Even though calisthenics by definition is bodyweight exercise, as you start to get better and progress, calisthenics equipment becomes part of your daily routine.
There are many products available, but we will show you what we consider will be the best bang for your buck.
If you don’t have a routine yet, please check this article so you can get started on your calisthenics journey.
What to consider before making any investment in calisthenics equipment?
1. Budget
How much are you willing to invest in equipment?
Calisthenics has many benefits like:
- Doing compound movements
- Improve mobility
- Reduce the risk of injuries
- option to do it anywhere
But when it comes to money, the real benefit is you don’t have to spend any money.
But getting better usually has its price.
Once you get to more advanced progressions, not having the right equipment becomes a problem.
So the question arises, is it time to invest in calisthenics gear to keep going forward?
If you are a beginner, don’t worry, this equipment will also be necessary to help you get better and achieve your desired results.
So first, we need to have a benchmark.
The minimum comparison you should do is check
- Gym membership near you
- Weight lifting option at home
If you want to dig more, you can check out machines that have built all-in-one exercises to get a gym at home (usually more expensive than weight lifting option), maybe the option of getting a personal trainer at home (usually more expensive than a gym membership), but we won’t complicate it that much.
So here are 2 of the possible benchmarks we have to evaluate the decision.
Gym Memberships
According to Healthline, the average monthly cost for a gym membership is $58. This will vary on the type of gym you subscribe to and what location you live in.
According to RunRepeat, the range can go as low as $20 a month to $80 a month.
Make sure to do the research in your local area, but we will use $60 a month or $720 a year to compare against the equipment we will recommend.
Weightlifting Home Options
The basic equipment you need will be:
- Dumbbell Weight Set OR Adjustable Dumbbell
- A bench to do your chest press exercises or even shoulder press (standing up will be the alternative for shoulder)
Depending on your strength or how long you’ve been training, the weights you need will vary. We will assume that at this moment, you will only need from 5lbs to 50lbs. This should be good enough to train muscles like the biceps, triceps, and shoulders. Chest, back, and legs, you will probably need more weight.
A dumbbell set of 150lbs is about $260.
This means you will get 5,10,15,20 and 25 lbs dumbbells times 2 (150lb)
You will be paying $1.73 per lb. This number will serve as a reference when comparing to an adjustable dumbbell.
The problem with buying a dumbbell set all the way to 50lbs is that the second part of the equation is heavier. This means that you need to add up 30,35,40,45,50 times 2 (400 lbs). This means you will need to spend around $700 (400 * 1.73) to get the rest of the dumbbell set.
Here is where the adjustable dumbbell comes to shine.
The price for an adjustable dumbbell set like the Bowflex is around $400 from 2.5 to 50 lbs.
Even though you are paying for 100 lbs (2 adjustable dumbbells of 50lbs), this will be the equivalent of buying 550 lbs with a dumbbell set.
How did we come to this number?
You basically add (5+10+15+20+25+30+35+40+45+50) * 2. You will be paying around $0.73 per lb.
2. Space
What spaces do you have available for your workout? Is it just your room, maybe your backyard, the garage, a living room?
Just make sure to consider this before buying any equipment because you might get excited at the beginning, and suddenly when you realize, you have no storage space.
If you are creative enough, you can make the gym part of your bedroom. You know your layout better than anyone; make sure to measure your spaces and check the dimensions of the products you want to buy before spending any money.
3. Try to cover all muscle groups
You want your equipment to help you get better at:
- Pulling movements (horizontal and vertical)
- Pushing movements (horizontal and vertical)
- Leg movements
- Hip hinge movements
- Core movements.
One of the problems that may cause injuries or affect your progress is when you start to overtrain certain muscles but don’t train the counterpart.
For example, if you do a horizontal push routine, make sure you do a horizontal pull routine as well. If you do a quads routine, make sure to include a hamstring routine. This goes for every movement in the body. Below is a chart with the most common movements to consider.
| Movement | Counterpart |
| Pull – Horizontal | Push – Horizontal |
| Pull – Vertical | Push – Vertical |
| Quadriceps | Hamstring |
| Biceps | Triceps |
| Abductor | Adductor |
| Deltoid | Rotator cuff |
| Abs | Lower Back |
| Glutes | Hip Flexors |
So taking these 3 aspects into consideration, without further ado, here are our top picks!
1. Pull Up Bar
Probably the king of exercises when it comes to calisthenics gear. Doing pull-ups and chin-ups is always eye-catching. Once you start getting better, the famous muscle-up becomes your go-to exercise, and if you achieve it, you are in the 1% of the population (guesstimate).
This piece of equipment is probably the most important because there are very few alternatives to do a pull-up.
Yes, you can develop back muscles without the pull-up bar, but it won’t be as effective.
If you decide to start calisthenics and don’t own a pull-up bar, please take a break from reading this article, and buy it NOW!
2. Dip Bar
Even though push-ups are a great exercise, they have a few limitations. For starters, the mobility on a push-up is limited to the ground, so you can’t do all the movement because your body hits the ground. With dips, you can do full range of motion.
Then you have the weight. With a push up you are not picking up all your body because your feet are on the ground, with the dip bar you are carrying all your weight.
Then we have the angles you are targeting, with push-ups you get more chest exercise, but dips develop more the triceps and shoulder to give a great look to the arms.
Never stop doing push-ups, but don’t forget to add dips to your routine!
