat — it’s not warped or bowed at all,” he states. “When you do use cheap plywood, if that wood is bowed, you might have one edge that bows up off the ground, so the platform rocks a tiny bit and when there’s weight there, the weight won’t sit still.”
Bowed plywood can also make your platform undesirably noisy. “If there’s one corner of the deadlift platform off the ground, when you set the weight down, the weight hits the plywood and the plywood slaps against the floor, so it sounds much louder,” Thrall says. “If you are in a neighborhood and you wanted to keep down on the noise, try to get cabinet grade plywood so that it’s totally flat.”
If you opt to stain your top plywood sheet, your final steps are as follows:
Thrall states the entire platform-building process, including the trip to your local hardware store, should take no more than 90 minutes. If you choose to upgrade your final product with stain and polyurethane, expect to commit a weekend's worth of time to the project to allow for ample drying.
Once you get into the steps of building your personal lifting platform, you’ll soon find that cutting the stall mats to size is likely the most difficult task in the process. Thankfully, Thrall’s experience in cutting this rugged material is expansive, as his 12,000-square-foot gym is, in his words, “covered in horse stall mats.”
One of the first tips Thrall has for making these incisions as headache free as possible is to prop the mat up over a structure so you can use gravity during the cutting process. “Taking some sort of PVC pipe, putting it underneath the mat right above the line that you’re going to cut is going to get the mat to bow,” he says. “So, when you slice, that incision is going to want to spread apart. If it is lying flush to the floor and you try to cut, gravity is not allowing the split to come apart so you’re not going to get very far.”
Thrall adds that having a brand-new blade in your utility knife is key to ensuring each pass isn’t a wasted effort. Rubber stall mats are tough and durable, so to help get through the material as quickly as possible, a sharp blade is a must. Last but not least: “I’m not entirely sure why, but a little bit of water along the line where the blade comes in contact with the mat helps the blade slide much easier.”
Outside of putting a personal spin on your home training space, building a DIY lifting platform can be a solid way to upgrade your environment without the need to renovate your entire flooring system. According to Thrall, training on a platform can help save your garage flooring from excessive wear and tear during intense movements like deadlifts, rows, cleans and more.
Thrall also states that lifting platforms can go a long way toward preserving the integrity of your equipment: “The platform does absorb some of the shock, and if you are deadlifting on the floor, even with a rubber mat underneath and especially if you’re using iron plates, not only is the floor going to be damaged, but it’s going to damage your plates and the barbell as well because of that impact of the iron plates rattling against the sleeve of the barbell.”
Finally, building your own lifting platform can be an excellent way to save money, which can allow you to spend extra funds on more worthwhile fitness equipment and tools like weight benches, kettlebells and other home gym staples. “Paying a company for a deadlifting platform or a weightlifting platform is going to be very expensive,” says Thrall. “So [DIY] is definitely cost effective.”
In general, your completed lifting platform should be sturdy enough for plenty of hard-nosed lifting sessions without much upkeep, outside of the occasional dusting and wipe down. However, the impact of dropped plates can begin to wear divots into your structure, which would require replacements. Thankfully, Thrall has a final tip to lessen said impact.
Rather than loading your barbell solely with iron weight plates, opt for two 45-pound bumper plates to start. From there, you can build out your working weight total with smaller iron plates, which lessens the iron-on-stall-mat impact throughout your lifts.
304 Stainless Steel Round Bar “The only plates that are in contact with the platform would be the bumpers,” Thrall explains. “If you want to preserve this thing for the rest of your life, that’s probably going to be the best way because the bumpers are not going to wear down the plywood nearly as fast as iron plates.”