Suggestions on those long parallette bars?

Any suggestions on good bars to get for the preliminary exercises?

Hi David, 

Great question. I have seen many athletes use just a basic dip station. I've seen set ups created using olympic lifting stations that have the two bars to preform dips.

Some scrap wood for the base and an appropriately shaped handrail from your local home improvement store seems like it would do the job. I'm pretty sure they'll have rails like that.

Fence posts or galvanized pipe work great. 

Here are some pictures of the ones I made - from a handrail from Lowe's and scrap pieces of 2x4 and 2x6 lumber. They are 6 ft long (I made 2, cutting a long handrail in half) and work quite well. The flex a bit but so do the ones in the demo videos. The handrail wasn't super cheap (~ $50 I think) but it's oak and wood feels nicer to me than pipe (I have shorter ones made from galvanized pipe also).

Nice. I really want some long paralettes of my own.... I'm nervy trying hs pirouettes on full size pbars