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An artist recently unveiled a ‘fully functional gym’ made of sculptures. I hate this kind of effort to reimagine gym equipment.
Gym equipment looks, feels and operates the way it does to make lifting it feel efficient, purposeful and reduce the friction to certain outcomes.
They call it a fully functional gym. Functional isn’t the bar. Anything with mass is liftable. Safe and efficient at load is the bar, and that’s a much harder problem than making something that can be picked up. Let’s forget details such as microloading, adding weight or using the same bar for different lifts.
I get that the piece is an artistic reimagining. But does it actually look aesthetically pleasing?
I think it’s ugly. Not because statues are ugly. A good sculpture is very hard work. Any style, format or material. The effort it takes to produce it is tough.
But nobody looks at a sculpture and thinks I need to lift that. The purpose of a centre mass bell or a t-bell is to be lifted. Safely, well and efficiently. What is the maximum load that can be lifted safely and efficiently. That’s the starting point for designing gym equipment.
The slickest bit of gear for me is a single piece pull up bar. A single 20 foot pipe bent neatly into a U and mounted on a simple frame. A close second is an 8 inch pipe with 25mm thick walls that has a rod bang in the middle. It becomes a centre mass bell that requires you to hold it firmly to keep it moving in a controlled arc.
The artist adds material to make the object beautiful. I take away everything I can and whatever survives is what looks good. Equipment needs to be comfortable and safe to lift. The aesthetics come from picking materials and shapes that are aesthetic to begin with and doing as little as possible to them.