Retired CrossFit GOAT Mat Fraser isn’t one to rest on his laurels. While he is no longer competing in the sport he dominated at an unprecedented level (winning five straight CrossFit Games titles between 2016 and 2o2o), Fraser is still a major figure in the strength sports community. He’s got his own training program now—he talked at length about it in an interview with Men’s Health—and to put his practice to the test, he needs a solid home training space.
Shortly after his retirement, Fraser shared a video to his then-nascent YouTube channel about all the gear in his garage gym. Since then, he’s moved into a new house, and he’s got even more room for a dedicated training spot. Naturally, Fraser opened up the gym to give his fans a peek inside at the setup. This time, he had an assist with the equipment from Rogue Fitness.
“It took awhile to set up this space,” Fraser says. “Any time I’ve moved into another home gym it was like, a day or two to set up, kind of get stuff moved in, you’ve got a couple sets of weights… this gym was a little more elaborate.” Indeed, Fraser has a custom rig that was built to fit the room, which took multiple days to build out and set up.
Fraser begins the tour with a rundown of all his cardio machines, which he says are all the typical machines you’d find in a CrossFit gym or on the competition floor. “I basically wanted two of everything so that if I have friends coming over or if Sammy [his wife] are working out together, we don’t have to coordinate who’s on what machine when,” he says. The machines include pairs of Concept2 SkiErgs, Concept2 rowers, Concept2 BikeErgs, Rogue Echo Bikes (“My preferred method of fan bikes for calories”), and Assault Bikes.
From there, he shows off his weights, starting with a Rogue barbell holder. He’s “overflowing” with barbells, including standard Rogue Ohio bars, competition bars, and even an EZ curl bar. He moves into the beginning of his massive rig. “I didn’t really want the typical wall-mounted rig just for pullups and squats,” Fraser says. “I wanted each station to kind of be a tool to serve a purpose.” He’s got portable squat racks his wife can move, and a wall-mounted pullup bar.
Once Fraser gets really into the rig’s specs, he explains how it came to be. He says he was working within Rogue’s typical product offerings and selecting what he wanted for his space—but by the time he submitted the massive order, someone at the company wrote back to him and questioned what exactly he was trying to do. He explained his plans, and the rep came back with a different option. “They were like no, you’re not installing that—we’re going to design you something custom and it’s going to look sharp.”
All of Fraser’s weight plates are mounted to the wall, and he uses the same lifting platform as his old gym. One spot he’s particularly fond of is the stall bars. The stacked wood slats are a versatile spot Fraser says he uses for everything from resistance band mounts to a spot for strict hanging exercises like toes-to-bar and L-sits.
Corner shelving holds Fraser’s recovery tools, speakers, and towels. He keeps kettlebells on the floor under the shelving, with weights going up to a massive 203-pounder. “Those used to get brought out once a year, just before the Games to get my hands on them,” he says. “I don’t know if they’ll ever get brought out again.” He’s also got a bunch of D-Balls on the ground, underneath his shelves of dumbbells which range from 5 to 100 pounds (with a set of 125s for good measure). Fraser admits he’s a bit of a control freak—he shifts one of the 5-pound dumbbells, and admits that he needs all of his weights to “face the same way.”
While the rig is custom, Fraser points out one section that he loves that is now available for anyone to get from Rogue called the Cave. This section has pulleys for cable work up high and on the ground, along with a squat rack and pullup bar. Fraser says he wanted this setup so that he could have a space for traditional CrossFit work, but also what he calls “the Globo gym stuff”: lat pulldowns, seated rows, and cable work. Along with the Cave, Fraser has all kinds of attachments for the cables.
After showing off the rig, Fraser gets excited to show off his favorite tools, including a Speed Bag machine, and Iron Neck, grip pinchers, and more. One highlight from the rest of the tour is a specialized pushup station, with rounded ball grips to go along with more standard bar grips. “Holy hell,” he says. “That thing blows out your grip.”
He has a reverse hyper machine, a tool that Fraser says will be in every home gym he ever builds, and a Rhino belt squat machine. One of the most surprising additions to the gym is something you might be surprised to find in the home of a former CrossFitter that he identifies as “the machine I wish I would’ve discovered sooner in my career”: a Stairmaster. Fraser says he first used the machine during a rare week off during his competition days and fell in love with its low-impact training. He says that he uses the machine a few times a week for 20 to 40 minutes wearing a weight vest.
He’s got more machines like treadmills, parallettes, weight vests, specialty bars, GHDs, and jump ropes. The whole gym is absurdly well-stocked—the tour takes almost 45 minutes—exactly what you’d expect from a five-time Fittest Man on Earth.
Brett Williams, NASM
Brett Williams, a fitness editor at Men’s Health, is a NASM-CPT certified trainer and former pro football player and tech reporter who splits his workout time between strength and conditioning training, martial arts, and running.
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