Posts Tagged ‘weight sled’

I have trained with conventional weights – barbells, dumbbells & machines at a gym for over 27 years. A year or so back I got into kettlebells & have trained mostly with those in the past 12 months. I have also done extensive weighted vest training in the past couple of years.

Recently I have been looking at diversifying my functional strength training. What I deeply miss from the conventional weights are the 3 basic lifts, squat, deadlift & bench having gotten my bench up to 400 lbs without a gym with barbells or a press machine how can you duplicate this?

Well this has led me to a few ideas for gear I will be setting up here at home with minimal costs.

First up is Sandbags…

Lets look at the “bulgarian bag” first. To buy a quality leather bag from suples will set you back a few hundred. If you are overseas like me it could cost you up to $1000 – clearly out of the question.

here is the site http://www.suples.com/

As you can see these are very well crafted and attractive but also extremely expensive.

Well the very simple solution is to make one from a car inner tube.

Now I wont go into the details here on how to make one – its all over the net already. There are knock off brands that are much cheaper than suples & chinese brands are available in real leather too.

Next up are actual sandbags. The beauty of sandbags is that you can use them for most exercises you can use a barbell for, including squats, deadlifts & benches. Plus a whole lot more of course.

The best thing to do is to go down to army surplus & pick up some heavy canvas bags. Fill these with a liner plastic garbage bag then fill multiple smaller freezer bags with the actual sand. Only fill them to 75% so the sand can still squish & move around. Seal it all up with duct tape. You can also use steel shot if you want an extra heavy sandbag.

Rosstraining.com has a great & cheap course on sandbag training.

With sandbags you can have a tonne of weight to train with for $100 worth of army surplus gear.

Next I’ll talk about weight vests briefly. I do not recommend training with a pack or making your own vest. The whole point of weight vest training is that it is ergonomic.

The problem for those of us outside the US is the cost of shipping a super heavy vest. For my MIR 140 lb vest it would have cost nearly $1000 to ship the thing here. I bought it without weight for $89.

I am buying $280 worth of steel bar which when cut down will fit perfectly into the vest to the full 140 lb weight. So a major saving.

next KEGS. Yep beer kegs filled with water, gravel or sand. Buy them of an auction site or from a local supplier.

You also want to google for home made suspension trainer. There are multiple sites & videos showing how to make these.

Finally the dragging sled.

Basically a heavy tire will do but the important thing is the harness. There are several configurations for harnessing. There are different options for the actual sled too.

Just have a good google & you will find a variation to suit you.

I personally will just use a tire but may have several configurations for the harness to maximize functionality.

So there we have it – a total functional gym for next to nothing. Hundreds of pounds of weight.