Garage Gym: New Editions

One thing that's nice about a garage gym is that it is always open. Well, not always. Over Christmas and New Years my gym was closed for construction and upgrades including brackets to convert my pull-up bar into a squat and shoulder rack, a 16 foot "plice" wall to practice ice climbing, and some shelves to get more shit out of the way.

Pull-Up Bar to Squat Rack Conversion: Ever since I built the pull-up bar I intended to have brackets made so that I could use it as a squat rack and shoulder rack, too. The design is pretty simple but avoids some potential issues I've seen with others. The weld shop screwed up at first, so these aren't exactly the way I wanted them, but I'll see how they do for awhile and maybe upgrade later if I need to. The high points: 1) there are no inside corners to concentrate stress or provide initiation points for cracks, and 2) made out of 3/8" steel and they bolt to the rack with 3/8" bolts, so they're plenty strong for anything I'll be lifting (or dropping). The toughest part is actually drilling exactly through the center of -- and perpindicular to -- a round pipe. I didn't manage that particularly well, but all-in-all it worked out. About $50 including primer, paint, hardware, drill bit etc.

Plice: I had the ice-jones bad all December. Typically, I take a long weekend climbing trip over New Year's but things didn't work out this year so I used the holidays to finally build the plywood ice ('plice') climbing wall to get my fix. It's pretty straightforward. The most expensive part is the pressure treated plywood. I only took a few laps before my first climbs of the season, but I felt like it helped get me in the groove a bit quicker than usual. Plus, I always need help on my 'hips in, heels low'. This helps me get some mileage and muscle memory. A few tips if you ever want to build your own: buy the straightest 16 foot pcs of 2 x 4 (this is not as easy as it sounds), space the 1x's so that your ice tools grips will rest on the next lower 1x (or at least so the grips don't end up on an edge), and get some help when it's time to raise the damn thing (heavier and more awkward than you expect). I wish I had a big tree to prop it up against, but I don't, so I attached it to the playset I built my daughter this summer. This makes it the first section of the real bouldering wall, with more to come later this year.

Shelves: Among other things, these will give me a place to put my boom box. This should not be underestimated. Seperating my music from the interval timer on my iPhone is a definite upgrade.