My home gym included a decent bench, a trap bar, door pull-up thing, rings, heavy kettlebells… you can sorta squat with a trap bar but really it didn’t feel the same.
Our grocery stores were pretty well stocked. If you made me guess what would have been super popular, I don’t think yeast woulda been in my top hundred guesses. I personally had enough TP, but saw a couple fights over the briefly low supply.
I had a pretty good one of those two, but in my case it was my neighbors and I had my own key. LOL Shame he didn’t have a freeze of meat in there too though.
Bar:
DIY Schedule-40 Steel Pipe “Axle”. Robust enough to beat up, and also not care if it gets beat up.
Can do nearly anything with it, with enough creativity. It’s a bar, but it’s also a lever.
Food:
Whole milk, from a cow. If I’d ever personally experienced the amazing claims people have made about raw milk, probably raw.
Book:
Calvert’s Super Strength. Not much actual programming, but a wide exercise selection and a lot of experienced opinions from the hundreds of professional strongmen he knew and trained.
Conditioning:
Heavy plate-loadable kettlebell swings.
Supplement:
Ribeyes 
Or eggs. Or protein powder. The milk is great, but the protein to calorie ratio is a bit low.
Recovery method:
Walking. Intentional meditative walking where each step you focus on holding as little tension as possible, and moving as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Eastern martial arts stuff.
Sport:
If we’re talking my real-life self, no real sport. Pool/billiards isn’t a sport.
If we’re talking my theoretical self, rugby seems like a lot of fun.
Great thread Pwn
Bar - Going to be boring and say standard Oly
Food - Beef, so versatile. I had lean beef burritos this morning for breakfast. As much as I agree with eggs being amazing I personally can’t eat too many too frequently as my stomach just can’t handle it which is something that vexes me.
Book - 5/3/1 Forever. I could only run templates in that book for the rest of my life and probably have something suitable for every occasion.
Conditioning - Running, possibly cheating with this but as it’s technically running I have the option of running up a hill really fast, walking back down and repeating or running over a long distance more slowly
Supplement - Living in the UK probably vitamin D
Recovery - Mobility drills
Sport - Having played rugby for over 15 years it’s pretty easy. Yes @LoRez it’s pretty fun as long as you’re a forward. Getting to kick the shit out of people legally and then laughing about it after is awesome. I’ve also met some fantastic people through playing and also led to a career opportunity which helped get me where I am today.
@LoRez that’s actually a crafty thought to have milk as the base and protein powder as the supplement. Can easily modulate your protein to other macro ratio that way. And I’m with you on the walking: ultimate recovery for body and mind.
@aholding88 Appreciate your contribution! On the eggs front: ever try going just yolks and seeing how you handle them? A lot of times, the whites cause intolerance. Other times, it’s simply eggs consumed in the context of other foods that can be the trigger.
Bar: Women’s 35# bar. My little hands can grip it SO much better than the 45#'er!
Food: Cottage Cheese - I love the shit out of that stuff!
Book: Not sure on this one. I’ve read a lot of fitness/nutrition books - and have taken something away from every single one of them, but I don’t really have a favorite.
Supplement: Vitamin D3, Magnesium Glycinate (for sleep purposes)
Conditioning: Hard Conditioning - any awful painful 20 minute CF WOD or sled work; LISS - it used to be running, but my body has decided it hates me when I do that now, so hiking would be my first choice, but I live on the flat side of South Dakota so biking is a strong second choice.
I’m almost wondering if I can change my answer, haha. Cottage cheese is fantastic, and an OG bodybuilding food. I love hiking as answer for conditioning as well. Getting outside, sunlight, and uneven terrain is huge. Could even include rucking in there.
I would like your opinion on kettlebell handles you can load with plates.
First one I bought was metal, four pounds, rated to 210 lbs., collapsed on first use.
Second one, same company, also metal, six pounds, rated to 1200 lbs., feels very solid with 135 lbs. of plates at the gym. Happy with it. But wondering if there is one that could hold 180 lbs? This one almost could. (Probably could at home where my plates are skinnier, now that I think about it). Shipping to Canada was moderate, but the base price of US$35 is actually amazing value for its use.
What is the best kettlebell handle?
The Olympic sized Kettlebud is the one I bought and am still happy with, but they seem to be out of stock everywhere for a few months. It may be completely discontinued, I don’t know.
5 pounds of cast aluminum. Solidly built and has held up.
They claim it can hold 4 45s, but my plates are on the thicker side and I’ve only been able to get 2 45s and a 25 on it. Haven’t done any swings that heavy though.
I’ve been working on hand to hand swings (so there’s some jarring during the switches), 3x a week for months, and never had any concern about it falling apart. I’m currently using 90 pounds.
I wouldn’t use it for much other than swings, but it’s been great for that.
There’s always the hungarian core blaster
If I weren’t doing the hand-to-hand thing, I definitely would have gone this direction.
Trying to build something for one-hand swings was more expensive (and harder to load, and probably less safe) than just buying a thing.
