How We Review Gym Equipment Products & Programs

You can find the full disclaimer page here.

At Strong Home Gym we review gym equipment and products related to getting stronger from home. This includes workout programs and supplements.

Everything we do goes through our 5 core values:

1. Excellence
2. Honesty
3. Grow or die
4. Teach
5. Simplify

You can learn more about these values on our about page.

Every member of our team works out at home. Most of us have built a home gym and some of the team own a commercial gym. But all of us have used our own money to physically buy gym equipment and we know how hard it is to find unbiased information about it.

We know this affects your health and your wallet so we take this responsibility incredibly seriously.

What We Do When We Review

Here are the things that we do 100% of the time before we review anything.

Our Exclusive 5-Step Process

Before we recommend anything it will ALWAYS go into our 5 step process (which constantly improves- one of our core values)…

1. We Start As The Buyer

Every time we review something, there is someone on our team who has physically bought that type of product…

Every time.

We have already spent countless hours reading articles, scouring product pages, and watching videos before we even consider creating content.

Once this product has been bought we add it to our content list to consider whether we should review it or not.

2. We Do A TON Of Research

As in far more research than any normal person should!

This helps us achieve excellence (a core value).

This involves creating an enormous spreadsheet with criteria for dozens or hundreds of similar products. It looks something like this…

We do this for EVERYTHING!

Why?

Because I can’t stand it when someone on the internet recommends something as the “best treadmill for me” because they have ‘used it’. They don’t know my financial situation, they don’t know my training ability and they certainly don’t know how much space I have.

By doing this research it gives us a great starting point to offer a product that suits people with any kind of budget, space, and training levels.

3. We Rate The Products Using Our Exclusive “Weighted” Rating System

After we do a ton of data bashing we can use our own “weighted” system to make products rise to the top.

We can now look at the main “criteria” for each product.

We use our own experience and other reviews to help decide what criteria matters the most and what criteria is a minor buying factor.

For example, if you’re looking for the “best adjustable dumbbell”:

• Price- an important factor so it has a “higher weighting”
• Color- a minor factor with a “lower weighting”
• Shape- very important to some people “high weighting”
• Number of reviews- shows how popular it is, but you can’t always trust these reviews “medium rating”
• Etc.

This helps us create our own exclusive score for every product that we research. We also share the criteria we review which helps us to teach the audience in case they want to do their own research (another core value).

4. We Use Data To Decide The Top Picks

This is a very important step.

After we do a ton of data bashing we can see what items rise to the top.

We can determine who they are best for and if they will be a good fit in our reviews.

This is the part where we decide what products we want to look into in more detail and which products don’t really stand out compared to others.

It also helps us to simplify things (another core value)- there’s nothing worse than having 1,000 products to choose from when looking for resistance bands.

This also helps for step 5…

5. We Get Our Hands On As Much Of This As Possible

Firstly, let me address the elephant in the room…

No…

We have not used every single item that we include in our round-up reviews.

However, we do get our hands on a LOT of it!

Remember, every team member buys these types of products regularly. So we always use our research to decide on our purchases.

A team member owns an 8,000-foot Strength and Conditioning commercial gym with hundreds of thousands spent on gym equipment.

And if we can’t get hold of it we ask our community (hundreds of thousands of readers and members of the commercial gym). This gives us unique insights into the products that you won’t always be able to find online.

We Assess Products Against Criteria

Some of the main gym equipment criteria we will assess against (remember step 3- we then create a “weighting” for each one):

