How Much Overhead Work Do I Actually Do?

The odd name for this post came upon the result of looking at a potential new home with a tight 3 car garage and a basement gym.  One of my goals when setting up a space was to be able to park 2 cars in the garage and have room for a gym.  Read as: for my wife to be able to park her car in the garage and have a 2 car garage gym.

The house also had a roughly 11x14 gym set up in the basement with the jigsaw foam flooring and full length mirrors.  Unfortunately it also, as would be expected had 8 foot ceilings.

It prompted the question, how often do I need high ceilings and much to my surprise, 40% of the time.  I reviewed my last 40 workouts which included 16 instances of overhead barbell, overhead dumbbell, wall ball shots, rope skips and kettlebell swings.  All of these would be impossible in the basement.  Interestingly of the 24 non-overhead workouts, 12 of them were running or cycling workouts which would not require a home gym at all.  So it turns out that the basement gym would only be required/suitable for 30% of my workouts.

While this may be a slight aberration, it was an interesting data point and it would certainly correlate well with how often I use my 50 square feet of basement space now.  I use it nearly exclusively for back squats and bench press.  

On another note, it does have a concrete patio which would be ideal for setting the yoke up and training outside.