UKC

Been looking at the price of dumbbells and weights and can't justify the costs, does anyone have any tips or ideas for a low cost way to add weight when doing pullups and dead hangs?

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

Pies.

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

Keep an eye on gumtree - people are quite often selling old weights racks on there

In reply to planetmarshall:

Saves eating them, but more expensive than buying weights

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

If you don't mind looking like a total tool, what about wearing your harness with a full rack on?

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

Milk bottles full of water are easy to tie on and pretty weighty. Concrete is another option.

Pies are definitely the most enjoyable though.

In reply to Andy Hardy:

Thanks, good idea. I'll weigh my rack tonight.

In reply to Jon Greengrass: Do you own a rucksack? A litre of water weighs a kilo

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

You'll find that waterbottles etc get very cumbersome. Why not ask down your local wall? There's a good chance they've got some weights or kettle bells knocking about.

Short of that, decathlon sell the cast iron disks pretty cheaply.

You could also consider 1 arm hangs?

you can buy 20kg of dumbell weights for around £30 - doesn't seem unjustifiable to me for a lifetime of training - handy for golfer's elbow rehab exercises too.

In reply to Jon Greengrass:


seriously?

In reply to jazzyjackson:

yes, seriously.

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

cinder blocks, stones, log with a hole drilled through it, hunk of old iron pipe, bag or plastic jug full of sand/gravel

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

I use whatever I have to hand, a cheap, sand filled weight belt, my outdoor bag with rope in weighs about 15kg, other rope bags, a few miscellaneous weights (free off the facebook I should add), I even used my wife once...

In reply to Dandan:

You can deadhang you+wife? Sick

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

Well pretty much anything heavy you can find will do. Attach it to a harness and away you go. One of the first weights I used for pull ups was a very old metal sewing machine. Bags filled with sand or even earth will do the job.

However if you can afford proper weights it's worth considering that they really are a lifetime purchase. They're never ever going to go wrong. They don't go out of date. You've got them for life. And if you stop using them you can resell them and get a fair bit back. They also open the door to many other exercises too.

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

Fridge

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

For one handed deadhangs you can stand on bathroom scales and apply force and measure how it lightens scales. Seems ridiculous at first but works a treat. Also good for getting recruited in the warm up.

With pull-ups you can increase difficulty in several ways. I think strict form pull-ups where you properly engage upper back and don't stick chest out is good training as is doing wide grip pull-ups which are even harder.

In reply to Cake:


She's only little

In reply to Cake:


This clearly needs to be a challenge.

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

You could forget about weights altogether and do fingertip pullups, thus combining both exercises.

In reply to MischaHY:


Along with the front lever with pet cat curled up on your chest

In reply to MischaHY:
Do you know Dandan's wife? She might object to strangers like you or me trying to deadhang her

In reply to Cake:

I'd ask very nicely first.

In reply to stp:

Are fingertips pullups any harder than regular ones? When I was younger and stronger all we had was a doorframe to train on.

In reply to Dandan:


>I even used my wife once...

Great idea, I have three children of differing sizes, why didn't I think of that before, I already use the 7 year old for bicep curls.

In reply to Cake and MischaHY:

She says she's keen if you cover travel costs

In reply to Jon Greengrass:


Yes, for most people I think quite a bit harder. Sometimes you get people with very strong fingers who have weak/underdeveloped pulling muscles. Even then you can reduce the edge size or use wrist weights to increase the load on the fingers if needs be. Though for that type of person they're probably better emphasizing the pulling part of the movement anyway since that's their weakness.

I think fingertip pull ups are probably one the most functional movements for climbing. Unlike deadhangs they train finger strength at different elbow joint angles, from fully extended to fully flexed. And of course they train you to pull, not just hang, which is what we do in climbing.

Fingertip pull ups were one of the main exercises used by top climbers in the eighties, before the introduction of home boards and campus boards. And French climber JB Tribout said if someone can do 20/25? pull ups on a 2? cm edge then they had the strength to climb 8b+. Sorry, can't remember the exact figures, but the key point is he thought fingertip pull ups were a vital measure of climbing specific strength.

In reply to alx:


Wuss. Ankles.