The Dungeon – Home Gym
A functional gym does not always require a membership. Practical fitness can easily be achieved within your own home with minimal equipment. I found as my exercises evolved and my abilities improved I did start requiring more elaborate and expensive equipment, though it was not the latest home-gym Chunk Norris is promoting.
Except for a handful of items, my gym, the Dungeon has been built with minimal effort and as little money as possible. I made use of everyday items and the nearby home-improvement store.
It's everything I need to get a very intense workout
This is the workout area. Just a cleared space in my basement. A heavy bag, a workout mat/crash pad, some old chairs, a few weights and my sequence rings.
Worth the cost of $200. I would never workout without one again
If you ever need to purchase a single piece of workout equipment, this is hands down the most important one you can own. The crash mat absorbs the impact of just about every exercise you do saving your body from unnecessary wear-and-tear.
I paid about $12 CDN for this bad boy
Just a hook screw and a pipe
This is it: My pullup bars. Its a single piece of 4 foot steel plumbing piping and 3 hook screws. The total cost was just around $12 CDN and the total time to setup was under 10 minutes. I am probably the least handy guy I know and even I figured this one out myself.
And for those saying “It will never hold!”; It’s supported me for thousands upon thousands of pullups this far. I think it will hold.
Yes, its an old chair. And its also a very useful piece of workout equipment.
It may just be an old, ugly chair but its also a very effective piece of exercise equipment. Dips, Box Jumps, Decline Pushups are just a few of the regulars we do together. Put two chairs together, weigh one down to anchor your legs and you can even make shift yourself a spot to do glute-ham situps!
When you no longer go to school backpacks are still useful
I know what your thinking: “Its a backpack.” Correction, its a backpack full of rocks. What use could an old backpack stuffed full of rocks be? Just trying swinging this thing around like a kettlebell and you will know. I hope you have strong hands because its not easy to hang on to. About $5 of rocks will easily fill two backpacks full of about 30lbs of stone… Just be careful not to let it open up during exercise as it will create a mess.
A similar product for samurai warrior pushups sells for $60. I made this for free.
Its hard to believe they really sell this for over $50. Stacking two 2-by-4′s and I have a very similar, equally as effective pushup bar. I refer to this setup as the T-Bar pushup in some of my routines because it kind of looks like a ‘T’. A very, very fat ‘T’.
It was an old fish tank stand. Now it serves as a stretching and parallel bar dip station!
It’s old. It’s rusty. It’s an old rusty fish tank stand. We were going to throw it out. But I saw another function for it, a useful exercise related function. Its a parallel bar dip station! I taped up the areas I grip to prevent tetanus!
You don't need these - But they are worth the money
This is it: The Training Vest - From 1-20lbs of resistance this is the epitome of exercise routine.
Ropes. a used weight set, punching gloves and an old sub. The poor-mans gym is complete
The sequence rings cost around $60 and I had to order them. They are almost a requirement for upper-level Crossfitness. The difficulty between a dip done a the parallel bar and on the rings is like comparing an onion to a habanero.
The picture to the right is it; One of the most critical components of my regiment. The training vest. The additional challenge added by this piece of equipment is well worth the cost. I could never have achieved what I can do now without it. Best of all it was a gift from my girl friend.
This is everything else. Boxing gloves and shin guards for the bag work, a used weight set with around 100lbs of weights, some rope I use for mock rope-climbing and rope-bells (make-shift kettlebells using plates and ropes) and an old broken sub which I use to save my ass from failed thruster sets. The skipping rope is another amazingly simple, cost-effective and excellent piece of exercise equipment.
And there you have it. Bradinator’s Poor-mans gym I call (knowing it’s cliche) the Dungeon. In thirty minutes I can get a crushing workout from the comfort of my dark, dank basement.