Welcome to this second installment of the article series, The Terrific Minimalism of Batman’s Batcave: A Look at Batfleck’s Batcave from BvS. If you’re looking for the first article in the series you can click here to learn about the design elements of this Batcave as well as The Lab. As the article title here states, this one is going to focus on the Batcave Gym aka The Training Room. This room might be my favorite in this iteration of the Batcave. It goes a long way towards showing us a behind the scenes look at how Batman does business when he’s not out on the streets in uniform. Let’s get to it.
Welcome to the Batcave Gym
It’s difficult to tell where from the available online stills, but somewhere in the Batcave there exists a room dedicated to Batman’s physical (and possibly skills related) training- The Batcave Gym. The room appears in the film’s preparation montage as Bruce Wayne readies himself to meet the Man of Steel in battle. Interspersed with scenes of him analyzing kryptonite and fabricating weapons, there are scenes of Bruce kicking his own ass in a very gritty, minimal, bare-bones gym space.
From the few glimpses we get here, the thing I like most is that Bruce has the equipment he needs to get the job done but nothing superfluous. He uses rusty, beat-up old steel plates and chains. The dumbbells he uses are steel with the black paint chipping off as well. No fancy rubber hex dumbbell sets that are gentle on the floor when you drop them. Weight is weight. Yes, he has a heavy-duty power rack, but we don’t see a tricked out 6-post rack with all the attachments. It’s not customized with bat iconography all over it.
On that note, this is a Batman that is at the tail end of his career (portrayed here by Ben Affleck). If we take into account that this gym was probably set up about 20 years ago, circa the early 2000s, it would have been long before the home gym revolution of today. Companies like Rogue Fitness and Rep Fitness weren’t around yet, and it wouldn’t have been so commonplace for the average person (or extremely wealthy person) to have a ton of bespoke gym equipment in their house or garage.
If you look closely at some of these images pulled from the montage, you can see how old school some of this stuff is. In the shot below, you can make out a long truss that crosses in front of the doorway and spans the entire width of the room, connecting the weight training equipment on either side.
This looks like something you’d find in a commercial gym, but it also could have been custom fabricated for the space. On the right side, there looks to be at least one weight stack and tower with a triceps pushdown handle attached. Additionally, you can see a dip bar here, and the pull up station is in the center in front of the doorway.
On the left side of the door frame is the aforementioned power rack, in plain matte black of course. It sits atop a lifting platform that extends out into the room. Up against the wall here are two weight plate storage racks. In fact, it does look like Bruce has got some bumper plates stored here, but again, they’re simple black. There’s no color-coded matching set of competition plates here. As a side note- if you’d like to know how to build your own diy bumper plate storage rack, you can check that out here.
Where Ben Affleck Batman Trains
So again, Bruce definitely has what he needs but as nicer equipment became available, he just didn’t care to upgrade it. He keeps his setup very basic on purpose. It’s like in the movie Rocky III, where Mick is begging Rocky to train like he used to. Rocky is really enjoying training with nice equipment in cushy spaces with adoring fans, and Mick realizes it’s making him weak (mentally if not physically).
Bruce chooses this bare-bones set up because it keeps him in the right frame of mind. He’s there for one reason and one reason only and that’s to get bigger, stronger, and faster in order to meet the threat(s) that come to Gotham. While he’s in this space nothing else matters, and he sure as hell isn’t interested in being comfortable while he trains.
Of course, he is Batman, so he’ll naturally adopt new training strategies if they are effective in helping him meet his end goal. You see Bruce making good use of sled pushes and using a heavy sledgehammer to pound the hell out of a tire. Both of these exercises are effective in improving power and conditioning. So, while the techniques are innovative (used in modern functional training and MMA training) they still utilize utilitarian, non-flashy equipment.
Within the movie we don’t get a full look at the size or layout of the room, but near as I can tell it’s a quasi-trapezoidal prism (probably an old bunker they used for filming). There are doorways on either side. The doorway on the side opposite the power rack/pull-up station is trapezoid shaped and has a “water feature”, lol. It’s pretty leaky (notice the buckets) I guess, but there’s also some sunlight streaming through. It’d be nice if we got a better idea of where this room is in relation to the rest of the Batcave and the surface above.
Most of the gym’s chains are hung here just inside the doorway. In the short hallway on this side, you can see an old motorcycle (batcycle, v.1?) before reaching staircases on either side that reach up to the next level of the cave.
Bring On the Batman Workouts
From this vantage point looking down on the right side, you can see a well-used heavy bag mounted to a ceiling truss as well as a box (maybe used for box squats or box jumps). In front of the opposing wall lies a platform that has a large assortment of dumbbells and kettlebells on it. This is also where Bruce benches in the montage. We get a brief shot of the wall opposite this bench but it looks to be pretty barren. There may be some additional equipment on the floor here or it may be where he stores the tire when not in use.
A Real-Life Batcave
Overall, I really dug the way the Batcave’s training space was presented in the movie. It really seems like it’s in keeping with the utilitarian aspect of this Batman’s character. Bruce just wants to do the work. He doesn’t need to be seen doing it, as contrasted with Tony Stark’s training, seen in Ironman 2. The Batcave’s gym is a place where Batman can focus on building himself into the weapon he needs to be for Gotham, while also fortifying his mind to go into the life and death situations he encounters regularly as the Dark Knight.
And as formidable as Bruce is just by himself, he is nonetheless going to need some specialized equipment to gear up for duty. Take a look at the next article in this Batcave series, as we examine Batman’s Armory.
The other thing I really enjoy about this iteration of Batman’s Gym is that this room is one of the most attainable examples of a real batcave room. You could build something similar to this yourself in your garage or other spare room. And if you buy some well worn used equipment off of marketplace it’ll save you some money as well as lend your space that no frills, all business feel and look.
If you’re looking to train hard like Batman and could use some help with your self-discipline, look here. And if you’re already in the mindset of seeking the most brutal workout possible you can check out this article on how to use the Rogue echo bike, complete with a ton of ideas on how to build rogue echo bike workouts to get you started!
