Foundation One Equipment Substitutes?

Hi all,

At present I'm feeling strongly inclined to begin something along the lines of F1, however after investigating the equipment requirements as explored in various threads over the forum I'm wondering what are the common ways people have been able to work around the lack of something such as a stall, rings or pommel?

I've seen some of the solutions, though unfortunately most aren't quite suited to a renter. No luck in being allowed to put up a door-frame pull-up bar here, though at the least there's a frame for this at my gym. There's also a basic dip station, though not true parallel bars.

Rings are possibly the easiest to fix - any playground may have a suitable bar for pull-ups which I could sling rings about, potentially, for the work out. But I'm not so sure how to work around the lack of a stall / pommel. I saw someone advocated grabbing onto a bed or doing those on the floor, but again, it sounds a bit iffy.

Also looked up as to whether there were any other gyms around which might have said equipment, but that may be tricky. Any thoughts? I'd love to give this course a proper go, but don't want to water it down too much or miss vital exercises.

You can use a table to substitute pommel horse exercises and a good playground may have a ladder that you can use for stall bars.  I'm using a fence at the moment for the beginning stall bar mobility work, but that wont last forever.

You can use a towel for the beginning ring work, but you will have to get rings at some point.

There are so many of these type of questions

I suspect that if we did a quick hand count, then FAR more devotees of F1 use substitute equipment than those that actually have all the 'official' apparatus!

I do all my gymnastic bodies work at a playground with rings, a dowel and a couple of 2.5kg plates.  

The playground has a few points that we use instead of stall bars: there is a ladder and a cargo net that we use to do some of the mobility elements.  For hanging leg lifts, I just hang off the overhead bar and have my friend push on my back to support it and stop me swinging. Until you're done with v-ups you wont need the stall bars anyway.

I use a park table to do the elements on a pommel, alternatively I sometimes use the platforms on the play equipment and just dangle my legs off the side.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQMtp6zgfWg

you can see the little platforms i use in the background with the water bottle on it at 1:30.  This is the playground I use, there are so many around here like it. But playgrounds change a lot from country to country so YMMV

alwaysthen said:

(...)I'm (...) inclined to begin (...) F1 (...) Any thoughts?

Great, get started, the rest will fall into place!

FredInChina said:

Great, get started, the rest will fall into place!

So I caved and got the Get Started package - can hopefully find some equipment nearby! However, I had a different e-mail for my billing details, but still requested this as my 'member' username... so, not sure if there's going to be some weird mismatch or if I'm not going to receive my login credentials etc, given this username already exists. Not sure how it works, per se.

alwaysthen said:

So I caved and got the Get Started package - can hopefully find some equipment nearby! However, I had a different e-mail for my billing details, but still requested this as my 'member' username... so, not sure if there's going to be some weird mismatch or if I'm not going to receive my login credentials etc, given this username already exists. Not sure how it works, per se.

Not sure.  Send a message to Cory about it.

Looks like it's all good, not sure if it synchs up with the username per se but have access to both forum and the content so no worries.

That said - found a tiny park nearby has a kind of tall circular metal beam I could sling rings over. Someone else had left something similar behind (not rings, but those handles attached to straps), so clearly others have had similar ideas and are already using it. Sadly not at a good height or grippable for pull/chin-ups, though, or conversely high enough to do those off of rings.

Sadly no high bench or ladder there as it's not quite a playground, but will see what I can make do with.