If they’re really BIG monkey bars, it’s best to call them gorilla bars, right?

My standards for pull-up bars have ratcheted pretty tight. Hence our custom-built bars.

In Oman, I made two separate pull-up bar systems. The first I designed to be portable, but was large, at 8′ / 96″ tall, with bars of 1″, 1.5″, 2″ and a 2″ rolling bar (thickness). When I decided not to build a training center in Oman, I put the pull-up bars in our house where they could not be bolted down; hence no kipping pull-ups. Frustration!

The second pull-up bar was a simple, welded frame of two uprights and a bar across the top. I cemented the uprights into the ground, and attached hooks at chest height to act as a squat rack (I made the pull-up bar exactly 46″ wide, the standard width for the hooks on a squat rack - to hold a barbell.) This pull-up bar would swing when I pulled kipping pull-ups on it; big annoying swing for normal kips, and it still bowed and bobbled for butterfly kips (which are lower impact than normal kips).

In globogyms (where you cannot find good, normal, old-school pull-up bars anymore), I’ve almost pulled the entire pec-deck cable-row systems over trying to kip. Those rubber-grip systems are absurd — no working grip. As usual, every time I enter a globo gym I’m awestruck at how poorly the equipment is designed. It fits the aesthetic — shiny, new — but D O E S N O T W O R K. Like everything about the globogyms.

I’ve visited the pull-up bar systems at Brand X (CrossFitKids.com) (nice angled cross bars, reported to help people with elbow tendinitis, most of the bars have a lot of flex), at CrossFitSoCal (good bars, gorilla bars, smart construction but adapted to their building), at Petranek Fitness in LA (hold a lot of people, quite a bit of flex), CrossFit Flagstaff (old school bars, very strong and rigid, fixed to the wall, no monkey or dyno moves), CrossFit Albuquerque (Sorinex complex? Ok bars), CrossFit Wichita Falls (ok for chin-ups or deadhangs for one person at a time — no good bars), GSX in Fort Worth (strong bars, a high bar and a low bar but dynos were awkward - jumping and launches - and would take a lot of getting used to, capacity for about 6 people). CrossFit Phoenix may have new bars in the gym they’re building, their old bars had a lot of flex - the simple home pull-up bars of 4×4 wood uprights and solid pipe. Finally, Competitive Fitness in Chandler, Arizona — the best bars I’ve seen anywhere, by far. Totally rigid. Smooth. No obstacles. Rounded corners and tubular steel = good looking. Five-foot squares, each square of bars at different heights. Can accommodate 15-20 people at once, and work as super gorilla bars for dynos and round-the-world traverses. The real functionality test is the rigidity, and their bars had zero flex.

So I copied the bars at Competitive Fitness. I considered and rejected several additional functions, like pegs to hold assistance bands or attachments for parallel bars. (I may still add an A-frame attachment to hold rings, as gymnastics rings require hanging from a high, rigid structure, preferably at least 15′ high.) Our bars are made with 11-guage, 120 wall tubular hot roll steel, at heights of 6′, 7′ and 8′. The uprights are 2″ diameter and the bars themselves are 1.5″ diameter. The 6′ height is good for people 5′6″ - 6′0″ tall to do jumping pull-ups at; bumper plates underfoot make them good for 5′0″ - 5′5″ height jumpers. The 7′ bar accommodates athletes up to 5′10″ for kipping pull-ups, and the 8′ bar for taller athletes (though people over 6′4″ may still hang too low!). Our squares are 5′, the corners are rounded; the concrete underneath is 4000 PSI and 6″ thick, so we drop Olympic lifts inside the pull-up bars, and a squad of 250-pound firebreathers can pull vicious kips on the bars, without concern for the concrete.

They look good, and they work exactly as the most hardcore CrossFitter would demand. Success.