Ultimate Guide to Building Your Own Lever Arms

Today, I'm going to show you how to turn any pair of basic lever arms into the ultimate space saving machine simulating solution. Lever arms can be an extremely useful and versatile staple of your home gym with the ability to simulate a ton of different machines in different planes of motion, different strength curves with different grips, connecting bars, attachments and much more. In 2025, now there are just so many options for lever arms once coming out soon and just some really great attachments that truly unlock the full potential of what we really always wanted these to be for home gyms. So I want to walk you through some of the current offerings and I'm going to tell you how you can build these out to suit your needs and your training. So let's check it out. Hey guys, this is Michael with the Jungle Gym Reviews.

Love them or hate them. You've probably heard of, seen, used or currently own sitting in a corner, a pair of lever arms. Lever arms, I think, are becoming cool again in the year 2025 because we have so many options for attachments and things to make these just easier to use, move, make exactly to our needs then existed in past years. And before I get into the video, you can quickly hit that subscribe button below if you haven't already. It's going to continue to help us grow the channel and make sure you get notified when we post two times a week reviews throughout the rest of 2025 and all next year.

And as always, if you're interested in checking out any of these products after the review, please check out the links in the description below. I'm going to show this on a three by three one inch hole lever arms build. This obviously applies to three by three, five eighth as well.

Two by two or two by three might not apply to as much strictly because of the after mart attachment support or maybe lack of support. For the sake of this example, I'm actually using one from SMAI. It's a company out of Australia. Traditional lever arms mount in just a singular location to your rack and they just have a swivel in and out. Some sort of multi grip handle just like this one. This is the included handle. It's typically got a weight horn on one side and a couple of different grips for you to use.

You'll have two sides. So now you get two different arms with two different multi grips, which in itself is very functional for different dynamic movements, pressing, sometimes pulling, but there are so many limitations to lever arms. Well, the first step in building out your lever arms and the most important step is to get these.

These are the vendetta strength lever arm adapters. You have to have one of the compatible brands though. So before you go buying lever arms, make sure you have rep, rogue, Titan, Belzesteel, Sorennex. I think those are the ones that are compatible. Check out the website with the link in the description below. If you're interested, Britain from a dentist rank was the first person to come up with this idea. Essentially, it's a multi point locking system slash mounting system for the lever arms.

So cool and thoughtful. You see all these holes, slots allows you to put some sort of D10 pin in here and now start the lever arms from different heights, store it in different heights. So it's up out of the way.

The other part of how the magic happens with this is the bracket that mounts the rack itself. Front part again, let's say the stoppers. The back part is going to be the actual trolley system. So a trolley system, meaning there's actually four UHMW rollers that allow you to slide this up and down the rack.

So now the terribly awkward lever, big, awkward metal bracket handle that you almost lose a finger to every time. You can now roll this up and down your rack. It's fixed to the rack. So anywhere up and down your uprights, you can store it. And then once you find a place to store it, you can pick whichever height you want to start it from with this little stopper.

And boom, you're good to go. This concept in and of itself completely changes the game for lever arms because now you don't have to spend five minutes lugging, un-lugging, double locking, again almost pinching your finger with the original lever arm bracket. You just quickly slide it up and down. And then if you want to store it up out of the way, you can do something like that. So your lever arms are like almost ready to go, but then you could still potentially, depending on the height of it, bench from below it or use the rack or get in and get out so it's not hitting your head. Literally just changes the game for how you can store the lever arms on your rack itself and move it up and down. Step two then is going to be ditching this original integrated handle and weight horn. Because this is three by three, because it's a square post and it has all the holes, you can mount something like this, which is a bolt-on weight plate horn adapter. This one is from CFT Performance.

I think I've had this for like three or four years. Now because you have a weight horn on here, you can load the outside traditionally, but the other benefit of a weight horn is you can also mount it vertically if you want, depending on which specific movement you're going to do and what you want the loading profile to be or where it needs to go. So for instance, if you're doing a movement, let's say like a belt squat where you're standing over this or you need to somehow have your feet or something on both sides or some other movement where you want all the weight to be perfectly centered up and down, you would want the weight horn on top. So having a pin slash hole mounted singular weight horn just gives you a lot more customization into how you load the arm. There's also a ton of other companies then now make these single bolt mounted weight plate sleeves on Amazon, where you can get them last eye checked for anywhere from like 50 to 80 bucks. I think Rogue Fitness sells them, Rep Fitness sells them.

