I'm not opening a new affiliate nor do I even own an affiliate, but working night work in a podunk town, you seem to find the end of the internet, and even better, everything CrossFit.com has to offer...so I'll give you a comment on what you should buy...The pull up bars, abmats, and kettlebells! CrossFit OTG - (shoutout Nick and Mark, I'll be back there eventually, don't give up on me) has a great set up complete with everything needed, however, my greatest results have been on that pull up bar. With the pullup bars, abmats, kettlebells and rope, you can get the most work outs for your money and the variations are endless.

Bars and Bumpers.

Strength, then strength endurance. Without bars and bumpers you are limited to bodyweight or very light, kb, movements. Or as we qualify them in CF "gymnastics". With bars and bumpers, you can hit all three elements of CF: weightlifting, gymnastics, and metabolic conditioning.

The best results I see with my athletes are those that have or work to develop a solid strength foundation.

My very next purchase would the pull-up bars, abmats, and kettlebells!

A belated "congrats" on becoming an affiliate CrossFit Ellsworth! Great job on making the A-blog...keep up the awesome work!

Bars and Bumpers. No hesitation on that one!

I agree with the comments above...bars and bumpers. If you had a couple bucks left over, I'd be making some homemade medicine balls too.

I would buy plates and bars first, then pull up bars, k-bells, and ab mats.

No question, bars and bumpers, but I'd be using my spare change to make PVC rings, so there's something to do pullups on.

Sounds like us! We bought bars and plates with our forst 1000.00

With out question....Bars and Bumpers!

Here in Oz I'd have to go for the 3rd option because I can't get the first two for under $1000!!!!!

Actually I may just sneak the bar and bumpers in if I leave out S & H.

C2 - $2k
Bar - $500
150kg of Bumpers - $500

I agree that a bar and bumpers are essential, but also expensive. If I _only_ had $1000 I would buy a pullup system, abmats, dumbells, power bands and stuff that I could use to train multiple people at a time. My next $1000 would go towards bars and bumpers. My next $1000 would go towards more bars and bumpers. My next $1000 would go towards more bars and bumpers...

Bars, bumpers.

And when it would be time to buy pull-up bars and kb's - I'd build the pull-up bars, skip the KB's altogether and get some more bumpers.

given the choices listed, i'd go bars/bumpers... but with only $1000- i'd probably get dumbells.

Hmm, it's hard to choose between 2 and 3. If push came to shove, I'd go with option 3 because of the pullup bar and KBs, but I don't feel as though the climbing rope or abmats are absolutely essential equipment to have when opening a box. I definitely wouldn't go with option 1, though.

Dumbbells! Again faster bars! Most bang for your buck. Can't get enough #'s of bars and bumpers.
Jen

Bars and bumpers for sure.

Just wanted to second the (belated) congratulations to CF Ellsworth.

LT Stellwagen, Say hey to my brother if you get a chance.

-Cad-idiot Lynn

I see wisdom in what Keith W. says...I happen to have just spent a 1,000 bucks and bought a combo of rings, MB's, a bar, bumpers and KB's. Luckily i'm crafty and will soon have an 8' high 10' long pull-up bar for another $300 pesos and some cervesa. It seems to me you can't have enough bars and plates soon enough!!! My next purchases are going to be nothing but bars and bumpers, bars and bumpers...with some MB's thrown in too!!! Props to Garage Gym store for finally making a good one that doesn't cost a freakn' C-Note!!!I appreciate the advice given yesterday about womens/smaller bars. A lot of my athletes are starting to be female and I need to accomidate them. PEACE, B

P.S. If anyone is giving away a rower I'd definetly be interested, otherwise it might be a while on that one...

Bars and bumpers. I simply cannot fabricate those easily or inexpensively.

I'm shocked that you guys would say bars and bumpers... I know its the cool factor of being able to drop weight, but what about the hierarchy of training.
Nutrition, metcon, gymnastic, then Weightlifting....
so since I can accomplish metcon and gymnastic with Pull-up bar system, climbing rope, abmats, kettlebells (although I would mix and match dumbbels because they are cheaper)I would pick those before ONE bar and One set of bumpers... thats only good for one person at a time.... and while I'm saving up for those bumpers I can use pvc/ DB's and KB's to perfect technique

I definitely agree with Dave H., though maybe that's because our fledgling (2-month old) outdoor bootcamp affiliate is off to a pretty darn good start with that stuff.

