CrossFit Centurion

Outfitting a home gym, or even a full size get up, can be done for way less money than people think. This is after all functional fitness and what matters is how well the chosen equipment gets you to the goal of bitchin’ fitness. It doesn’t matter one damn bit whether the equipment costs alot, is shiny and chrome plated or whether the gym has mirrors and TV’s all over the place. All that matters is, does it work? So, in light of the current economic crunch we all seem to be in, here are some ways to reduce the cost of putting together a good gym with equipment that really works. The only catch here is a few hours, if that, of your time and a minimal expenditure of greenbacks.

PULL UP STATIONS – This one is really easy. Pick a sturdy -read that again and sear it into your brain; sturdy - location to hang the bar. I chose the header portions of our large and small garage bays. Under the pretty trim, the garage header is comprised of a massive “parallam” beam. These things are compressed, glued together monster beams to support the load of your domicile above it. They are relatively indestrucible (I know this because I actually used to frame houses for a construction crew comprised of more than a few “chemically enhanced” individuals…it was interesting).

Go the the hardware store and buy two 3/4″ flanges, two 6″ long 3/4 galvanized steel pipe, two 3/4 elbows, and one 48″ 3/4 galvanized steel pipe. Purchase eight 3.5″ long lag bolts with lock washers. Make sure the bolts fit through the holes in the flanges – don’t ask how I know. Also, make sure you have a drill bit long enough to tap into the parallam beam to start the lags into. If you try ratcheting the lags into the beam with no tap hole, I can assure you the lags will break – again, don’t ask. Take the aforementioned mess of steel home, find said header, put it all together (making sure all fittings are TIGHT), hold it up and mark the flange holes, tap a pilot hole, and hang that sucker up. My bars hold A LOT of weight without any issues and they are bomb proof. You can hang them anywhere, as long as you have a good anchor spot. The set up should look something like the photo below.

Voila! 48" P/U bar. Good for Pull ups or skinning wild animals.

KETTLEBELLS – Once again, looks mean nothing compared to functionality. I made two sets of KB’s for our home get-up using 3/4″ galvanized pipe, a PVC spacer cut from 1″ PVC, and some used standard 10Lb weight plates, thanks to Play It Again Sports. Purchase two 6″ pieces of 3/4″ pipe, one 8′ish” piece of 3/4″ pipe and two threaded 3/4″ end caps. Make sure the pipe pieces fit through the hole in the standard plates or this will not turn out so well. Using the picture below, put the pipe pieces together (6″ pieces form handle and weight bar, 8″ piece is vertical connector between both), FIRMLY TIGHTEN them, and slide the weight plates on to one end of the pipe contraption. Before sticking the last end cap on, cut an accordingly sized piece of 1″ PVC to act as a spacer. When the last end cap is tightened down, this spacer should keep the plates from jiggling and spinning, thereby making the KB more stable. Tighten it down and go to town. This KB works well, the only caveat being I would not go overhead with it, it tends to want to flop over backwards and a rearward skull bashing will quickly become part of your workout. I can go up to just above forehead height or so, and trust me, when you are really cooking along, it’s still hard as hell. I made one 55 Lb. and 35 Lb. KB for fun of all kinds.

Boo-yah! 55 Lbs of fun!

Daddy and Mini-me KB. Note PVC spacer on the inside to keep plates tight.

RINGS – I got this from the CF Forum boards some time ago and made some of my own tweaks to it to make these rings. So far, they are bomb proof. I have pulled, jerked and done all kinds of unmentionable things to them and they are still looking good – traumatized, but good. First things first, find a place to hang these. You don’t need a ton of headroom to do muscle-ups and the like, so don’t sweat it. Mine are hung on 8′ ceilings and do it all.

I took a 48″ long piece of 2×6 lumber and lagged it into the joists in the ceiling. More lags are better than less – you are not worried about weight here, you are worried about landing on your ass at high speed so avoid that. Once again, tap the holes prior and mount the board up there. Then put two heavy duty eye blots in it about 18″ apart. Obviously, the shaft on the eyebolts need not be more than 1.5″ long. There you go, that’s the mounting set up. Check the pic below.

Mounting station - Mount your rings on it, but not your dog....

As for the rings, get two 24″ length of 3/4″ PVC pipe, 54″ of small link chain with a high weight rating (the chain needs to fit throug the PVC), a small link connector rated to at least 800 Lbs, 4 large link connectors rated to 1600 Lbs, and two cargo tie down strap set ups. Once you get home, heat the oven to 375 and find a regular size paint can to take in the house with you. Take the PVC length, duct tape one end shut and fill them with sand, then duct tape the other end. One at a time, put the PVC sand pipe thingy in the oven on top of a sheet of foil for exactly 10 minutes. Remove the pipe -gloves will be an exceptional idea at this point- and grab your paint can. Put the can on the ground and gently wrap the pipe around the can. Both ends will almost touch. Roll it back and forth a tad to make sure it doesn’t kink or ripple, but the sand should prevent that. You will need to hold the pipe around the can for at least 5 minutes. Once that’s passed, you can put the ring on a counter and do any final tweaks to it before letting it cool. In the meantime, ring #2 should be oven bound and on it’s way to this point. Running cold water over them will help the cooling process.

When both rings are cool, un-tape them and drain the sand. Insert the chain into the ring and work it around to the other side. Once the new link just starts to expose itself from the ring, insert the link connector to the other side link. This connection should be fairly tight, there should not be a lot of play between the links. Cut the remaining chain off and do the same for #2.