A lot of companies offer these single bolt hole mounted weight horns. At the end of the day, they function all pretty relatively the same. Then how do you use this thing? Well, you need some sort of handles. The original, the OG, the mutant metals, knurled straight handle, and these became so popular that eventually Rogue bought them.

So that's awesome. This is the actual 15 inch version from Rogue and you can choose whether or not to also buy with it this Rogue knurled knob, which is my favorite locking option for any one inch threaded attachment because it's got this little like plastic washer built into here, which is super great. Now you have a fixed, nicely knurled solid handle to your lever arm. This allows you to do things like pressing any angle, any movement. Obviously the traditional is going to be some sort of military press, bench press, but the cool thing again about these Vendetta arms, you want to just store them out of the way.

You want to use it like a pull up bar potentially, slide this higher up here, store it way out of the way. Right here, we already have unlocked 70% of what lever arms can do. You can be absolutely go nuts with the handle options, which change exactly how this is going to feel. So a straight handle for most people, that's plenty. So Rogue Fitness, I believe, was the first one that I was aware of that had this articulating handle option and they had it for their straight handles.

I used to own a pair. Well, Rory from Roman Strength came up with this idea, the same concept, but it rotates fully 360 degrees, something the Rogue one did not. In addition to the fact this rotates 360 degrees with some bearing washers inside here, so very smooth 360 degrees. The handle itself also rotates. So you have a handle that rotates in space for your wrist and a bracket that rotates in space, which then allows where you're exerting force to just go naturally with how best suits your body and the natural arc of the movement. So if you want to press a little bit forward, want to go a little bit backwards, want to change your wrist angle, you could do all those things with these handles and it just feels exactly how it's meant to be stacked gravitationally over your body based on how you're moving your limbs, your torso, your leverages, everything. This is one of the handles I would say I would actually recommend as a starting point if you want just a straight handle. But now in the last few months, he came out with something even better, which is this holy handle, which is the exact same concept as the Megalith handle, but neutral grip options. And if you'll see here, like we saw at home gym con, you can mount it on an angle. And now you have a 45 degree angle handle for pressing, pulling with the exact same concept.

So that's really cool. The neutral grip in particular, I really, really like for pulling movements. Now one of the other cool things about handles like this, and I will say handles are completely subjective based on your needs and your training. So whether it's a fixed handle, you don't want it to rotate, mutant metals is perfect. I've also used JD Jim equipped handles in the past, another good company that makes neural handles. So one of the things that I like to do, you can attach carabiners to this to be able to do things like swivel movement. standing lateral raise like this. And it's nice because the whole point of lever arms is it gives you that machine like feel because it has a fixed path and a fixed lever. So I like this now because this articulates and this spins slightly. I'm on a like semi fixed path for a lateral raise which feels so, so good.

And you can just load these exactly however you want. Before we talk about loadability, the other option that I don't have here but I have opted for in the past because either fortunately or unfortunately I've owned like four different pairs of lever arms is a Kaizen slash Gympin articulating slash free motion bracket. It's another adapter that goes into this lever arm Vendetta adapter that not only then allows it to go up and down but allows it to be either two things, free motion swinging side to side or lockable in different angles. I've recently done a review of the iron bowl lever arms which they have something similar where you can have it in like a free motion mode and use them in a little more creative dynamic way but still have that fixed lever arm path. I had those before on my last pair of lever arms and while they were great functionally, I don't think they're really worth the price as far as what you can actually do with them unless you really have a specific need. I found that now with the advent of the Roman handles and some upcoming handles that we saw at home GymCon from Vendetta strength and athletics that are gonna allow I think 10 or 15 degree increments. That's one of the biggest reasons why you'd get these Kaizen Gympin adapters is you want just a little bit different handle than just a straight handle.

So I just have foregone those on this pair and I have no regrets. The other thing you have to consider when all this is a lot of people, myself included are trying to save space at the end of the day. So you want this low profile, you wanna be able to store it like this or up out of the way.

