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DIY: Home-made gym equipment
by Scott Bird | October 14, 2006
Filed in DIY
, Equipment
, Favourites
, Magnificent Seven
| 11 comments
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.
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There are several great writers here, looking at the world of strength training from a number of angles. The regulars :- Scott Bird (@scottbird)
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This is a fantastic book. If you've ever considered learning this incredible strength feat, the Card Tearing eBook (review) is the perfect place to start. Love it.
In addition to the articles on this site are a number I've written elsewhere. Including :
- Paleo Diet : First 2 Weeks
- Interviewed by Joe Hashey
- Strength, Nutrition and Conditioning on Twitter
- Modifying Exercise Routines to Suit the Equipment You Already Have
- Rock the Kitchen: Plan for Diet Success
- 10 Challenging Bodyweight Exercises
- The Art of Working Out Alone
- Buying Your First Kettlebell
- Get Motivated: Inspiring Transformations
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Josh shares a lifetime of strength-training knowledge in an incredibly powerful article. - How to paint a kettlebell
Perfect project for the weekend - painting your kettlebell. Here's how.
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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.
Cheers Kevin. What’s your next Strongman competition?
How do you buid plyomtric boxes for jumping?
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.
Raul, just came across a great rundown on plyo boxes at Chasing Elite : http://chasingelite.blogspot.com/2007/04/diy-plyo-box-ideas.html
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?
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
WOW, so much stuff here, an excellent resource. Thanks guys!
Cheers.
hi
does anyone have the link for schematic diagram for a glute ham raise machine?
thanks
Hi Wayne,
The GHR is actually one of the few pieces of equipment I’d buy rather than build. I know they’re expensive things, but the difference between the real thing and the home-made versions is incredible.
Unfortunately I don’t have one here (to measure). Anyone else got one?
cheers,
Scott