We love simple and effective exercise ideas at The Lean Berets–especially if they are also cost effective. A great home exercise idea is to make your own low parallel bars out of PVC pipe–often called “Paralette” bars. We put together a simple handout based on some requests. You can access the PDF below and also explore our growing “Bar Projects” page where we will be posting other ideas on how to make your own pull up bars and parallel bars at home.
*Addition Info: This is not on the short handout, but we made our base feet a little bit wider to give more stability and safety. Our foot pieces are 5″ while many others only use 3″ pieces. Some people do not glue their racks–they just press them together. Considering that we are doing assisted handstands on our Paralette Bars, we wanted to secure the joints with PVC cement. Your choice of course, but we opted for more safety. Also, PVC pipe will degrade in sunlight and weather, so we recommend that you store them out of the weather when not in use. Some people also use a smaller diameter 1″ PVC for Paralettes, but again, we wanted more strength and safety so stuck with the 1.5″ diameter. For just a few pennies more, you can make your bars much more stable, stronger, and safer, so please consider beefing them up a bit as we suggested. Lastly, consider wearing safety glasses while cutting PVC if there is any wind blowing around because the small fragments of plastic get everywhere and can blow into eyes.
Family Fun on “Low Boy” Dip Rack!
Construction “How To” Information:
