Blog | Coaching | Featured | Mobility | Strength Empowering Your Black Friday: Equipment

Author / Carl Case

Black Friday is basically here, which means businesses are throwing savings in your face. Thousands will be making their way to stand in line to get the hottest deals. Thankfully, this new invention called the internet allows you to skip the lines, and shop from the comfort of your home! This is the perfect time to add some equipment to your tool box that you might be missing, to take your gym (and your training) to the next level. I am going to give you five items to keep a lookout for.

Safety Squat Bar

There are some major positives to having one of these in your arsenal. The handles in the front enable someone who is having shoulder, bicep, or wrist injuries to continue to load a heavy bar on their back. Unlike the traditional straight bar, this bar is designed with a camber and sits slightly higher on the shoulders, that wants to pull you forward, further challenging trunk strength and your ability to maintain a strong posture and position. This can be a great addition to any lower body Primals like the lunge and step up.

Pulley System

The current structure of most micro gyms has lots a free weights, but are often absent of machines. Now, this is a great shift in focus from the purely Nautilus training days of the past to the emphasis on using free weights. However, some machines can be great for some accessory work on your way building your house on Jacked Street. The folks over at Spud Inc have some really killer but affordable pulley systems. Want to hit up some lat pull downs, blast those triceps, or get some good old cable rows? Their systems can make this all happen for a reasonable price, and not take up a large footprint in your gym.

Sandbag

Sandbags are awkward, grip intensive, full body, and create a new way to challenge to posture and position in all your Primal movements. By its nature, the weight distribution of the sandbag is constantly shifting, which in turn forces you to have to continuously react and fight to maintain control. This unique aspect of the sandbag further develops your tensile strength, and tests your ability to react to a shift in external load in real time through space. Sandbags are where the “Field” in Field Strong.

Already have sandbags? Then head over to Sorinex and check out their Kevlar Sandmine Sandbag; it has a compact design with six different handles, allowing for all kinds of possibilities.

Loadable Dumbbells… and matching plates

Dumbbells are a crucial piece of equipment to have in your arsenal. They have an increased demand in stabilization when compared to using a barbell for movements like bench and shoulder press. They can be used to load movements in unilateral manner, and they allow for more options in executing primal movements patterns as opposed to a fixed barbell. The down side of these is that picking up a complete set is going to cost a nice chunk of change. This is where having adjustable dumbbells with the matching plates really comes to the rescue, saving you both money and floor space.

Intek modF bar

This is a bar I have been wanting ever since seeing it on Derek Woodske’s Instagram. Your normal trap bar is limited to a few functions, like deadlifting and carries. With the open design of this bar, it unlocks a whole new selection of movements such as: lunges, bulgarian split squats, step ups, and overhead presses.

Landmine

Much like dumbbells, landmines are a great way to unilaterally load movement patterns. They are also great to use for anti-rotation training. If you have an injury that you are working around, certain variations can be useful as a workaround during the healing process. Best of all, you can use your existing plates and barbells! All you need is the rig attachment, and you’re good to go.

Empower Your Training

One of the big lenses I used to select these items was versatility; I didn’t want something that was a one trick pony. Also, I looked at items that didn’t have a large footprint. Being a gym owner, I know space is premium. When my remote coaching clients have these at their availability I always take advantage of them.

Now I can’t tell you where to find all of these deals, but I can tell you that these are five items I would keep a lookout for. Happy hunting. Tag us, and let us know what you scored on your Black Friday Shopping Extravaganza.

Not necessarily a piece of training equipment, but still a necessary component to training. Head over to https://shop.powerathletehq.com to check out our Black Friday, because after all “look good, feel good, train good.”

Carl Case

Carl Case has been an athlete his whole life, playing both football and rugby in high school. After high school, he directed his focus to rugby where he went on to become a collegiate Midwest All Star. Carl continues to play rugby on a mens team near South Bend, and was part of a National Runner Up team. He found CrossFit and then Power Athlete as a way to fuel his rugby performance. He has been following the Power Athlete methodology since it’s launch in 2009 and attended his first CrossFit Football seminar in August of 2009.

After an introduction to CrossFit in 2007, Carl became a certified coach in 2009 and co-owner of CrossFit South Bend in 2011. In addition to coaching CrossFit and Power Athlete inspired classes at the gym, Carl has been coaching high school rugby since 2009. He uses the CrossFit Football and Power Athlete concepts to help his young athletes identify their goals and provides pointed instruction to help achieve those goals.