Authors
The writers behind Strengthpicks. Each person owns a domain, from the gear they test to the criteria they use. Here is where they come from, why they cover it, and how they work.
Grant Ellis
Garage gym builds
Salt Lake City, Utah · testing since 2016
Grant designs a home gym backward, starting with where the car has to park and working inward. He measures cable travel, ceiling clearance, and mat seams before he reads a single review, because a machine that does not fit is just a return.
Background
Six years framing houses for a builder who measured twice and yelled if you did not is where Grant learned to read a level and distrust a tape that had been dropped one too many times. He grew up in Provo. He and his wife bought a Salt Lake City house with a two-car garage in 2016, and the second bay has been a gym ever since, with the car parked tight against the wall.
The back wall holds a cable machine, a flat bench, and a set of adjustable dumbbells on a rolling cart. A strip of horse stall mats covers the concrete, cut around the water heater with a utility knife. Grant keeps a framing square and a chalk line on a shelf near the door, plus a spiral notebook where he sketches layouts for friends who ask him to plan their garages.
Why I got into it
Framing taught him that a space is a set of constraints, and a garage gym is the tightest set he has worked with. He got tired of buying a machine that looked fine online and then fouled the garage door track, so he started taping out footprints on the floor before ordering anything. The notes from those layouts became the blueprint posts he writes now.
How I review
Grant installs each machine in his own garage and lives with it for at least six weeks, because the first workout tells you almost nothing. He measures footprint with painter's tape, checks cable smoothness at the top and bottom of the stack, and tracks whether the frame shifts under a heavy pulldown. Mat seams get tested for curling in a cold garage.
Ceiling height is the tiebreaker, since a rack or machine that clears the door track is worth more than one with a nicer finish. He tells renters to skip bolted racks and steer toward freestanding ones they can move. Flooring gets ranked by smell and how it handles dropped plates. If a cable machine needs a permanent wall anchor, that goes in the first paragraph.
House framer turned home-gym builder who has laid flooring and installed cable machines and storage in a working two-car garage.
Domain: cable-machines · flooring · layout · storage
Focus: footprint planning · floor protection · cable smoothness · storage layout · ceiling clearance
Sofia Martinez
Cardio and conditioning
Chicago, Illinois · testing since 2015
Sofia trains at 5:30 a.m. in a third-floor apartment, which makes noise the first spec she checks. She runs machines through full training blocks, and a treadmill that thuds through the floorboards does not survive the cut.
Background
The basement flooded every spring in the Cicero, Illinois house where Sofia grew up, the youngest of three. She rowed for a club team through college and took a job as a physical therapy aide, which put her around rehab equipment all day. She lives in a Chicago apartment now, near the Brown Line, with a rower that folds against the living room wall.
The living room holds the rower, a spin bike in the corner, and a fan aimed at the spot where she trains. She keeps a decibel meter app open on her phone and a folded towel under the bike to catch sweat. The downstairs neighbor is a night nurse, so a 6 a.m. session has to be quiet enough that he never texts her about it.
Why I got into it
Her physical therapy work showed her how many people quit a home program because the equipment was loud, awkward, or shoved in a closet. When she moved into an apartment with no gym within walking distance, she had to solve that problem herself. She started writing about the cardio machines that actually fit a small, shared building, with the noise numbers attached.
How I review
Twenty sessions come before she writes a word, enough for a rower's resistance to feel different in week four. She logs decibels at three feet and at the floor, folded dimensions with a tape, and heart-rate response on a chest strap. A 2,000-meter row gets timed at the start and the end of the block.
Noise is the tiebreaker, because a machine she cannot use before 7 a.m. is a machine she will stop using. She tells apartment dwellers to skip most treadmills and points them toward rowers and spin bikes instead. Long-legged riders get a caution about seat height and stride. If a bike squeaks at speed or a rower needs constant chain oil, both go in the cons.
Apartment-based rower and cyclist who has run rowers, bikes, and treadmills through full training blocks in a shared Chicago building.
Domain: cardio · conditioning · small-spaces · noise
Focus: footprint · noise · resistance feel · stability at speed · storage
Tyler Brooks
Strength equipment
Nashville, Tennessee · testing since 2014
Tyler has bailed out of a squat in a garage and listens for how the plates land. He buys his own bars and racks, trains on them for months, and writes down the numbers that matter when a rep goes wrong.
Background
Football through high school in Murfreesboro, Tennessee ended with a shoulder injury, and the next four years as a warehouse forklift operator taught Tyler that a frame either holds its shape under load or it does not. He lives in Nashville now with a garage that has an 8-foot ceiling and a rack he had to measure twice to fit.
The garage gym is a squat rack, a bench, a bar, and about 400 pounds of plates on a two-tier rack. A broom handle marks the ceiling height on the wall next to the rack, so he can check any new attachment without dragging out a tape. He keeps a worn leather belt on a hook and a chalk block in a coffee can, and the chalk dust on the floor tells him how often he is actually training.
Why I got into it
The shoulder injury meant he could not press overhead, but he could still squat and pull, so he built a garage setup and learned to train around a limitation. He found that most rack reviews skipped ceiling height and bar clearance entirely, which are the two things that decide whether a rack works in a real garage. That gap is why he writes about strength gear now.
How I review
Tyler lifts on each piece for at least three months, squatting, benching, and pulling on the same rack and bar twice a week. He tracks rack sway at a heavy squat, knurling bite with sweaty hands, bench pad width against his shoulder blades, and how a bumper plate bounces off concrete. Bar spin gets checked with a bare shaft.
He tests the failed rep on purpose, so plate durability and rack catch height get judged from a drop, not a rack pull. He tells lifters with a 7-foot garage ceiling to skip tall racks and look at short stands. Anyone benching alone gets a caution about safety arms. If a bar's knurl tears up his hands on a light set, that bar is out, no matter the tensile rating.
Garage-gym lifter who has trained on squat racks, benches, barbells, and plates for years under an 8-foot ceiling.
Domain: racks-benches · barbells-weights · powerlifting · garage-gyms
Focus: rack stability · ceiling height · knurling · plate durability · bench width