We workout in a park with a great set of pull-up bars (can have 5 people on there at once) and parallel bars for dips, so there's that. We have kettlebells, abmats and sandbags ranging from 30lbs to 50lbs.

Obviously we do a lot of metcon stuff out of necessity, but my folks are definitely getting lean and strong with our setup thus far.

Given that we plan on moving into a box by March or so, our setup is temporary. Nevertheless, the no bars/bumpers route is definitely doable to start out if money is limited. Given our sign-up rate so far, by the time we get in our box, there will definitely be enough money onhand to set up a few quality bar/bumper stations.

$1000 bucks - that's a bunch of money! Weld up the pullup bars or go with AgainFaster setup, buy abmats, buy a rope at the hardware store, buy a couple of irrigation boxes at Home Depot for box jumps, bag KB's and buy used DB's off Craigslist, spend 20 bucks for Coach Ruts DB moves. I can get alot of mileage out of DB's, both as a replacement for KB's and a stand-in for Oly bars/plates.

But I do love a rower - bought both of mine off Craigslist for under $500.

Dave - because once you work with bars long enough and learn how to properly teach basic lifts and olympic lifts you will find that they're unparalleled in developing your athletes.

The reason I was so amazed by the Olympic lifts was due to the simple fact that compared to gymnastics - they're fairly easy to coach/learn yet the carryover to CrossFit is simply short of phenomenal.

We worked and continue working with Nationally ranked weightlifters and a young guy who's competing in the international arena and what we found was that they are really good at anything you throw at them from the get go.

Like a 4-6 Diane @ 130-170 lbs by several guys from the get-go as their first CF WOD.
Muscle ups without even having taught them how to kip, etc.

Since then after incorporating quite a bit of weightlifting in our programming - everyone is much stronger, faster and their CF performance is shooting through the roof!

And look at Josh Everett's King Kong - Olympic lifting background is a solid, functional base that excellent CF performance can be build upon.

I have not seen such carryover from medballs and pure metcon.

Strength/Power training is essential and unless you have some freaky amounts of adjustable dumbbells - you can't match barbells with anything else.

Go with craig's list and get them all :0) Then as you get more and more clients start adding slowly to your collection.

That sounds strangely familiar to me. Having just opened up our box 5 months ago, I had only slightly more than 1k to open the doors up with.

I went with pull-up bar system, homemade med balls, PVC, 2 used squat stand, homemade plyo box, dumbbells, used C2 rower, 1,000lbs of used CAP weights, cheap CAP bars, homemade parallets and Iron woody Bands.

We saved $$$ for 2 months and bought better bars, 2 sets of bumpers and dynamax balls.
I have seen more gains in strength and fitness of the clients since I got the bumpers and bars, but would get them second if I had to do it again. I knew that the clients I was starting with would need lots of scaling, so the cheaper weights and bars were adequate, but not perfect.

Hey if it was up to me I would buy a Concept2 all the way!! We at C2 have mouths to feed around here. Where's the LOVE! - Greg from C2

Okay, go I have $1000. My answer: None of the above.

For $1000, you can get more than you think.

A pull-up system, using steel schedule 40 pipe can be put together for a $200. (2 x 7', 3 x 5', one end bolted to wall)

For $550 you can get a bumper plate set from the Garage Gym store.

So we are up to $750.
A set of Rogue Rings is $77, up to $827.

Two kettlebells from GGS, a 1 pd and a 1.5 pd is another $145. $972.

You have $28 to spend on wood and screws for a poly-box.

I think the question is if you were opening an affiliate, not if one of US had to train one domain, which would it be. We have to build a client base. We need to attract them to CrossFit. We need them to keep coming back. I would get it so I can do a little bit of this and keep those clients coming back, plus attract clients that are good at SOMETHING.

But I don't run an affiliate and I suck at anything with a barbell, so take it for what it is worth.

Buy the bumpers. The other equipment can be made very inexpensively & the kettlebells aren't needed, just don't program Helen and you're good to go. The basic barbell lifts & O-lifts will give your athlete's an unparalleled stimulus.

Lenoid S. I am going to have to agree with Dave and say that pullup bar etc would be best...why?

