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Power towers are popular fitness machines to improve physical health. Find out what accessories you can use to get even more out of a power tower.
A power tower is a type of fitness equipment that is mainly a combination of a pull-up bar, captain’s chair, and tricep bars in one gym machine. Some models add other attachments too.
Even with just the standard three components, there are a wide variety of power tower exercises. These can help you strengthen your muscles and offer the benefits that come with that. A power tower alone can definitely offer valuable advantages.
Even so, with the right power tower accessories you can make certain exercises more effective and/or comfortable, help you work up to certain power tower exercises, protect your floor, etc.
Depending on things like your training goals and budget, certain of the power tower accessories below can be a worthwhile investment.
1. Resistance bands
This first accessory is for both resistance training beginners and experts. Resistance bands are an inexpensive type of fitness equipment that are basically elastic cords. You can use resistance bands as a power tower accessory in two main ways.
For resistance training beginners, regular bodyweight pull-ups and dips may currently be too hard. If this is the case you can use loop resistance bands to do assisted pull-ups or dips to work up to the regular version.
You can do these assisted dips or pull-ups by attaching two ends of the resistance on each side of the dip or pull-up bar. After that, you sit on these resistance bands with your knees and do the exercise.
Individuals more experienced with resistance training may need to make these exercises more challenging to keep seeing muscle growth and strength progress.
To do this, you start by anchoring the resistance bands close to the ground or under the feet of the power tower. Next, you wrap the other end around your ankles and do the pull-ups or dips.
Some of the other benefits of resistance bands are that they are relatively inexpensive, usable in a variety of other workouts, easy to store, and very portable.
One downside is that resistance bands are not the type of fitness equipment you can use for the rest of your life. At least every few years you will need to replace the last set with new resistance bands.
2. Hand grip hook straps
This next option is more for the pull-up bar part of the power tower. Hand grip hook straps are a pull-up bar accessory that can help you relieve some of the tension on your forearms.
When doing pull-ups, or other exercises on the pull-up bar, sometimes your grip muscles fatigue before the target muscles of the exercise. This is generally not helpful for a lot of muscle growth.
Hand grip hook straps are wrist straps with a hooked pad to put your fingers on. The hook shape makes it so your grip muscles need to work less hard, the padding makes using your pull-up bar more comfortable.
Another benefit of this power tower accessory is that it is relatively inexpensive, especially compared to the extra training gains and comfort it can offer you. On top of that, you can also use these straps for heavy lifts.
Check hand grip hook strap prices
3. Protective gym flooring
Power towers can be a great piece of workout equipment but some potential downsides of certain models are that they move around and scratch your floor. Especially on floors made of more slippery material.
Your power tower moving around can be uncomfortable in the best-case scenario, lead to tilting in the worst-case scenario.
If it is not possible to attach the power tower to the floor or hold it down with weights, good protective gym flooring can be a good first step. While improving the safety of the workout, protective gym flooring also helps you avoid damaging your floor.
An additional benefit of protective gym flooring is that it can be used for all types of fitness equipment and machines.
A potential downside is that protective gym flooring can be relatively expensive compared to some of the other power tower accessories on this list.
Check protective gym flooring prices
4. Dip belt
As mentioned before, individuals more experienced with resistance training may need to add resistance to pull-ups and dips to make the exercises challenging enough.
A challenge for both weighted pull-ups and dips is that your hands need to be on the bar(s). This means you cannot hold any weights in your hands like with other exercises.
One way to overcome this challenge of making these power tower exercises weighted is by using a dip belt. This is a belt you can attach weights to that goes around your waist.
While the name implies otherwise, the dip belt is also a great equipment option to do weighted pull-ups. Another benefit of this power tower accessory is that dip belts are relatively inexpensive.
One potential downside is that you do need other weights to attach to the dip belt. Besides that, check the weight limit of the different models and your power so that your choices can hold the weight you intend to use.
5. Weight plates
Weight plates are plates made of heavy material, usually used for making a barbell heavier. Even so, weight plates can also benefit your power tower workouts.
The first way is by serving as extra resistance for the power tower exercises. You likely want to use weight plates in combination with a dip belt but in theory, you could also clamp one between your legs.
The second way is to weigh down a power tower to keep it from moving when using it. To do this you simply put weight plates on the legs of the power tower.
Weight plates are essential if you are serious about barbell exercises. You may already have some laying around in your home gym or think about buying these.
A potential downside of weight plates if you don’t have them already is that they require a relatively high initial investment. This may not be worth it if you only plan to do power tower exercises.
6. Ankle weights
Ankle weights are simply straps with some extra weight that are attached to your ankles. Similar to the previous power tower accessories for making exercises weighted, ankle weights are great because you don’t need to hold them in your hands.
Something more unique about ankle weights compared to the previous options is that the weight is strapped around your ankles. This makes them especially great accessories for the power tower ab exercises where you raise your legs.
Additionally, they can be used in a variety of exercises for many different body parts. Ankle weights are relatively inexpensive, easy to store, and very portable.
One potential downside of ankle weights is that even the heavy ones generally only come in light weights compared to many other free weights.
If you are more experienced with resistance training ankle weights may not be enough to make the power tower exercises challenging enough.
7. Rotating pull-up handles
Pull-ups can be done with different grips, with your hand palms in different directions. This will influence what muscles get targetted the most and how comfortable pull-ups are for your wrists.
For regular and reverse grip pull-ups you only need the straight pull-up bar that comes with most power towers. For a neutral grip or in-betweens, you need certain power tower alternatives or rotating pull-up handles.
These are simply rotating handles that you can easily attach to a pull-up bar. Once you have these attached you can do pull-ups with neutral grip, other unusual grip angles, or with a changing angle throughout the pull-up.
Besides the comfort and potential for different muscle focus, rotating pull-up bar handles are easy to attach, detach, and store.
Check rotating pull-up handle prices
