The home gym has exploded in popularity in recent years, as much out of necessity as out of desire, as a lot of people bought a set of weights to set up a way to keep themselves fit when the gym was inaccessible.

Because portable, versatile, and flexible equipment has become more widely accessible in recent years and allowed for a far more complete range of workouts than was previously possible, it is perhaps no surprise that most people have a home routine they rely on.

However, the idea of portable home gym equipment is not particularly new; in fact, the first piece of gym equipment designed to be installed at home is over 150 years old, predating many, if not most, competitive strength athletics competitions.

What was the “Portable Gymnasium”, why was it made, and who was the mysterious man who invented it?

The Home Of Gymnastics

The modern concept of fitness began in earnest in the early 19th century with the rise of the “turnverein” movement led by Prussian teacher Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. 

Mr Jahn developed a physical exercise routine that included the gymnastic rings, pommel horse and balance beam, establishing the modern gymnastics competition as well as public gyms where people can go to get fit and find a community of like-minded people.

The idea of coming together and developing in both body and mind also led to a campaign to oust Napoleon in 1813, the 1848 German Revolutions and eventually established a united Germany. 

However, the only part of that tangent that matters with regard to the home gym is that it displaced a lot of turners who fled to other countries to spread the ideals of the “Father of Gymnastics”.

Bringing The Gym Home

After several of the European revolutions failed or were suppressed, the “Forty-Eighters” dispersed throughout the rest of Europe and the New World, and a significant reason for the gym culture seen in the UK and the United States can be credited to this populist uprising.

Part of this was seen with the resurgence of the gymnasium as an important civic and cultural centre in a manner not seen since the fall of the Roman Empire, but another part was the development of various systems of exercise with equipment to match.

The first person to take advantage of this was the somewhat mysterious Friedrich Gustav Ernst, an orthopaedic machinist who in 1861 published Portable Gymnasium, a manual designed to promote and advise on the use of a pillar-like exercise machine of the same name.

Made from mahogany, the Portable Gymnasium could be between six and nine feet tall and resembles in practice a cable traction machine of the type still commonly seen in gyms today or replicated through the use of resistance bands or suspension training kits.

Remarkably, one of the exercises resembles a cross-trainer, albeit with far less balance and far more precariousness.

Outside of the date of publication and the idea of a heavy piece of gym equipment being made of the now extremely rare mahogany wood, the greatest telltale sign of the age of the equipment is the exceptionally quaint illustrations for many of the exercises.

Heavily pomaded men in three-piece suits and women in floor-length dresses are depicted undertaking the exercises, something that even by the end of the 19th century would be seen as downright quaint.

Exercise Has Always Been For Everyone

Possibly the greatest aspect of the Portable Gymnasium is how it showed from a very early point that exercise is for everyone, regardless of gender, physical strength or experience.

Whilst it would be at this point considered at best unwise if not somewhat dangerous to exercise in evening suits and multiple petticoats, it highlighted the ultimate point that exercise wasn’t just for committed gym members, revolutionary radicals and strongmen and strongwomen performing feats of strength on the carnival circuit.

Part of the reason for this is that Mr Ernst’s background was in orthopaedics, and he saw his fitness equipment through the lens of orthopaedic care and physiotherapy rather than from the perspective of modern fitness.

The goal was not necessarily to get fit, although that was a very nice side effect; it was partly to aid with recovery and to boost mobility. Even during the Victorian age, continued health and recovery from injuries were a universal goal that everyone would want and need.

As well as this, the suggested exercises and use of the machine recommended four 15-minute sessions a day, emphasising the benefits of small bursts of motion rather than protracted exercise, something only realistically possible with home equipment.