If you look at the fundamentals of crossfit and what is fitness they say we want to develop a work capacity across broad time and modal domains. That said - they best way to do that is execute functional movements at a high intensity. FxD/T=P and Power is directly equal to intensity - intensity is the secret to the good stuff right?

So with a pure beginner to create a high intesnity workout the load must be low or even non existent. You can give a killer workout to a beginner by doing over head squats/snatches with a PVC. They are still moving a lot of weight (their body weight) over a long distance in a short period of time...and for them it is extremely intense.

You are talking about Olympic lifters going over to crossfit. Well most lifters are already tremendous athletes which already have a good grasp of the 10 general physical skills, cardio resp. endurance, strength, stamina, flexibility, power, speed coordination, agility, balance and accuracy. Ofcourse they will be good a crossfit, and taking any average crossfiter and working on power and speed will make them better crossfitters.

But for a beginner or below average crossfitter I would say the best way to get better would to develop the physical skills through intense metcon workouts and working technique for the heavy lifts with a PVC. This will help when the load does get heavy because of the hierarchy ----- first technique then consistency then intensity.

Lets not forget the founders of crossfit are "fitness whores". If starting beginners with Oly lifting or strength training is what worked...then they would recommended on how to get started.

Thanks Kyle! We miss you over here and are looking forward to having you back whenever you're ready.

Cool pic - Ellsworth and congrats!

As for the question - There are no subs. These are your options and pick your best.

It's a no brainer for #3 - especially if you're a new affiliate about to open your doors.

You can teach the OLY lifts w/ KB's(clean, jerks, and snatch) use the pull up bar to no end and just plain get more use out of those items when it comes to more than 2 clients. If you only had 1-2 clients maybe go with the bumpers and bars. But this is unrealistic. You can't do half the CF workouts without a pull up bar and some weight(KB's) to move.

Pull-up bar system, KB's, etc. Without question. It appears that a number of affiliates want to put the cart before the horse. All of the equipment is essential but the question posed was regarding opening your doors, which would suggest new clients to CrossFit.

As affiliates, we're absolutely required to develop athletes through a hierarchy of development that starts with nutrition, metcon, gymnastics, etc. Weightlifting is near the top, since it takes a large degree of athletic development to achieve competency.

I would go:
1) Bars and weights (to build the foundation of explosion, hip extension, and coordination)
2) Pull-up bars, climbing rope, abmat and KBs (to build the next step of pull-up)
3) Rower (only one person could be on that at a time)

PS look at those white legs!

Skip the C2. Nice to have, but expensive and too single use when you don't have everything else.

Most places have a door frame you can use for pull-ups. I'd seriously look at getting rings though. Then spend the rest on bumpers/bars.

Note that your $1000 won't get you too far with bumbers/bars. If you want to run classes for more than one person at a time forget about them. At least with body weight stuff you can can get a couple sets of rings and a few boxes, which allows larger groups (if you work in rounds - which means no PRs, but perhaps a TeamR).

Either way, until you get enough bumpers and bars (you don't need compelte sets of bumpers, just enough), plus the rings/kb system you better be putting a lot of your income into that.

pullup bars, kettele bells, abmat and rope. I would also buy some bands so I could immediately start all females on pullups. Bars and bumpers would be next.

For those that asked why we'd go with barbells first:

1) More potential for absolute strength.
2) More potential for absolute power.
3) Equal variety in metcon.
4) Still an excellent selection of gymnastics movements available without rings/chinup bar.

Simply put - the barbell is the most versatile piece of equipment on the face of the planet and I would take it above anything else in a heartbeat.

Bars and bumpers all the way. Then the pull up system. I just bought the Sorinex Base Fit (half diamondback) system and I love it.

What a more perfect blog. I just left my full-time CF Training job at BTB Fitness in Atlanta to go back to corporate america in Baltimore. My students & trainers gifted me $1600 to purchase equipment. We already have 2 sets of rings, a place to attach self-made pull-up bars, so with only $1k I'd go with one set of weights, a few DB's, some med balls and start saving for that rower!

Bars and bumpers but that is only $550 or so. After that spend the extra on rings and dumbbells.

Comment # 20

Word indeed!

I like the way you think!

tucker

Option #3.

Pullup bars, KBs, etc.

