 Hey guys, today I want to show you this multi-purpose workout machine that I had built in my home gym over the weekend. I looked all over YouTube and the internet to see if anyone else had built a DIY hamstring curl machine specifically. And I wasn't able to find anyone who'd actually built one themselves. Most of the advice that I'd found on doing hamstring curls at home involved using your body weight. And so it wasn't possible to use different amounts of weight to do the exercises. The total cost for this build was I think just under $70. I bought all the supplies from retail stores and I was kind of experimenting with a couple different items. So I spent a little bit too much I think. You could probably do this for I bet under $50. If you were to buy all the materials online through a retailer like Amazon. All right, let me show you guys exactly how this setup works. Let's go ahead and start with the bottom half of the system first. I have this heavy-duty hook drilled into one of the studs in the wall. You absolutely want to make sure that you hit a stud if you're doing this. And you want to figure out how much weight you're planning for this for these all these hooks to hold. I knew I wasn't going to run more than like a hundred pounds or 105 pounds. I think these are rated for like 800. So I got pretty strong ones just to be safe. Okay, then off of the hook we have a carabiner. The carabiner is holding the bottom pulley. Pretty straight forward here. And coming off of this this is where I actually pull the weight. So we have a slightly less heavy-duty carabiner holding a couple of nylon straps. And this is where the actual pull movement is done. If we follow this rope up to the ceiling we can see that we have a similar type of situation coming from up top. Those bolts are on the studs and those bolts are on the studs. You definitely want to make sure that you hit the studs in the ceiling. I doubt that the hook is actually drilled into any kind of stud. But the wood does a pretty good job of keeping this in place. And as you can see there's the same pulley being held up here. The rope runs down through it. And also a couple nylon straps holding this is where the weight is actually held. Okay next I want to show you guys how I actually mount the weights into the strap system here. I won't be using a ton of weight. I just have 15 pounds here. Now this part may vary depending on what kind of weight you have. I had these both legs interchangeable dumbbell set thing. And so I figured the best way to have these mounted was to just have a strap coming up here. Let's strap coming up here and having the center point kind of right in the middle of the weight. If you're using free weights like if you have the round weights you might have to come up with just a rope that hooks through that center ring and holds it that way. But really you can use whatever you want for the weights. I mean you could use the second potatoes or a bag of sugar if you are so inclined. This is kind of the part where you get creative with it. And I'm not really including these in the actual cost of the build because this is kind of where the price varies drastically. Obviously if I was to account the price of these dumbbells in the cost of this build it would be dramatically higher. So the first thing that I do is I just mount one side into the nylon strap. I mount the other side into the nylon strap. And now we can see that it hangs pretty pretty evenly. It's not out of balance or anything and it'll just go straight up. It has a slight wobble to it but it hasn't been so much that it gets in the way of the workout. You can find these nylon straps probably in any automotive section of a retail store. I personally bought them on Amazon. I want to say a pack of eight of them ran about nine bucks so they were pretty cheap. You can see that the weight is pretty close to the ground here. And I made sure not to turn the rope too much. I wanted the system where I'd be able to adjust the length of the rope if I needed to. Like when you're doing like shoulder extensions you need more rope than less. I'll show you guys really quick just what the basic movement looks like. It's pretty simple. I'll just give a toggle on the bottom part of the system here. So you can see as I pull it out the weight goes up pretty straightforward. And you'd be surprised how many exercises you can do just with a two-point pulley system like this. So here's a pretty basic hamstring curl. I'm not using a ton of weight but this feel that just as effective as any hamstring curl machine that I've ever used at the gym. All right, this next exercise is also one of my favorites that I've been able to accomplish on this setup. It's a back rose, upper back rose. I increased the weight up to 40 pounds so you can see how much weight it can hold. Let's do a couple reps. One thing you'll notice is that there's really not that much friction on it. I mean, I don't know if you can hear it but the motion is really smooth and fluid. Probably could use a little more weight there. Another exercise that I've really been enjoying with this is side shoulder raises. I just had to buy one attachment. It's like the pretty standard workout grip here and I'll show you how it works. Feelin the burn man. Now this might have been an engineering fault on my end. The attachment point of where you typically do the pull-from can sometimes get a little bit too close to the weight here. So what I figured I could do was just take another nylon strap, tie it to the other one. And now we have 36 inches of space from there to here. And so when I do the pull-from here, I'm not really interfering with the weight here. And typically when I'm doing this on my own, I have this end of the rope sort of away from the weight so they don't actually hate each other. And of course we can't forget everybody's favorite bicep curls. So I got both of my grips here. Let's crank out a couple of reps. Felt the burn on those man. The last thing that I want to point out is that I'd say it's pretty important to get the right pull-ies and to get the right kind of rope. I bought these from REI, which if you don't know, they sell gear specifically for rock climbing. So I would buy pull-ies specifically built for rock climbing. I find that they're a lot smoother and they have a lot less friction, which is really important. The other thing that I'd say is pretty important is to get the right kind of rope. The first thing I experimented with was this half-inch generic rope that I bought from the hardware store. First of all, it was hard to tie the knots with this stuff. And I found that it had a lot of friction in it. So this was the second type of rope that I bought. I also bought this from REI. I believe it was called rock climbing accessory rope. So I don't think this stuff is meant to handle body weight when you're rock climbing. But for my purpose, it's been able to hold up as much weight as I have, which is roughly 100 pounds. And I've noticed that there's a lot less friction with this rope as well, which is really important. These are the first pull-ies that I tried to use when I first came up with this system. I bought these from the hardware store. I think they were like three or four bucks a piece. And these things were crazy loud. When I actually went and put the weight on these things, like they just made this horrible, streaching sound. But I think for a home gym, these just did not really fit the bill. I definitely recommend spending the extra five or ten bucks and getting the rock climbing specific ones. You're going to notice a really big difference in them. The other thing that you might be wondering is how sturdy is this system and how much weight can it actually hold? Well, I've been curious about that too. So I have a 100 pounds worth of dumbbells right here that I'm going to try to attach onto here. And yeah, we'll see if it holds. All right, guys, there you go. That is a hundred pounds right there. As you can see, seems to be holding it just fine. That was a strap just put going into place. I don't particularly want to lift this right now. I think I've done enough lifting for the past 30 minutes. But there you go. If you're curious about how much it can hold, easily a hundred. Let's do a really quick recap. So if you're going to build something like this, make sure you use heavy-duty carabiners and hooks. Check the weight rating on them before you buy them. If you know you're going to be using a hundred pounds, I mean, just buy double the weight rating just to be safe. It's not really going to cost you that much more. The carabiners and stuff, they're pretty cheap. And the hooks are pretty cheap too. They only run a couple bucks. Other thing to remember is make sure you drill into the studs. There's no way this kind of system would work strictly drilled into drywall. It's going to be a bad time if you only try to use the drywall. And lastly, just buy plenty of these carabiners. You're going to find that you're going to use these quite a bit. I've been surprised at how handy these things are ever since I built this system.