All those people who say that bodyweight training can't build you as much muscle or isn't as challenging as weight lifting clearly have never tried to learn handbalancing. Doing handstands and holding yourself horizontal is the ultimate bodyweight workout, and it's also very fun and look very impressive if you get good at it. As such it follows that a dipping station/parallel bars is the most impressive piece of workout equipment you can own. I realised this, and to help me with my new regime and my goal of the one handed hand stand (my traps and lats burn like hellfire by the way) I decided I needed one.
The thing is, to buy a dipping station almost always means buying a massive thing with a pull up bar on it too which won't fit in most people's homes and is incredibly expensive. Parallel bars meanwhile go for roughly $3,000! Outraged I built my own above (ignore the stupid hair, I'm growing it into a style...). Shown in more detail here:
This bad boy cost me £25 to make as opposed to £100 or £3,000 and it's in my living room where I do handstand pressups every time I go to the kitchen. I can also use it for dips, extending the range of movement on press ups, leg raises and all sorts of other shizzle!
So what is it? It's the remains of a chair! Simply the cushioning has been removed, along with the back and the front bar - both sawn off with a hacksaw. Not any chair will work here - you need one that can take your weight. So it needs to be metal, and the arms and legs should be made from one piece of metal. At the same time you need to stop it splaying so it needs bracing. The bar across the back of this chair connecting the two legs provides this function, but we were concerned the front bar would prove integral and the thing would break without it. Fortunately it seems that the two poles going across the from the back legs to the front provide it with enough stability so look for something like this when choosing your chair.
If you can't find a chair like this then some cabinets also provide sections that could conceiveabley make good dipping stations. Don't be afraid to saw bits off and if necessary to add extra bracing by bolting bars of metal or wood across the bottom.
If you get really stuck then contact me on the forum and maybe I'll build you one. You'll probably have to sign a disclaimer or something though... these things are dangerous!
Built any of your own training equipment? Dicuss it on the forum! http://www.the-biomatrix.net/forum/index.php