1. Value– taking into account:
   • price
   • quality
   • durability
2. Quality– looking at:
   • materials used
   • weight of the product/ steel thickness
   • construction method
3. Dimensions– comparing:
   • size
   • footprint
   • compactness
4. Portability
   • how easily it can be moved
   • whether it has wheels
   • if it can be folded
5. Practicality– looking at:
   • versatility
   • what it’s used for
   • how easy it is to use
6. Delivery and assembly– reviewing:
   • delivery times
   • assembly instructions
   • if there is a service to have it assembled for you
7. Customer reviews– we look for:
   • common issues/ problems
   • the number of reviews compared to the positive reviews
   • how new the product is to market
8. Brand reputation–
   • how popular it is within the home gym community
   • the resale value of typical products from the brand
   • previous manufacturing issues
9. Customer service
   • we contact most brands we recommend (as a customer to ask questions/ to do with orders we make)
   • we check for other people’s reviews about brands
   • regularly ask our community about them
10. Warranty, financing and returns– taking into account:
    • how long the warranty is for items
    • whether there is financing as an option
    • what the company’s policy is on returns (and how long these returns take).
11. Availability– we look at:
    • how often items go out of stock
    • where these products are delivered to (locally vs nationally in the USA vs internationally)
    • if you can find them on re-sale sites (FB marketplace, Craigslist etc)

What We Don’t Do

These are the things that we don’t do at Strong Home Gym.

Make Recommendations Based On Potential Income

There are numerous times when we recommend products that do not have an affiliate program.

Why do we do this?

Some REALLY good gym equipment companies don’t do them. And their products are…

Really good! (go figure.)

We use the data and our 5-step process above to determine recommendations, not how much a company will pay us.

In fact, most team members who do this work have no idea what the commission structure is for products they recommend (or if there even is an affiliate program). This helps the reviews to be unbiased and even more trustworthy (a core value).

Make Recommendations Based On Our Own Biases

We always take our biases for and against certain brands out of the picture. However, we do take into account brand reputation, customer service and negative reviews online to account for this.

Again this is why the 5-step process is in place above.

I see so many reviews that recommend a product because they have used it for the last 2 years.

Don’t get me wrong, personal hands-on experience is great! (which is why we have step 5)

But when the barbell you recommend costs $800 and I’m living on state benefits, that recommendation doesn’t help!

Hide Negative Reviews

On the rare occasion a company sends us a product to review we do not let this cloud our judgment. We will be transparent and honest about this too.

If the product sucks we will let you know. We’ll always compare it against the competition and provide our own opinion about it.

Go Against Health Recommendations & Guidelines

It’s becoming trendy to go against health organizations or medical professionals. But we do NOT do that. In fact, we have a certified medical doctor on the team to make sure the information is accurate.

We use thorough research and provide up-to-date advice on anything to do with health and nutrition.

Affiliate / Third-Party Links Disclosure And Disclaimer

In short, we create referral external third party links that direct you from Strong Home Gym to our partner sites.

These links DO NOT cost you any money.

They simply let our partners know that you came from our website. In turn, it allows us to earn a commission for the sale and keep the lights on here!

You can find the full disclaimer page here.

Here’s the more legal stuff…

We may partner with other businesses or become part of different affiliate marketing programs whose products or services may be promoted or advertised on the website in exchange for commissions and/or financial rewards when you click and/or purchase those products or services through our affiliate links. We will receive a commission if you make a purchase through our affiliate link at no extra cost to you. 

We may also recommend other products, services, coaches and consultants but no such reference is intended to be an endorsement or statement that such information provided is accurate. We recommend these based on our personal experiences but it is still your responsibility to conduct your own due diligence to ensure you have obtained complete accurate information about such product, services, coaches and consultants. 

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, which is an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

These affiliate or third party relationships in no way compromise the integrity of the content, information, services and materials being presented to you here, and you are under no obligation to click on these affiliate links to purchase those products or services being offered. These affiliate programs are selected based on personal experiences and preferences. 

Although we provide these affiliate links on the website for your convenience, we have no control over these external websites and they are solely responsible for their own content and information presented.  Therefore, Strong Home Gym and/or its officers, employees, successors, shareholders, joint venture partners or anyone else working with us cannot be held liable or responsible for any content presented on these external websites and for any damages resulting from them.

This disclosure policy applies to all affiliate links we share on our website, social media, emails, programs, products such as courses, ebooks, services and any other means of communication with you.

Review Guidelines- The Bottom Line

The main aim of Strong Home Gym is to help you make an informed purchasing decision. Using these review guidelines we are very proud of the guides we provide.

You can see all of our gym equipment reviews here.