Ring/strap connections

Take the cargo straps and cut one of the hook fixtures off using a steel cutting band saw or a Sawzall. A normal hacksaw will take eons on the tempered steel, so forget that idea. Cut off the hook fixture from the long strap end, not the short ratcheting end. You will want the ratchet set up above you and away from your forearms when you are using the rings. Once you get the hook fixture off one end, run the large link connector through the loop and connect that to the small link connector and ring. Run the other large link connector through the loop on the other end, but don’t cut off the hook fixture. This will allow you to hook the rings to pull up bars if needed. The end result should look something like the pictures below.

The whole shebang - Adjustable for pull ups, dips, push ups, muscle ups, etc.

Friggin' groovy!

 PLYO BOXES – This is easy and requires very little labor. You can make rad plyo boxes by following the instructions in an old issue of the CrossFit Journal, or you can be lazy like me, travel to Home Depot, pick up a few sprinkler valve cover boxes and call it good. I took them home and screwed the lids on. I tapped some holes and countersunk the screws just to make extra sure the lid didn’t come off as someone was bouncing on it like Tigger. You can stack the boxes for added height and/or, make a base for one or more to add some height. HD and Lowes also sell small sprinkler boxes that would make good booster boxes for people who need just a tiny bit of assistance. One word of advice, keep the soles of your shoes dry before bounding up onto the plastic tops or you’ll be ass over tea kettle before you can say, “funky chicken.”

Boing! Check your overhead if doing this indoors -seriously!

MEDICINE BALLS – There are a few ways to do this. My first ball was a Ross $4 basketball that sacrificed itself for the greater good of mankind. I cut a slit in it and poured in 20 Lbs of sand, and did a funky homemade lacing job on it before taping it up so it resembled a small asteroid. But, it does work and it takes a beating.

I went back to Ross, culled another B-ball from the herd and filled it with water. This was a bit more tricky. You have to let some air out of the ball and GENTLY remove the air plug by getting around it with a pair of needle nose pliers. Wiggle it around gently until it comes out. Set the ball up under a faucet and turn the water onto a very light stream, preferably into the hole where the plug once was. This takes a while, but in the end I had 15 Lbs of water in it. I GENTLY wiggled the plug back in the hole and filled the ball up with a tad of air to give it some structure and resiliency. This ball works well, but I woldn’t use it for a slam ball, lest you like wet surprises…I was just about to make a lewd comment, but I’ll save it. The ball does work well for other stuff though and the motion of the water inside makes it kind of interesting.

Last but not least, go to K-Mart or some other white trash emporium and buy a 3 pack of the colored dodge balls that are about volleyball size. Once again, remove the air plug GENTLY, create a funnel and start pouring in a cup of sand at a time. You thought the water thing was slow! Once you get around 16 Lbs, the balls are reaching capacity and it starts to get artistic. You can squeeze 20 Lbs of sand in, you just have to stretch the ball a bit. I did this by using a larger air nozzle on my bike pump and pumping a few strokes worth into the ball to stretch it out. The sand inside will settle a bit and you can add a pound more before doing it again. Once you get to where you want to be, put the plug back in GENTLY and put a couple shots of air in the ball or it will be more like a really heavy, ugly little beanbag than a medicine ball. Mine lasted a very log time before I got a small split in one of them. At that point, I took my handy duct tape and wound a criss cross around it for stability and ultra-coolness and they work fine.

Larry, Curly and Moe - 18, 20, and 16 Lbs.

PVC TRAINING BARS – This is a simple yet effective training tool to use for warm-ups as well as scaled down workouts and instruction. Go to your friendly hardware joint and buy a couple 10′ lengths of 1 inch PVC pipe. You are going to cut these in half at 60″, so buy a corresponding number of PVC end caps. You don’t really need them for the unweighted PVC bars, but I am so anal retentive about the way things look, I would feel lame if some bars had end caps and other didn’t. You will need end caps for the weighted bars, otherwise all kinds of madness will ensue.

Next wander over the concrete section and find a couple pieces of rebar steel that will fit inside the pipe. Most likely, the rebar will be in 6 foot lengths, so you’ll have to chop a foot off at home witha Sawzall or bolt cutters. These pieces of rebar are for the weighted training bars, so pick up as many as you need or want for the weighted bars – I have 4 weighted and 4 unweighted at home; that’s how we roll at CFC! Now pay for said items, since you will not be able to stuff them down your pant legs and run out of the building with any degree of speed and if you are caught shoplifting rebar and PVC, I give full permission to store staff to take said items and pummel you with them.

Once you get home, cut your PVC to 60″ lengths. Put end caps on the unweighted bars if you want to. If you are doing weighted bars, cut the rebar to fit inside the PVC, put one end cap on with some PVC adhesive, and slide the rebar in there. Now find some sand, and fill the PVC up with the sand. You will have a rebar and sand weighted PVC training bar that weighs about 10 Lbs. Stick the other end cap on it before you thnk about working out or you will find sand and rebar in places that sand and rebar should not be. I also marked both bars with blue tape about 14″ from each end. This is the point on a regular Oly bar where the first set of rings is, so it provides an even reference for people from the Oly bar to PVC bars and keep their hands equidistant from each other during warm ups, drills, etc. I also marked the weighted bars with red tape around the end caps so people know which one are weighted by sight.

Unweighted (top) and weighted - If you are going to sword fight, cheat & grab the one with the red tape!

There you have it kids. Several ways to make very functional, often used tools of the trade for cheap. If you have money to burn, then have at it. But if you are a lowly public servant or business starved realtor such as ourselves, than this may be a bit more up your alley. Last but not least, if times get really tight and you and the fam have gone “paleo native” after the foreclosure, keep these items handy since you can kill animals for chow with each and every one of them. Once again putting the functional back into “functional”!