Stephanie Zambra Stephanie Zambra

From International Footballer to Home Gym Owner From International Footballer to Home Gym Owner

What You Need to Know When Transforming Your Seomra / Small Space Into a Home Gym.

From an international football career to coaching, and soon to motherhood, Stephanie Zambra didn't need a lot of space to build a gym that keeps up with her. In a 7m x 4m room, Stephanie and her husband Dean - both football coaches - put together a compact but complete strength setup anchored around a power rack and dumbbell station, so that training never has to compete with a busy schedule again.

Stephanie's Experience with McSport

The Overview

Location: Co. Wicklow

Seomra size: 7m x 4m

Key items:

F200 Power Rack
Hit Fitness Hex Dumbbells - 12 Pairs | 5kg to 25kg
Hit Fitness SB30 Home Weight Bench
Hit Fitness G7 PRO Indoor Exercise Bike

The Background

Sport and fitness has been part of Stephanie's life for 20 - 25 years. She's a former international professional footballer, retiring from playing in 2024.

Since retiring, Stephanie went straight into coaching alongside her husband Dean, also a football coach. Wanting to stay as fit as possible without a season to train for, she found it could be difficult to stay motivated - which is what set her on the path to building a home gym.

The Challenge

Without a team programme to train for, Stephanie needed a home gym that gave her no excuses. To build a space that worked for her, Stephanie needed to:

Source a good range of equipment rather than a single focus area
Prioritise the key items - a squat rack and dumbbells with rack setup - that both she and Dean would use in their daily training
Build a gym that would fit around two busy schedules, including Dean's full-time job.

The Solution

Having trained specifically for football throughout her career, Stephanie and Dean already had a clear sense of the equipment that would serve them best, so they went online and ordered it themselves:

Easy to find and order the specific equipment they wanted online
Clear communication when contacted about items out of stock
Fast turnaround once everything was back in

The Result

The investment paid off immediately for Stephanie and Dean's busy lifestyle:

Having it on the doorstep, with no excuses - for a coaching couple with a full-time job and busy schedules between them, that's made all the difference in staying consistent
A gym built for range rather than one sport, supporting her shift from football-specific training to general fitness and wellbeing
A space Stephanie can return to quickly to retrain postpartum, once she's ready.

Stephanies’s Philosophy Stephanies’s Philosophy

"Control the controllable." Something Stephanie carried through her football career — there's so much in sport that's out of your control, so she focuses on doing the right things and preparing the right way, and leaves the rest to fate. "Control the controllable." Something Stephanie carried through her football career — there's so much in sport that's out of your control, so she focuses on doing the right things and preparing the right way, and leaves the rest to fate.

Advice For Home Gym Builders

Stephanie's advice for anyone fitting out a home gym:

You don't need a huge space to get a complete setup
Prioritise the right core equipment - a rack, a bench, dumbbells - compliment the room with accessories like resistance bands.

Q: What equipment did you need for your small home gym?

A power rack, weight bench, dumbbells and rack, a set of weight bars, a soft jump box, and a wall-mounted bar holder — a compact core of strength equipment that covers a full range of training without needing a large footprint.

Q: How much space did you need for your home gym?

Stephanie and Dean's gym fits into a 7m x 4m (23ft x 13ft) room.

Q: How did you fit a complete gym into a small space?

By choosing equipment that works hard for its footprint - a wall-mounted bar holder instead of a floor rack for bars, and a power rack and bench as the anchor pieces - Stephanie and Dean were able to fit a full strength setup into their seomra without it feeling cramped.