Master gymnastics before weightlifting. And I think if I were stuck on a desert island and could only bring one (1) thing with me for exercise, it would be a tossup between a pullup bar and a kettlebell.

Tempting to say bar and plates, but I think for an affiliate it would be more useful to have a multi-person pullup bar station, as well as multiple kettlebells, abmats, and the rope always fun. You can run more people through classes that way.

Plus, without a squat rack, you're limited to DL, c&J and snatch. If your clients aren't already athletically inclined, it's going to take a while until you can get them doing Oly lifts. And I have had clients who couldn't DL a 45# barbell when they started, so for those type of clients a barbell and weights won't help anything.

I would change out the rope for a med ball though - preferably 10#

I would go with Bar, bumpers and pull-up station.

I realize this was not an option, but there are ways you should be able to do this.

Greg

Love the C2 mate but at $2k in Australia, it's our most expensive piece of kit. Even more than a months rent!

What's with the huge price down here anyway?

That said, I'll still have 6 of em!

B-H,

You're right about the broad time and modal domains. But I think that makes a bar and bumpers more important. Very few of the items mentioned in #3 are actually indispensable. Abmats...just have your clients bring a rolled up towel, or just do plain sit-ups. Kettlebell...you can use barbell plates instead. Granted, they're a little more clumsy, but the essentials are there. Climbing rope...just do towel pull-ups. Pull-up bar...tree branches and playground equipment work well for substitutes. I do think pull-up equipment is important. If a nice pull-up bar is too expensive, just buy a few sets of rings. I bought rings because you can use them for pull-ups, dips, push-ups, and a host of other exercises.

So there are lots of substitutes for #3 equipment, but it is very difficult to substitute anything for the function of a barbell. I've tried using 2" PVC with some metal plates, but there is absolutely no comparison. And almost nothing scales like a barbell. (The possible exception being a sandbag. But changing amounts of sand is still a pain.) The ease of slipping a few more plates onto a barbell is simply unmatched by anything else I'm aware of. And this translates directly into broad time and modal domains. If all you have is bodyweight, you can't go heavy. A good barbell lets you run the whole range of domains.

Scaling options are greatly increased with barbells. Of course you train technique with PVC first, but you can only do that for so long. Then the first thing you need is a 15lb barbell, and you scale up from there. Yes, a squat workout will be plenty for a beginner. But how do you ramp up the intensity? Start having them do thrusters. What do you need for that? A barbell.

But also consider that beginners might not be the only clients a new affiliate will get. They'll probably get at least several very fit clients who need a barbell to keep their intensity up. The fact is that barbells can scale to anybody, and most calisthenics can be performed without equipment. The only exception to this is pull-ups. So my advice is to start with barbells and pull-up equipment.

I started with a an olympic barbell set from Dick's Sporting Goods for $100, two 6'x4' rubber stall mats for $100, and a pair of rings for $75. After a few months I bought a squat rack. With this equipment I could do the vast majority of main site WODS.

I would spend it on .....MARKETING!

Here's why.

After I have my 30 clients in the door within the first 30-days, I would take the additional monies earned and by all the equipment I need.

Just a different take on priorities in my humble opinion.

Bars and bumpers. That was easy. Next question.

You can do pullups on monkey bars at a park.

Post 41...! R U friggin crazy! LOL

tucker

PS - you cant eat buzz!

option 3.

rowers are over-priced here in aus, can do everything with the 3rd option.

Matt hunt (#41) hit it on the head. Marketing is key! but I would do as much free/cheap marketing as possible.(Internet, Networking, put business cards up at coffee shops, etc. oh and pray for clients, absolutly free)

I like what dave maxwell had to say (#27)
Because the bottom line is in spending your money you need to be creative, be crafty, do your research and work hard! If you do these things you'll do great!

I started in a park with my clients bringing there own dumbbells and yoga mats and like comment 42 said we did pull ups on monkey bars. We did a lot of crossfit "W.O.D." that were Gymnastic/MetCon like "Cindy" or "Murph" and Other personal recipes that got clients their desired results and kept them coming back and put money in the bank.

So with a little creativity and good cash management you'll have everything you need in no time.

Aloha and God Bless

Crossfit is Barbells and Pullup Bars.

Everything else is fluff.

It's a tie between Barbells/Bumpers and Pull-Up bars.