From Blog
Why we make our own equipment
The question we get asked most: why not just buy it? Control, cost, proportions, durability, and fun.
Published
by Adarsh Gopal
Here’s a question we get asked a lot: Why not buy gym equipment from the many Indian companies or even import it ?
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The many hours spent coaching, doing exercises and watching people train makes us highly opinionated about making things more comfortable and challenging. This calls for us getting our hands dirty and designing the equipment that we want to use. Making things we want to use really does make it easier for us to get clients to enjoy using it.
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To commission an Indian company to make gym equipment in stainless steel would drain us financially. To buy mild steel equipment off the shelf would drain us financially on account of the maintenance cost. Despite high cost of material, few units and using some fairly sophisticated manufacturing the cost of producing equipment is lower than what it would be if we picked up stuff from Indian or foreign manufacturer’s.
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Paint and powder coating both dramatically wear down with traffic and use. Where stainless steel scuffs or scratches. But it can be polished down. But we prefer to let it age naturally and show its age.
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Importing it would also be too expensive. And there’s the upkeep cost. And the proportions would be bonkers. Some equipment produced abroad is built for bigger frames.
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Making it lets us control every detail. We tweak little things like swapping out cushion pads, pick better quality foam, rexine and canvas to finish our equipment. Case in point, our push-pull rig. The same unit contains a 27 mm, 30 mm, 32 mm and 38 mm thick pull up bar. And we can quickly plug in or replace units as our requirement changes or coaching tools evolve.
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We often dive into a first principles approach to making things. This means going back to drawing board for moves like squatting, dead lifting and pulling and asking ourselves ‘what would be the most optimal way to do this move?’. And then we work our way up.
Last but not least the most important reason : it’s just way too much fun.
The downside
Our equipment has slightly thicker welds on account of hand welding.
Some of the knobs and bits to adjust things are cruder in the form of industrial looking nuts and bolts.
The hand grinding marks are not to everyone’s liking either.
We don’t worry about making equipment as user friendly as possible. We just show clients how to use certain things.
Sometimes dumbing things down for a consumer is a sure-fire way to make the product less fun to use in the long run.