Homemade Parallettes

Just an example, hands could be closer

I’ve seen lots of articles and videos on building parallettes, mostly out of pvc pipe. These all look pretty good, but pvc pipe and fittings are not that cheap in NZ. So when I had some leftover dowel from my stall bars I decided to make some wooden parallettes. Since this is the first set I have built I decided to build slightly smaller, shorter bars and I will likely build higher bars later. 

I used off cuts of 20mm plywood from work and 400mm long, 32mm dowels for the bars. The plywood is 200mm high, and 240mm wide. Very simple to build and screw together. These parallettes will work well all kinds of gymnastic movements and will help me build towards a full deficit handstand push up. My next set of bars will be 400mm, possibly 450mm high so that I can get a full deficit on the handstand, this will likely be as high as I will ever need the bars.

Super simple and very solid

Homemade stall bars (Swedish bars)

Hanging from the top, low leg raise (mush harder an stall bars than on a pull up bar.

Quite a while ago I saw some of Ido Portal’s videos with those old school wooden bars on the walls of his gym and I thought “they look cool, I bet I could build some, but I have no idea what they’re for”. Then Ido put out two videos using the bars known as stall bars, or Swedish bars, one video showed a front support (like a front lever) and the other showed a back support (like a back lever). So now I knew something I could use these bars for, but it was a lot of wood (and money) to lay out so I never got serious about building some. 

Recently I bought the gymnastics bodies, foundation one course, which uses stall bars quite frequently (I make nothing off that link). While they are not a necessity, it starts to get difficult to work around things without the stall bars and eventually I would need to set up something like a ladder to use instead. So I bit the bullet and built myself a set. 

As always I looked around as much as I could to get an idea of how most people build them, and common issues that arise before I jumped in and built mine. First step was to decide on the measurements. Most commercial units are 3 foot wide (900mm), but my rafters are 800mm apart so my unit had to be 800mm wide. As far as I could tell most bars were set 150mm apart, and the top bar is offset by about 120mm. I used 32mm pine dowels (pine was all that was available to me), this seems to work quite well as any thicker and the grip would fail first, meaning any gymnastics training would be sub optimal. The dowels were the most expensive part costing about $160NZ total. As far as I can tell the way I have set my bars up will work very well, possibly I won’t use all of the bars but I’m not familiar enough with gymnastics training to know. If in the future I have any issues I’ll update this post.

So to maximise space I cut the sides to fit floor-to-ceiling (approximately 2200mm), then laid out the sides which would be drilled to fit the bars. The wood I used is 140mm wide and 20mm thick. I used this because it was cheap and available (about $8NZ per metre). I used wood glue to glue two boards together for each side, as well as two shorter pieces for the top. I then drilled these boards for the dowels. Note: Always drill from the side you will see as the holes on that side look good and not blown out which can happen on the other side. These boards (drilled) were then glued to the outer boards (not drilled). I put a small amount of glue into each hole before I put the dowel in. It was tricky to get both sides together so call a friend if you can. I then added the top, bottom and middle braces, threw some screws in and waited for it to dry. The unit is screwed into studs behind the plywood but I might add some small brackets to the outside just to be safe.

Undrilled sides, finished drilling, one side glued

Top, bottom and middle braces

All finished I’m quite happy, it looks pretty good for something I built and feels very solid.

Tough Mudder (NZ) – Strengths and skills

I completed the first New Zealand Tough Mudder last Sunday (27/4/14) and had an absolute blast. I felt like the distance (18km) was set just right, such that the course was long and hard but still do able. The obstacles were a lot of fun; I was particularly impressed with the Berlin walls, Everest, and the walk the plank. All the mud was excellent and over all I really enjoyed the course and obstacles. I would have liked to see monkey bars, or hanging rings on the course but clearly this took a lot of money to set up and the event is in its infancy in New Zealand so I’m sure everything will scale up next year. I had such a great time; I plan on running both days next year.

That’s all I really want to write on the event itself, a friend of mine shot a short video which you can see here. In the second half of this post I want to lay out some strengths and skills which I think were important in this Tough Mudder. I know there are countless training plans, break downs and obstacle tutorials on the internet, I haven’t looked at many of them; this is just the way I saw things going down and how my run went so that you can apply this to your own training.

A friend and I before and after Tough Mudder. Photo credit to Francis Wheeler.

Running

This is a long run over rough terrain, so (in my opinion) training some long distance running is key. Personally I built up to 8km training runs on the road, ideally I would have liked to build up to 10-12km. I know there are camps who say you can run long distance by only training short distance but I feel like the legs need volume; you need to feel long distance and know how you respond. I’m not suggesting 3-5 times per week running a 10k, but I think running 5-10k once per week is helpful (for more of my thoughts on running, and training for a half marathon see this old post here). Even better training might be to do a lot of your running off road to get used to the rough terrain of the course. I do all my running in vibram five fingers so I have strong feet and ankles, I believe this helped a lot on the course. Also I think the barefoot running style of feet landing under the body helps on wet slippery ground.

