Just built my indoor ring and rope climbing setup...

I have moved to a new city (Gainesville, FL) and don't really like any of the local gyms around here as they don't let me do all my "weird" gymnastic and HIIT stuff that I love to do. So I figured that with a little carpentry and time I could come up with something great at home.

Being in Florida, there are no basements, so no easy rafters to hang the darn things from. Also, I knew that I would be much more likely to train harder, longer, and more often (especially GTGing) if this thing were in the air conditioned house and not in a garage in a tropical summer. And seeing as with the new house I already had "dibs" on a room with a vaulted ceiling... it all came together.

I bolted a 2x6 into the wall studs with 5" lag screws, wood glued and screwed another on top of it (to give the beam more to lay on) and then wood glued/screwed 2 2x4x10' s together for the beam, and bracketed them into place on the 2x6's. From talking to a framing contractor, this thing could handle 1500+ pounds, so I'm not exactly going to hurt the house. In fact, by tying the studs together I figure I've made it stronger.

I know that the rope isn't all that long (beam is about 9-10 feet up) but I'm still at the point where I'm getting my hands strong enough to climb anyway, so it could be 5' long and be all the same to me. GtGing on it right now where I lower myself from a stand to almost laying on the floor and pulling myself back up. Hopefully my hands will toughen and strengthen up fairly quickly. Once that's down, I do have a tree out back that I can get a lot more height with.

Anyway, just proud of my creation, thought I would share.

That's awesome! I'm moving to Arizona pretty soon. I hope I can build something, indoor, like that for my rings.

Very very cool! who wouldn't want a place to do rope climbing in their house?!

Good luck with your training there!

Nice!

That is a very neat setup you have created, looks very strong too.

Thanks for post man. I just made a rig similar to yours in my room (albeit much shorter) and I love it! Now I actually have a place to practice every day, and its just a short walk from my computer desk.

How thick is that rope? It looks skinny. If it's too skinny it won't be very good for climbing.

thin rope just means you need stronger hands to climb. not really a bad thing, eh?

Blairbob said:

thin rope just means you need stronger hands to climb.

A 1.5" rope is standard for normal strength work. Something to consider however is that a thicker rope of 2" or more is much better for grip training and elbow prehab.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Yes, Coach, we currently have 2 standard size ropes, which is not enough IMO since it seems groups fight for ropes towards the end of the day and we have none with knots for the younger or weaker kids. Recently, I've seen some of our female coaches have conniptions with our younger girls who can't manage to climb the ropes just like they have conniptions when they can't do pullups in the volume they set. This is more of a matter of improper scaling, but getting that across to them would never sink through. I'm really glad I don't coach in the WAG program sometimes. I spot the ones, that need a spot, but by in large, our WAG coaches are somewhat wacko.

I did find a source for manilla for 15 feet that would be about 20 bucks per rope, so with slack to it and the mounting hardware, each rope would cost about 30-35 dollars which is less than half of what they sell for online at many gymnastic suppliers. This is a bit more than my current budget for equipment but I will probably buy 2 or 3 more of these after I can find a ladder that reaches to the top of the ceiling. I do not like building towers or pyramids to get up there.

One of my friends once climbed 1/2 inch that was hanging at one of my friend's workout gym. He used it to to hang things from. Said friend was a rock climber and it astounded us all. Then again I climbed it later too, but don't think I could do it now, the 3/4 was trying enough.