A side quest in Kerala
A side quest from my working holiday: getting a simple gym up and running in Kerala — what's in, what's on the way, and the freedom of building from scratch with more room.
Posts tagged equipment
A slice of personal heaven
Tired of complaining about Madras, I started carving out a slice of personal heaven in Kerala — a gym full of the gear I love, and a first heavy lift on a trap bar I built ten years ago.
Thor, my ten-year-old trap bar
A nostalgic profile of Thor — the wildly overbuilt 47 kg trap bar I built in 2015 — and the design and build choices that have let it age without a single thing I'd change.
In praise of Raja
The unsung hero who scrubs every piece of our kit each week with a 3M pad and coconut oil — and why, if you'll own equipment for decades, stainless steel pays for itself.
Measure fifty times, cut once
Building four cable stations from scratch meant three weeks of quiet thinking and nine design decisions — because with equipment, unlike coaching, you get to weld only once.
Spoilt for load: a field guide to free weights
Sorted not by brand but by where the mass sits relative to your hand — five positions, from the classic dumbbell to centermass bells and long-lever maces, and what each is good at.
The only tool that matters is you
A year-by-year timeline of every tool we've added to the gym since 2014 — the list is past fifty now and still climbing, but the most important one has never changed. It's you.
Patenting the obvious
Eleiko patented an obvious way to balance an open-back trap bar — an idea that wasn't theirs, and one we'd already solved in 2018. On patents, pricing, and protecting the obvious.
The trap bar: neutral grip for the win
Why the trap bar's neutral grip is friendlier on the upper back and shoulders, how it lowers the setup barrier that makes the barbell deadlift so hard to coach, and the variants worth knowing.
The most comfortable tool for something uncomfortable
My favourite equipment does one thing really well. Why single-purpose beats the do-everything machine.
Ikea has no patina
On being a discerning consumer: what it really means to ask how the things we use are made.
Don't just brace, embrace the curve
Why we run both back-extension machines and add Jefferson curls. The spine is built to move, so we move it.
Details matter
The hand-laid knurling on our bars, and the machinist who has been laying it down, by hand, since 2016.
The weights that anchor me
100 days outside Madras in 4,200. Owning a gym is a maximalist life that weighs you down in literal tonnes.
The oldest barbell we made
The first barbell we built in 2015 is still going after 150,000 reps. On making things to last, not to look the part.
It just works
Designing a pivot that never fails: stainless bushings, sea air, and putting function ahead of form.
Building tools is being human
Reverence for tools and how we make them is as human as it gets. On why building equipment satisfies so deeply.
My own museum of failure
Seventeen gym-equipment builds that didn't work, and what every one of them taught me.
Why we make our own equipment
The question we get asked most: why not just buy it? Control, cost, proportions, durability, and fun.
The spinning dumbbell
Machining a bearing-free rotating dumbbell to spare the wrist under heavy overhead load.
The nice things always ran out
A 90s childhood of imported chocolates and toys that always ran out. Why I would rather make things than wait for them.
Make in India, not mimic in India
A real reason for a subcontinent equipment brand: design for the bodies it actually serves, not the ones it copies.
The margins for getting it right are tiny
Grip thickness, bar width, plate diameter. The details mass-market gym gear quietly decides don't matter.
Seven years of the t-bell
How our hand-built t-bell evolved from V1 to V2.2, and why it makes loading a deadlift so accessible.
The infinite monkey bar, start to finish
A long, honest build log of one machine. 'Made in India' is never quite made in India. Everything is made on Earth.
Mistakes
Sixteen ways I've been conned or screwed up in twelve years of building a gym. We powered through anyway.
Literal product-market fit
Copy-pasting equipment dimensions builds uncomfortable tools. The safety squat bar, resized for Indian frames.
Nine inch fails
A client's safe miss on the lever squat, and why a loaded barbell sits exactly nine inches off the floor.
The idiot index, applied to barbells
Musk's cost lesson, borrowed for a gym: why I make a stainless barbell for ₹7,500 instead of buying one.
An ode to knurling
An appreciation of knurling — the obscure, unglamorous craft that decides whether a bar actually grips.
Venkatesh, the lathe artist
In a 120-square-foot workshop by the canal, a lathe operator turns my crudest drawings into working parts. As much artist as worksmith.