Home-made Low Parallettes

Thought I'd share this in case anyone found the info useful.

Been wanting to do more handstands on my paralettes at home, to give wrists a bit of a rest while still keeping up my practice ...however, at 6'1'' I was unable to do them on my regular parallettes since the ceilings in our home prevented me from straightening my legs!!

So with a little free time I knocked up a set of low parallettes from some wood I had at home, and some 32mm dowel from a hardware store:

What I did

1) Saw 4 blocks of wood, 1 for each end of two parallettes

2) Saw two lengths of thick pine dowel (mine were 32mm diameter)

3) Drill two 32mm holes through each end block, about 2/3 up (to leave room for fingers underneath)

4) Sawed off corners (in case I landed on them) leaving enough wood around holes for strength

5) Glued dowel into blocks (making sure they were level before the glue dried)

6) Sanded down all the rough edges, splinters, etc.

Turns out they are a pretty good size for storing under my TV cabinet, and not quite so scary for Planche training (in terms of less far to fall on my face - cushions or not). They are just about high enough to do L-sits on as well (now that I am strong enough to do with legs straight and level).

In retrospect:

If anything I would have made them slightly shorter, as they'd have been even more storable, and still give me plenty of leverage/stability. I am planning to put some rubber strips or similar on the bottom to make more grippy...they have been fine so far, but just want to play it safe.

I also think the wood looks and feels a lot nicer than PVC tubing.

Cheers,

George.

Nice, I prefer the trapezoid bases as that allows for better spacing for doing L -sits and L presses than just rectangle bases.

Those look very nice....good job!

Casey

Looks very nice, those compare to the American Gymnast bars. I still love my cheap rinky dinky PVC bars, they've always treated me right.

sweet work!

Wow, think you can make me a pair of those, hahaha.

Yeah, these are definitely nice and allow for going from L press to HS a bit easier with the trapezoid bases instead of rectangular. Nice and stable too. Always preferable to the PVC parallettes, and nice to have some long ones to also use for high bar drills or pirouettes on these parallettes.

I know this is an old post, but I love the design of these bars. I'm new to this website, so apologies if my question is in the wrong part of the forum. I've seen many parallettes bars that are 14" or so from the ground. Should a beginner start with these higher bars, or is there no advantage to that? I'd like to make my own, and think George's design here is as good as (if not better than) any I've seen.

Many thanks for any responses

if you'd like to go with this design and are concerned about the height of them, you could always prop them up on cinder blocks or something if you need the extra clearance. my paralettes are about 5" off the ground (relatively low, imho) and this is what i do. it works fine and doesn't cause any problems, although if i had my druthers i'd prefer a higher pair. that's just me, though.

Many thanks for your reply. Good point with the cinder blocks, I hadn't considered that. Think I'll go with that idea

All the best

If I have time this weekend I think I might make me a pair of these