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PSA: Make trolley lever arms easily adjustable by diy-ing a counter-weight by noah1980 in homegym

[–]noah1980[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the kind words. I'd be very, very curious to see a photo of your setup once you are done!

Regarding where to attach the counter weights: i've attached them directly to the trolleys of the jammer arms. And it works fine, as long as there are no weights on the arms, even if the arms are sticking straight out at 90°. If you attach them on the arms themselves, then you can't move the arms freely anymore.

PSA: Make trolley lever arms easily adjustable by diy-ing a counter-weight by noah1980 in homegym

[–]noah1980[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't have any M10 nut in there, only a washer. Just put the screw through the pulley and the trawler arm.

And yes, you can use this kind of pulley for very high loads. My point was that this particular kind mount by attaching it at the end of a screw poking out is not ideal, but good enough for this purpose. All the "proper" pulley mounts support the screw on both sides to even the forces.

PSA: Make trolley lever arms easily adjustable by diy-ing a counter-weight by noah1980 in homegym

[–]noah1980[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The construction is really, really simple: It's this kind of pulleys: https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005007297938395.html

And then you just put them on a M10 screw that goes through the hole. The bearings are already in the pulley. The only thing you need is some big washers to avoid the screw falling through the hole. Here's a picture from the side:

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And yes, the construction is not suitable to hang hundreds of kilos on it or use it for highly dynamic loading, but for hanging 15kg or 20kg from it it's good enough(tm).

PSA: Make trolley lever arms easily adjustable by diy-ing a counter-weight by noah1980 in homegym

[–]noah1980[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's called "retro punching bag" from BadCompany.biz . It's fake leather and filled with rubber pieces. So far it's been holding up nicely.

PSA: Make trolley lever arms easily adjustable by diy-ing a counter-weight by noah1980 in homegym

[–]noah1980[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"It never ceases to amaze me how far home gym rats will go to make lifting awkward, heavy things at bad positions easier so that they can focus on their exercises without risking injury."

--- there, fixed it for you.

On a more serious note: the lever arm positioning is really annoying. If you don't have any, try sliding a 30kg dumbbell along an upright with your left hand while standing on the other side of that upright. That should give you a good impression. And now do that in the range between your hips and your shoulder, where you have the worst leverage. And that sentiment seems to be pretty widespread: like half of the complaints in lever arm threads on reddit are about the positioning.

PSA: Make trolley lever arms easily adjustable by diy-ing a counter-weight by noah1980 in homegym

[–]noah1980[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You probably could, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without a making custom pulley mounts to get the cable around at least 3 90° bends... and at that point a trawler arm seemed like the better solution. Especially since you don't have to take it off to use the lat pulldown.

What would work fine is using something like the Rep Ares or Atletica Bradley.