DIY: Home-made gym equipment
by Scott Bird
October 14, 2006
9 comments
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When it comes to the typical home gym, it’s usually a matter of getting down to the basics. Have you ever considered expanding that setup a little with your own lifting platform? Climbing wall? Stones for Strongman training? To find out how to construct these and much, much more, read on:
Big Steel - Building a thick dumbbell handle
Tom Black
Making wooden handles for your dumbbells. You’ll find more great stuff on Tom’s article page including notes on the construction of a plate-loading sledgehammer and a modified adjustable gripper.
Brian’s Strength Training site
Equipment for Janda Sit-ups and other fun things.
Everything from bars to a belt squatting setup.
Building a Lifting Platform (Ironmind)
Randall J. Strossen
Now all you need is a set of bumper plates.
Building Your Own Set of Atlas Stones
Jason F. Keen
Making stones using an old - but effective - recipe of plaster, cement and water. And a couple of inflatable balls. A similar article appears at Body Results.
Some good discussion on the ins and outs of equipment, both store-bought and home-made.
Edgewalls - How to Build a Home Climbing Wall
Construction of a bouldering/traverse wall.
Plastic shopping bags, pipe, a tennis ball and of course lots and lots of duct tape.
A forum for DIY gymrats everywhere.
Building a spring loaded mat. Superb.
If you’ve ever considered the idea of having your own Glute-Ham Raise, take a look at this. While you’re there, check out the home-made slammable medicine ball (based on instructions [.pdf, 1.21mb] from Pierre Augé).
Free instructions for building squat stands and plyometric boxes.
Some great articles here, including Make Your Own 200m Track [.pdf, 204kb]
Plans for a home-made squat rack
Bill McBride
What more could you want?
Want to know the exact dimensions of that bar you’re about to transform? They’re all here.
Photos of various home-made equipment.
How-to articles on construction of Hammers and Weight for Height/Distance equipment.
Assorted DIY goodness including photographs of a home-made pulldown attachment and a Reverse Hyper bench for the rack.
Ross Enamait forum - Training Equipment
Some great ideas here (start in this thread). If you’re hungry for more, take a look at his articles on constructing (and using) a waterball and a sandbag [.pdf, 344kb].
Notes on the construction of various Highland Games equipment.
Excellent advice on joining materials to other materials.
Construction history of many items in the outdoor Toffe’s Gym (which is in a superb forest setting, incidentally) including calf-training equipment, a heavy-duty bench and of course the power rack. Excellent stuff.
After reading those, it’s time for a trip to the nearest hardware store. Plenty of fun things to experiment with.
Update
Part II of this article is now online. Also worth a look is the Home-made equipment competition, which runs until May 30 2007.
Ready to bend some steel? Grab a copy of the Diesel Crew's Bending eBook. Superb.
Comments
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I have found this site to be very helpful with ideas I have been wanting to try in training and prepairing for strongman events. Thanks.
Posted by: Kevin McEntyre | March 6, 2007 5:37 AM
Cheers Kevin. What’s your next Strongman competition?
Posted by: Scott | March 6, 2007 10:04 AM
How do you buid plyomtric boxes for jumping?
Posted by: Raul | March 26, 2007 4:55 PM
Interesting question. I’ve never tried building them (not quite sure why not, it isn’t a bad idea at all), and a quick look around didn’t turn up anything exciting.
In fact, most of the recommendations I can find are along the lines of ‘just build a wooden box’ which may/may not be reasonable.
The ones at Jump USA look like the type of thing to copy, perhaps that’s a good place to start.
Posted by: Scott | March 27, 2007 9:35 AM
Raul, just came across a great rundown on plyo boxes at Chasing Elite : http://chasingelite.blogspot.com/2007/04/diy-plyo-box-ideas.html
Posted by: Scott | April 18, 2007 10:32 AM
The link to the plans for the squat rack by Bill McBride (theministryoffitness.com) seems to be down. Is there anywhere a copy of the content or an address to contact the original author?
Posted by: Andre | August 6, 2007 10:08 PM
Sure Andre.
Here’s a copy of the article from September last year :
http://web.archive.org/web/20060913011959/http://www.theministryoffitness.com/mof/library/articles/article11.htm
Posted by: Scott | August 7, 2007 12:24 PM
WOW, so much stuff here, an excellent resource. Thanks guys!
Posted by: tptls | April 11, 2008 2:48 PM
Cheers.
Posted by: Scott | April 11, 2008 6:28 PM