The rise in home fitness
During lockdown, “the body coach” Joe Wicks achieved a Guinness World Record when his online fitness class on March 24th had an audience of nearly 1 million people. That’s a lot of people jumping around in their living room! It’s also a great example of how people took workouts into their own home during the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns. In addition to the astonishing work of Joe Wicks, there are a number of other statistics that highlight a rise in home gyms during this time. For example, between March and July 2020, sales of exercise bikes in the United Kingdom grew by over 2,000 percent. In addition to this a survey commissioned by Nuffield Health showed that 31% of British people substituted household objects for gym equipment to support their workouts.
Impact on neighbours
The increased use of home gyms in bedrooms, living rooms, garages and other rooms in the house, has in turn led to a growing need for residential gym noise reduction, as many have found that the noise from their gyms has led to conflict with neighbours/residents in the same building or in some cases, noise abatement orders being issued.
The main reason for this is the fact that home workouts can be noisier than we realise. The experience you have of a noise whilst inside your gym, can be completely different to the noise a neighbour can hear. Loud noises such as weights being dropped on the floor, running machines, music and the impact of jumping on the floor have multiple frequencies that reverberate through the ceiling, floor and each of your walls. As we discussed when we recently looked at noise in commercial gyms, there is a psycho-acoustic element to noise and the sounds that commonly upset people the most, such as sudden, unexpected high volume noises such as weight drops on a bare floor. These sounds disturb and surprise your neighbours causing anxiety and upset. As well as weights being dropped onto the floor in a home gym, the rhythmic thud thud of skipping or running on a treadmill arouses anger in a different way, more of a dripping tap. It’s also worth noting that Nuffield Health also reports that 18% of people knocked into their own furniture during a workout!
What can be done?
iKoustic has a wide range of gym soundproofing products that can help reduce the impact of noise in a home gym, from MuteBlocs™ which are easy to install and reduce the noise impact of weights and other exercises, to MuteMat® Gym flooring, our highly engineered, multi-density gym floor tiles for soundproofing gym flooring. Every room, floor and ceiling is different though and as such it can be very involved to determine which product is going to truly make a difference to you (and your neighbours!)
Let’s talk
To find out what product would be best for you, get in touch with a member of the iKoustic team today. We will identify what your residential gym set-up is and the challenges with soundproofing that you want to address. Directing you to a solution that is going to give you the opportunity to re-watch those Joe Wicks classes WITHOUT disturbing the neighbours!