3. Assistance Bands
What happens if you can’t do a pull-up or a dip yet?
Assistance bands will be the best way to achieve your goal. Adding an assistance band will reduce the weight to carry yourself and help you do the full range of motion, keep the correct posture, and allow you to build strength.
This equipment will probably be needed only if you are a beginner to help you progress to the next level faster. The alternative to assistance bands is doing negative repetitions. These are great but limit you only to do the negative side of the movement. With assistance bands, you will be able to do the positive and the negative movement, which will be worth it in the long run.
4. Resistance Bands
What’s the difference between assistance bands?
The name kind of gives it away, but you are basically trying to do the opposite. With resistance bands, you are looking to add more weight or make the exercise harder.
Do you need to buy them separately?
Not necessarily. In some cases, you can use the same bands either to assist you or to increase difficulty.
The thing is, some resistance bands are branded and targeted for different muscle groups. You will get more variety than assistance bands.
The resistance bands can help you target smaller muscles like the biceps, triceps, and shoulders. They can also help you increase difficulty with abductor and adductor muscles.
5. Pull Up And Dip Station
If you have the space and would like to buy 3 in 1, you could get the pull-up bar, the dip bar, and even the resistance bands all at the same time.
Will you save money? Probably not. If you add the dip bar, pull up bar, and resistance bands they are almost the same price as the pull-up + dip station.
Having said that, it is very convenient having everything together and in one small space inside your home.
6. Gymnastics Rings
This is probably the best investment you can make if you decide to go through your calisthenics journey.
Why would I need gymnastics rings if I don’t want to be a gymnast?
They are excellent for stabilization, muscle gains, mobility, versatility, and fun! You can use them as a beginner to help you reduce the difficulty of an exercise to achieve the next difficulty level, or you can use them to make an exercise harder and get more hand and balance coordination.
In the beginning, it may be strange to get used to them, but once you start using rings, you’ll become addicted to them.
7. Jump Rope
We had to include a cardio option! You can run, swim, row, bike but all of them will need money and space.
At the same time, the number of calories per minute burned jumping rope is higher than most of the other options.
You get the benefit of:
- Burning more calories
- Spending less money
- Using less space to workout
Again, this is a no-brainer and you should start making jump rope part of your workouts.
There is an excellent app where you can find routines that mix up calisthenics home equipment with a jump rope. You have the free option to get started and there is the premium version. I’ve managed to stay on the free version for a long time, so try it out.
8. Weighted Vest
The weighted vest has the same objective as the resistance bands but with the added value that you can increase the weight no matter what exercise you do.
If you buy a weighted vest, you are basically becoming heavier, so any exercise that you do will be harder. This will make you stronger and help you build muscle faster. Remember that to build muscle, you need progressive overload, and the weight vest is the best way to do it with calisthenics workout equipment.
Usually, if you buy resistance bands, you will use them to exercise isolated muscles like biceps, triceps, and shoulders.
When using the weighted vest, you will try to use them for compound movements like pull-ups, dips, squats, jump rope, running, and many more.
9. Fitness Tracker
How can you improve if you don’t measure your progress?
The fitness trackers are amazing at doing this. Yes, you can measure your strength without a fitness tracker, and you can also take body measurements without the fitness tracker, but there are many other measurements that add more value to your workout routine.
- Do you know your Resting Metabolic Rate (How many calories you burn without exercise)
- How many calories do your workouts add to your RMR?
- Are you having a good night’s sleep?
- Reminders and Accountability
- Daily Tips
Depending on which fitness tracker you buy, you can get different inputs, but all of them will add value to your workout.
10. Smart Scale
Smart Scale complements your fitness tracker with the added benefit that you can start monitoring your lean body mass and fat percentage.
There are other options available, but having everything together will definitely help you monitor your progress easily.
You should try and buy the same brand for the fitness tracker as the smart scale. Not always possible (usually when you get it as a gift).
Adding It All Up
Here is a summary of all the equipment we considered necessary and the equipment that we considered optional.
Necessary
- Calisthenics Pull-Up Bar – $30
- Calisthenics Dip Bar – $80
- Calisthenics Assistance bands – $30
- Calisthenics Resistance bands – $30
- Calisthenics Gymnastic Rings – $30
- Calisthenics Jump Rope – $10
- Calisthenics Weighted Vest – $150
This comes to a total of $360.
If you remember at the beginning of the article, we had that a gym membership is around $720 a year.
Then we had the adjustable dumbbell + bench that comes around to $550.
Even though you are investing in equipment, it is still cheaper than the other 2 options. You can always get creative and find cheaper alternatives, but the point here is cost vs time. Not investing in equipment will delay your progress.
At the same time, it’s important to mention that you don’t need to buy everything at once. Depending on your needs, you can do it month by month and still save some money.
Optional
We didn’t include the fitness tracker and smart scale as necessary equipment because they can be used with a gym membership and weight lifting option.
The pull-up + dip station is a substitute for the pull-up bar and dip bar, so adding them would implicate a duplication of products. But here is a summary of the investment.
- Fitness Tracker – $100
- Smart Scale – $100
- Pull Up + Dip Station + Resistance Bands – $150
So what do you think?
Are you ready to take the next step and invest in your home calisthenics equipment!
This is one of the best articles I have seen.
Thank you for sharing,
Glad to see it helped!