Sunday, 29 Jan 2006

Chin Up / Pull Up Bar Links

Since Tiffani (and others) have asked, here are a few sources for those pull up bars that hang from doorways with mouldings:


Everlast bar Door Gym Jungle Jam
Everlast Multifunction Chinning Bar
$27.99 with free shipping from Amazon.com
Door Gym
$42.95 + $2.95 shipping from Karate Depot
Jungle Jam/ P90X Chin-Up Bar
$53.95 + $14.95 shipping

Thanks to a mix up at the Beachbody warehouse last spring, I wound up with both a Jungle Jam AND a Door Gym, so I can give my impressions of both

The Door Gym is a very well-constructed, sturdy piece of equipment even though it doesn’t have as many grips as the Jungle Jam or the Everlast bars. The dense foam padding on the areas that come in contact with your wall and door frame is thick enough to prevent damage to your home or apartment. The bolts that are located on the top bar that hangs right over your door moulding are recessed into the bar and won’t scratch up your wall. All of the nuts and bolts were included, assembly was very easy, and the whole unit pops on and off the door frame easily. At its widest point, the bar is around 37″ wide, so make sure your doorway isn’t too wide for it. Another possible problem is door location; even if your door is the perfect size, if it is too close to a corner on one or both sides, you might not be able to center the bar properly in the doorway.

The Jungle Jam has a lot of different grips, but the design isn’t as polished as the Door Gym. It is 41″ wide, so the note above about doors too close to corners applies even more here. Some of the bolts also seemed to be a bit too short in my opinion, and the assembly instructions were a bit confusing. My main gripe is that the bolts in the top support bar that goes over the top of the door are NOT sufficiently recessed. There is padding on the support bar, but with regular use, those two bolts WILL dig into your wall above the door. Padding that area with some folded up duct tape might help you avoid creating divots in your wall. Speaking of padding…while there is foam padding on the grips of the Jungle Jam, the parts that come in contact with your home are covered with a black rubber that did leave marks on my door frame. It also wasn’t soft/thick enough to prevent the bar from digging into the wood, so I had faint black stains plus two tubular dents in my frame after using the Jungle Jam for a few months. The metal tubing of the bar does seem to be nice and sturdy; the JJ weighs a ton compared to the Door Gym.

I don’t own the Everlast bar, but there are some reviews from other owners on the Amazon.com site. That one seems to have mixed reviews–some units were shipped with missing parts, but the significant cost savings might make a trip to the nearest hardware store for $5 worth of nuts and bolts worthwhile.