Climb ups

I felt like this was the most important skill/strength on the course, muscle ups weren’t necessary but climb ups were. Almost every time you needed to get up and out of a mud pit you needed to do a climb up, not to mention the Berlin walls and blades of glory. There was always people around to help (that’s the point of the event), but I find being pulled over or out of something uncomfortable (being dragged across your chest and belly). I found it easier to pull myself out, or have someone boost me from underneath. Building strong push ups would help, dips would be even better, but the best thing I can suggest is look up ‘climb ups’ on YouTube and have a go, or find a parkour practitioner you can teach you. You could even train this by climbing out of a ground level pool repeatedly.

Jumping

Personally I tried not to jump too often during the race, as I said I was running in five fingers which I find put more pressure on the calves, I just wanted to play it safe and not add the additional stress of jumping. That said if you feel confident learning and training some basic parkour precision jumps would go a long way. Not needed for any obstacles, but could be helpful jumping over water hazards on the course.

Leg strength/Endurance

This one’s important, particularly with the Berlin walls and Everest falling towards the end of the course. It helps a lot to have additional leg strength that you are able to call on after running 16k (or more) to get you up and over obstacles. High rep swings and high rep squats might help this, I’ve been doing 100kg back squats for 20, don’t know if this helps directly but it is mental training as much as it is physical.

Crawling 

A few obstacles required that you crawl hands and knees, or if you’re bigger on your belly. This might be helpful to train for in order to do fast. Trust me, you don’t want to muck around in the electric eel. 

Upper body pulling and grip

I didn’t find this to be tested much on this course but looking over possible obstacles, many call on a strong upper body and grip. Pull ups, climbing, and all manner of grip training (particularly hanging) would be important if your event includes any of these obstacles. 

Finally some advice for after the event, moving around in a hot pool made me feel in top shape for work the next day, however I had a hard karate class on the next Wednesday which I felt fine heading into, but my legs were just not ready for it. They failed big time and it was all I could do not to fall over, so take it easy after the event.

Homemade peg board (climbing)

So I finally got around to finishing my peg board, I’ve been posting photos of the progress for long enough on facebook. This is a continuation of my rockclimbing wall/hang board, using the pieces of plywood from that project. I first saw a peg board in action in a video by Jim Bathurst from beast skills, it looked really cool and I filed it in the back for my brain for when I had the plywood and time. And when I got given the two sheets of ply I knew what I wanted to build.  I made lots of mistakes on this project which is why it’s taken so long and I’ll outline all of them that I can remember so that you don’t have to repeat my mistakes.

I started with two pieces of ply, 400mm by 2400mm (I cut these from a full sheet of ply costing about $80NZ yielding 3 strips). I glued these together with ‘no more nails’ wood glue and let the glue set under the weight of my sandbags and kettlebells (Note: I also sourced a piece of 8mm ply as the backing once all the holes were drilled, this was glued on after finishing the holes). Next came a series of mistakes.

Dip bars double as saw horses

Looking around different sites on the net I found several people suggested making the holes 30mm and the pegs 28mm, I wanted mine slightly bigger and tighter so I bought a 32mm auger bit and 32mm dowels. The problem was that my cordless drill was not strong enough to run the 32mm bit through the ply straight off so I decided to drill a pilot hole with a 10mm auger bit. The holes were drilled 200mm apart, one line in the centre then 80mm up from the bottom and down from the top.

The problem came then I tried to drill through the pilot hole with the 32mm drill bit. Since it has a small cone shaped tip to start the hole the large section of the bit moved around a lot before finally biting in and getting going, this made a mess on the board (really it wasn’t so bad but I’m picky). Also once the bit broke through to the other side it made a mess of the other side to (again I’m just picky). So I did my best to keep it looking good by drilling from both sides which didn’t quite line up exactly. So following this I had to clean up the holes with some drill bits used kind of like a dremmel to shape things, I don’t know what they are called but it took ages.

You can see how the holes are a bit rough

Once all the drilling was done, which took a long time since my cordless drill could only manage 5 holes before running out of power, I could test out dowel I bought, it was too small. The dowel moved around too much from my liking so I took it back and swapped for the next size up, 35mm, which was too big. At this point I put the pegs in the “later” basket; I glued the 8mm ply to the back, and mounted the board on the wall in my garage. First the two 2x4s were screwed to the wall, then the board on top of that, it’s super strong and feels totally safe. Finally, I cut 4 pegs at 200mm each (from the 35mm dowel) and sanded down the ends to fit into the board. I like to have spares which is why I cut two extra.

Two pegs the the ends sanded down to fit

It feels great to have the board finally finished. It’s really hard and fun to use and will be great for training for the one arm chin ups. This project probably took 20 hours or so, due to all my mistakes. I suggest buying or borrowing a powerful drill; it will make everything so much easier. I’m happy with how it’s turned out. I would probably do it again, however I can always take it down and bring it with me if I move, maybe in the next garage I might have the height to mount it vertically, or at least on an angle.