Busting Strength Plateaus with the Second Level of Home Gym Purchases

You’ve already covered the basics—a barbell, plates, squat rack, bench, and collars—but if you’re serious about hammering out raw strength at home, there comes a time to level up your equipment without straying too far from the barbell-based mentality. Picking the right tools beyond the essentials can be the key in blowing numbers up on the Squat, Bench, Press, and Deadlift. Let’s dive into a few items that are worth your hard-earned cash.

Squatting with the SSB

First up, the Safety Squat Bar (SSB). This isn’t just another fancy bar—it’s a game changer for squatting. The cambered design and padded handles that wrap around your shoulders completely alters the physics of the traditional low bar Squat, which results in the SSB forcing you to sit more upright, so your quads and upper back do way more work than with a straight bar. The SSB is also a shoulder-saver. The SSB shoulders the load differently (pun intended), giving your traps and upper back a brutal workout without jamming your shoulders into uncomfortable positions. Use it for high-bar squats, lunges, good mornings, and paused variations, and watch your quads blow up while your core stability and upper-back strength improve. I chose the SSB for this list because it is on the more affordable end of the luxury bars, while still being extremely effective.

Weighted Dip - great for the chest and triceps!

In tandem with squatting variations, pressing strength demands its own set of tools. The combination of a sturdy dip station or rack-mounted dip handles with a dip belt is a gift your chest, shoulders, and triceps will thank you for. If you keep adding (fractional) plate after plate over time, you’re building explosive pushing power that translates directly to bigger Bench and Press numbers. For the bench specifically, a Bench Block or board may come in handy. Basically, it’s a stackable wood or dense rubber block that sits on your chest when you press. By reducing the range of motion, it forces you to generate maximum force and maintain impeccable tension at the chest position, teaching you to drive the bar back up

from a dead stop. Over time, using a bench block builds explosive power off your chest and ingrains better bracing in the bottom half of the press. Plus, you can gradually lower the block’s height as you improve, slowly stretching that strength into a full-range bench. For anyone chasing tighter setup, more leg drive, and a thicker middle, a simple bench block will help you iron out those weaknesses and carry that strength into your regular bench sessions.

Both your upper body and lower body can benefit from purchasing some thick bands to do resisted Bench Press or Squat variants. Bands force you to accelerate through the lift’s toughest lockout, so the second you break past the sticking point, you’re still fighting tension—which means stronger lockouts and bigger lifts overall.

Further out from the core movements, there few items to keep an eye out for. First, you may want to consider a set of adjustable dumbbells. But let's face it: not all of us are millionaires. Purchasing a set of regular dumbbells is both money- and space-consuming, so adjustable dumbbells make more sense. However, these items are still very expensive. In the event you decide your children's college prospects aren't that great anyway, purchasing this luxury item opens an entire new world of options that can help you push beyond your current levels of strength. If you are gifted with extreme patience, you may be able to collect a hodgepodge of "good enough" variety and quality dumbbells cheaply via Facebook Marketplace, auctions, gym or estate sales. Furthermore, looking into cable pulley systems might be a worthwhile endeavor, and they are getting better all the time. These economical, attachable pulley systems create enough variety to give your training some extra spice without creating too much friction in your finances.

There's also another category to consider: Efficiency tools. Efficiency tools round out a strength-oriented home gym by keeping you focused on lifting rather than everything else. A deadlift jack or plate jack is one of those simple investments that pays for itself a dozen times over. Instead of bending over and wrestling heavy plates off the bar, you slip the jack under one side, pop the barbell up, swap plates in seconds, and get right back to pulling. That extra ten seconds per set might not sound like much, but it keeps your focus on lifting the heaviest weight possible when you intend to, and not gassing yourself out changing plates. Another great tool is a gym timer. This allows you to leave your phone out of the gym completely thus eliminating one huge time-waster.

In the end, pursuing strength isn’t just about piling on more weight and repeating the same things ad nauseam—it’s about picking the right gear to intelligently stack the deck in your favor. Stacking some of these tools in your gym could be strength plateau-busting formula for you.