One man's quest for the best home gym money can buy

By Jeannine Stein

Aug. 18, 2003 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

While dedicated home chefs may pour their resources into a showplace kitchen and gardeners into a magnificent outdoor landscape, Mitch Kompaniez took everything he had and channeled it into a gym.

Housed in a roughly 400-square-foot room and costing well into five figures, it’s outfitted with top-of-the-line equipment that alone cost $12,000, an integrated sound system, insulated walls and a reinforced floor. It’s decorated with a wall-filling trompe l’oeil mural depicting a bucolic scene of mountains, Italian villas, a gazebo, palm trees and little birds. “It’s kind of like an escape room,” he says. “I feel like I’m on vacation.”

Not the kinds of things people typically say about their home gyms, which are usually plopped in unfinished garages or spread throughout the house -- a treadmill near the bed, free weights next to the computer.

Such extravagance is becoming more common. “You could charge admission to some of these places,” says Michael Loch, manager of the L.A. Gym Equipment store in Laguna Niguel. The rooms are often outfitted with rubber flooring, sound systems and flat-screen TVs, he adds.

And it’s not just wealthy, overly body-conscious actors who are installing these suites anymore. According to Loch, it’s now parents who have young children and little spare time, and baby boomers left with an extra room when the kids flee. That they can install fitness club-quality equipment is a big incentive.

Wholesale sales of home gym equipment have risen steadily in the last few years, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Assn. In 1999, sales were $270 million, rising to $300 million in 2002. On average, says Jim Watson, vice president of the Southern California Fitness Store chain, people spend about $5,000 on home equipment, usually consisting of a weight machine, a piece of cardio equipment and some free weights.

But it may not be enough just to buy the stuff. Where it’s set up can have much to do with whether it’s ever used or not. Even putting a little thought into where the dumbbells are going to go helps, says Diane Whaley, assistant professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of Virginia, where she teaches sport and exercise psychology.

“There’s evidence that you’re more apt to exercise if the area is convenient and attractive,” she says, “and it makes sense if you’re in an environment that’s comfortable and pleasing. We know that fitness clubs put a lot of emphasis on this, that’s why there are TVs and music.”

But Kompaniez’s gym is in a realm all its own. The journey from empty room to plush gym started when he bought his trilevel West Hollywood condo four years ago. The upstairs bedroom originally included a loft space, which the previous owners had made into a separate room, accessible by a spiral staircase.

He first thought about turning it into a bedroom, then a video room. But the combination of some family money and getting fed up with schlepping to nearby Gold’s Gym Hollywood gave him another idea.

“I’d come home from work and then sit in traffic going to the gym and then I wouldn’t get home until 9:30 or 10,” says 45-year-old Kompaniez, a salesman in the men’s department at Barneys New York in Beverly Hills. “I had been thinking it would be so nice if I didn’t have to do that.”

And so construction began two years ago. The floor was reinforced, a shared wall was soundproofed and the spiral staircase was transformed into a straight one. But that was just the beginning. There was equipment to buy and decor to think about.

Kompaniez, who became certified as a personal trainer four years ago and has a background in interior design, knew exactly what he wanted: “A swingin’ gym, no holds barred. I thought, if I were to open my own gym, what would I have? I wanted the best stuff, and enough that I wouldn’t feel that I couldn’t work out at home because I needed to go to the gym to do it.” His choices were the result of copious workouts in a variety of gyms over many years. All the equipment is white, and it is spotless.

The ParaBody 440 Multigym allows him to do leg extensions, shoulder presses, bench presses and various other upper-body exercises, and the ParaBody Smith System has barbell racks for squats, a bar for pull-ups and an adjustable bench. There’s a set of space-saving Power Block free weights and a setup for doing back hyperextensions.

For cardio, Kompaniez chose a Life Fitness elliptical trainer and a Landice Executive Trainer treadmill, the latter because it was “like a Cadillac compared to everything else I’ve been on.”

It wasn’t just the cushy ride that swayed him -- it was also the animated workout display. Push “road display” and a little digital man appears, running on a path bordered by trees.

“I saw that and thought, ‘Oh my god, this could totally get me into my mural.’ ” But that wasn’t all. The treadmill also comes with a “vertical situation indicator” which lets users climb the height of the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower, or

“The Empire State Building!” says Kompaniez, pressing a button that reveals a rendering of the New York landmark. “That was, like, 45 minutes. Killer. Just killer.”

But the gym wasn’t to be just about the equipment: “When you work out in gyms you hear the music and go, ‘I hate that song, I hate that song.’ So I got this CD player that has 300 discs, and it just goes from one to another and I can cut my own mixes. And I can operate it all from a remote,” he says, pointing the device at an electric eye in the wall. “It’s DJ Mitch!” he says triumphantly.

And then there was the wall. An off-center square window was replaced with a round one, accented with a faux geranium-filled urn set atop a stone and wrought-iron table. Being a fan of trompe l’oeil, Kompaniez loved a friend’s idea of covering the wall with a mural. In five months, artist Scott Woods had completed the scene, culled from snapshots of Puerto Vallarta, travel brochures and the local landscape. Two palm trees mirror ones across the street. Even Josh, Kompaniez’s part-Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, is in there.

All of this has proved to Kompaniez that workouts may not just be about the pain and the gain. Since building his uber-gym he looks forward to exercising, believes he’s in better shape and says his workouts have become shorter and more efficient now that he doesn’t have to wait for equipment or let someone else work in a set. Mixing up workout routines has thwarted boredom. His membership at Gold’s is up in a week, and he’s not sure he’ll renew.

Sometimes Kompaniez thinks about the time, years away, when something will compel him to move and give up this fitness aerie. He’s already decided not to take the equipment with him.

“I’ll just redo it wherever I go,” he says lightly. “Besides, there might be new equipment by then.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Putting a price on it

Mitch Kompaniez’s home gym features several pieces of state-of-the-art equipment. Prices are approximate.

Landice Executive Trainer treadmill ... $4,000

Life Fitness elliptical trainer ... $3,000

ParaBody 440 Multigym ... $2,500

ParaBody Smith System ... $1,250

Hyperextension machine ... $150

Two adjustable benches ... $300

Power Block dumbbell set ... $500

Assorted accessories (stability balls, exercise bands) ... $400