Buck, about eight years ago we had our pipes freeze (we live in a mobilehome). I was trying to thaw out the waterpipes and created a leak. I kept working on it and eventually got everything fixed and thawed. The unfortunate thing was that laying in all that water with below freezing temperatures, I froze to the ground. When I finally finished and went to stand up, I couldn't move my leg (due to being stuck to the ground) and jerked really hard to free myself. A noise like a firecracker sounded and I immdeiately knew that I'd done some major damage to my knee. I had to crawl for about 100 feet thru the snow, yelling for help, before anyone could hear me. Gigs and my mother helped me into the house. We had no insurance and money was scarce. So I spent most of the winter soaking, elevating, iceing, hobbling along and whatever else I could think of. Lucky for me, a friend and I had already set up a powerlifting gym in his garage. I used the weights and machines to slowly, very slowly, build up muscle to help take over some of the stress on my knee.
I can do most everything I used to, except play softball or do any major running. Volleyball, dodgeball, biking and back to the powerlifting training were all within my grasp until my heart gave me problems this last spring. But I'm starting to get back on track once again.
Here's a few ideas that you could do with bike parts that may help. I'm assuming you wanna "rat" you workouts.
Other than the obvious exercise bike riding, could you rig up a stationary bike that when you peddle it pulls a weight similar to an upright cable machine? It would work like a winch. You peddle and it winches the weight up to a certain heighth and you do a hold for 3 to 5 seconds, than slowly back peddle it to the starting position. You might be able to make a portable version that you could take into the gym and use on their cable machine.
Being involved with football, I'm sure you've seen/used a weight sled. Bike parts offer all the things needed to build the sled as well as all those extra parts laying around making good weights!
Not so much for your legs, but an ab wheel is really simple to make! Just how cool would it be to have a 24" x 3" fatty rolling back and forth across your living room carpet!
Paint the rim red though! :wink:
Just about anything that can be done with cables and pulleys can be done with chains and sprockets! Find some heavy tubed bike frames or sleeve several size frames, then cut weld and grind! The wieght macine frame is as easy to make as you want it to be. No Welder? Drilling and bolting works just as good if done properly.
Simple, simple simple! Inner tubes make great exercise bands! Different size tubes should give you different tensions. Don't know for sure but different air pressures should also work!
Now I wanna build a "RatBike Gym"!
Hope this is what you're looking for,
Chainy
