Fergusonhouse

I’ve got two pieces of gear I use for every workout. In total, they’ve cost me every bit of $15. I couldn’t do without my parallettes and rings and I can’t imagine having spent real money for ‘em either. Both were totally cake to build in the garage. I don’t remember where I got the idea for the parallettes, but the rings came from an Instructable (great website by the way!)

Here’s a brief description of how I built them. Rings first – then parallettes down further in the entry.

:: RINGS ::
You’ll need to have two 24 inch sections of 1″ PVC. I’m told the gray would be better, but I used the regular white. You want to put some twine through each pipe and tape an end off with several inches of twine hanging out. I used regular old 100mph tape on the end. Fill the pipe up with sand and tape off the other end. Put the pipes in a 350 degree oven for about 8-10 minutes. Then all you have to do is pull them out of the oven, carry them to the garage, and tie the ends of the twine together. You may want to have something round to form it around, but I found that I didn’t need it. The sand kept the pipes from deforming and my rings hardened up perfectly in about 10 minutes or so. After removing the tape and dumping the sand, I threaded some webbing through the pipes with a carabiner on the end and now I can hang em up from eye hooks in the garage or looped over something sturdy wherever I’m working out… Here’s another good site with information on a similar set of rings On Kyle’s Strive Blog. He’s got a couple of videos with some workout ideas.

:: PARALLETTES ::

These were easy to make too. All you need is a wire saw, two tee connections, four elbows, eight caps and about 8-10 feet of 1.5 inch PVC. You can choose the size based on how high you want to have them from the floor. Mine are about 14 inches off the ground and about 2 feet long. Take your two horizontal bars and attach elbows to the ends. Attach your vertical pipe to the elbows and run them down into the tees. Get your eight little short support stand pipes and put them in the tees. Cap off the ends of these supports and you’re done. I told you it was easy…

Now you’ve got the two best pieces of gear for your workout. I honestly think you could get by with just these, no not get by – I think you could really thrive with just these two pieces of gear!