But the hungarian core blaster is basically a loading pin with a handle, so you do get a twofer. A loading pin and some rope (or vines, in our desert island scenario) gives you a pulley system. Two loading pins, some vines and tree branch give you a yoke. And a yoke is just a dead-stop bottoms up power rack.
What a great thought experiment! I’ll toss some out - the theme really being versatility.
Equipment: I’m going to second the smith machine. You can do absolutely anything on it. I was thinking power bar, because it is the ultimate in versatility, but in real life I’m going to get annoyed without a rack - the smith gives me some bang for the buck and now I’m also knocking out pullups and those types of things.
Just so I’m not a total copycat, I’ll toss out another thought: the cambered bar. Similar reasons as the really cool trap bar at the top, I’ve just never used that.
Food: it’s probably ground beef for me. I think it covers all the macro and micro nutrient bases, it covers me on creatine, and I just plain don’t get sick of eating it. Plus I can significantly change the texture/ style (much like eggs), so it creates different meals.
Book: It’s Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding for me. I have actually found a lot I don’t like in there, but it’s such a combination of compendium, motivation, and practical application, it simply can’t be beat (except maybe by Dr. Stevenson’s version).
Again, to add something new, if you just want a blueprint of what to go do, John Meadows more recent programs (High Evolutionary would be my recommendation) give you a meal and supplement plan, sleep and recovery crash course, and repeatable program/ principles complete with video examples.
Conditioning: My cheater choice is the Rogue Yoke bar, because it gives me extra options for equipment. If I did this, my equipment is a power bar.
If I’m not cheating the game, and this is a vacuum, it’s the Prowler all day. There’s no planning involved and it makes me look cool.
Supplement: In a vacuum, it’s protein again for its versatility. My favorite specific supplement is Surge Workout Fuel. In context of my food being ground beef, that would probably be my choice here - I like periworkout carbohydrates.
Recovery: Sleeping? I don’t know. I like walking the dog and getting in the hot tub, so I guess I’ll choose dog walking.
Sport: Basketball, if only because I can still play and it forces a lot of athletic movement. Other sports were my “favorite,” but I just can’t do them anymore without them taking more than they give. Basketball is still fun, it doesn’t absolutely destroy me, I have some extraordinarily minor skill, and it forces all the things I don’t do in the gym.
That was fun! As I went through, my brain had to decide how to deal with each choice on its own vs. in context of the other choices - great idea.
I’ve never used a Prowler, but I know several people here have, and recently (@T3hPwnisher)
There’s a lot of different designs on the market.
Several variations on how to push it: vertical bars, horizontal bars, different widths, different heights.
A few variations on how to load it: on the near side, the far side (which can get a bit of “lift”) or more to the sides where it has some rotation element to keep it moving straight.
And then indoor sleds, outdoor sleds, and wheels with resistance.
If you were to have the One Prowler to Rule them All, how would it work?
Appreciate you swinging by @TrainForPain and glad you dug this!
I like your idea with ground beef, because it’s honestly a red meat superfood, where what people consider to be “bugs” are actually features. Because ground beef tends to be the stuff that wasn’t suitable for steaks, you actually get a LOT of good stuff in ground beef. Things like connective tissue, tongue/heart, sinew/collagen and all that other great stuff you can’t find in a pure cut of muscle.
The yoke is actually such an awesome answer that you’ve got me thinking about my own first one. Aside from the fact it can be a rack, you can actually to a lot of strength work with a yoke. You can press it, you can squat it, you can deadlift it, you can, of course, carry it like a yoke, but you can ALSO push them like prowlers
@LoRez Regarind the prowler, all I’ve had is the Elitefts Prowler 2, but it’s definitely awesome. 2 sets of low handles, high handles, and rugged. Makes a HELLUVA noise though, which is why I have to drive out to a parking lot for my 0400 workouts, haha.
Good for one arm rows too, but not the only way to skin that cat.
Make me one that has a lawnmower attachment on the botton.
Don’t have to go on concrete, and the weights would make better stripes if you care about that.
Well, I have a water-filled lawn roller. And a push reel mower. So…
I realized that that would be worthless in the winter, so we need a modular prowler that you can use with a lawn mower attachment, a snow blower attachment, and a tiller attachment. I was going to list metal detector but that’s obviously dumb.
Somebody get on this asap.
I guess you could wear a weighted vest but this sounds like more fun.
Was just about to suggest this, and, in turn, I think we all slept on “weighted vest” for conditioning tool. Talk about a conditioning cheat code. Turn ANY activity into conditioning. Great for taking the dog for walks, and I’ve definitely mowed the lawn/shoveled the driveway with one on.
And you can even combined the weighted vest WITH the prowler. Pushing on the low handles while wearing a vest SUCKS.
That was one of the other reasons I got it actually. But I found myself getting a bit sloppy with it and wasn’t really happy with the path. I was intentionally doing more of a flare to target the upper back.
I switched to something more like a meadows row, but with the landmine end lifted to about knee height. This works much better.
(This does tie back in topically… that steel pipe axle is highly versatile…)