Greg Says: The first and most important thing you need to take care of is determining if this is something you can even do legally at your location. If you’re located within city limits in particular, the city is going to have something to say about it. At the very least, you’ll need to obtain a business license, and you may also need to get a conditional use permit, which can be an expensive process and a hassle. Do your homework up front because the last thing you want to do is go through the effort and expense of building out a gym, getting a bunch of people raining with you, and then not only have to shut it down, but potentially get hit with fines. If you’re way out in the middle of nowhere in an unincorporated area, you can probably do whatever you want short of operating a meth lab.

Next, you need to consider your neighbors—they can be an even bigger problem than the city planning department. Again, if you’re pretty remote and isolated, no problem. If you’re in a neighborhood with houses or condos packed tightly together, I assure you someone is going to object to the noise and the extra cars parked on the road. You may be able to mitigate the problem by only training during normal work hours when most people aren’t home, but that’s also when most people can’t train.

Do your homework on insurance as well. Check with your homeowner’s insurance—you likely have some kind of umbrella policy, but since insurance companies’ primary objective is to avoid paying you, there will most assuredly be a way for them to exclude this activity if it’s not explicitly written into your policy. Even if it does cover this, get some additional insurance specifically for coaching/gym/training type coverage.

Practical considerations that are easy to overlook: Where are people going to get water? Use the bathroom? Do you want them roaming around your house? Do you have other options? Where are they going to park? Is there a limit to how many people you can accommodate, and if so, how are you going to enforce that? When are you going to allow people to train, will you need to be present at those times, and is that going to be feasible consistently? Who is going to be welcome to train there, how are you going to invite them, and how are you going to deny people you don’t want there

Having a garage gym is just about the greatest thing on earth, but it also offers a lot of potential for headaches once you start bringing other people into it. Again, do your homework well and make sure you have a good plan before you jump into it.