Those Gympin and Kaizen brackets add another about like eight to 12 inches of length on the lever arm. Something to consider that although they work, there's an added downside of increase in space, obviously increase in cost. And in my opinion, for me personally, there's just not that proportional increase in functionality and value. So after you pick your handles, after you pick the different ways to load it, after you pick whether you wanna swivel bracket or not, and all those other things, there's still a million more things you can do to be extra when it comes to these lever arms.

At some point, I think it's kind of a diminishing return on investment. But if you have a small footprint and you're just looking to maximize the crap out of that, lever arms and lever arm attachments, plus maybe like some sort of small profile cable system is gonna be the way to go. Couple different ways I've seen people go nuts with, ah, you know, I like lever arms, but the loading curve or something doesn't ever feel right to me.

That's where I've purchased these CERT Plus Strength Stealth Spotters, so that you can use them as spot arms, yes, but you can also mouse them onto your lever arm, grab another weight horn, multiple weight loading horn points so that you can bias the strength curve exactly how you want. So if you wanna start a movement from, let's say here, in some sort of rowing fashion, we could bias the top end of the movement with weights like this, which means from the start, it's gonna be a lot harder. So if I'm doing a row, this is gonna be a lot harder from the start right here, or I can make it even by loading weight horns evenly across. So now the entire weight curve, strength curve of this should be a little more even, or if for whatever reason, you want just the end of the range of motion, so once this starts to come out a little bit more to gravity, you want the end to be a little bit harder, that's what you do. So there's not as much resistance here at the bottom, a lot at the top, so you can basically modulate the resistance curve, the strength curve with something like this.

I particularly like these because they don't take up a whole lot of space or a whole lot of holes, more than three or four holes on the lever arms. So that's nice. So this will be one of the ways you can get a little bit extra. The other ways you can get a little creative are things like band pegs, which are always typically included in your rack and can be very helpful. You can put band pegs on different areas, depending on how Xigen you want to modulate by the strength curve. I've seen people, and I've actually even used them on the inverse for pull downs because pulling movements are hard because it doesn't really work due to gravity and the lever arms. And the lever arms are starting up, you want to pull down, gravity only goes down, so you can't really do pull downs with the lever arms with plates, but I've configured ways to do them with heavy, thick rogue bands like these. You could figure out how to set them up with band pegs so that you're pulling against bands to do things like seated dips, pull downs. So you can do things like band pegs, which are always pretty easy to load bands and modulate the resistance how you would like. Or if you want to get a super fancy, that's where things like the Vultras come into play. And I now think these completely, completely changed the game for lever arms because you are now no longer just fighting against gravity. The Vultra for those who don't know is a five to 200 pound cable system in a small profile, depending on the different kind of mounts you get.

I've gone over in different videos, I'll link below, but you can attach this to any part of your three by three rack. I've found creative ways to do things like some sort of standing chest press, very similar. It's like a Dynabody or others that you've seen where your back is supported and you're pressing almost in like the lower decline fashion.

They feel fantastic. I've done things like mounting these up above and doing the hammer strength style pull down. You just have so many creative ways you can now load these arms. If instead of plates, you just want to drive them with cables.

The only thing you need to find is how you attach cables to them. I personally like to use the Rogue Monster post attachment. Again, that's what's nice about all this one inch hole stuff. I leave mine pretty much permanently mounted in here. It's got a knurled knob on the front, a knurled knob on the back, a little detent pin to make sure your knurled knob on the back never comes off, a carabiner or a post on the front. Now you can attach this to pretty much anything you want. You want to hook it up to a holtra and you say, oh, well, I don't like it mounted here. I want it mounted here and I want the cable closer.

I want the resistance to start at this place and I want the resistance to be this weight. Now you can just absolutely modulate to your heart is content with this. What a fantastic time to be alive. Now you're just building your own machine and that is what's so enticing about all this.

Yes, there is a initial cost, upfront cost and all this, but long-term you have the ability to mimic literally almost hundreds of machines. The only other one that is not available widely, but it's something you can do at home as well, is something that's a little more DIY and that is going to be my dual connected bar. This was a, I believe from Titan Fitness, adjustable pull-up bar for a 5 eighth further T3 rack. And what I did is drilled out a little more clearance on the inside of these brackets. So it was now a one inch hole. It was very close before, but then I was able to put a one inch hitch pin on here. And then I was able to insert this bracket and the hitch pin into the three by three hole. I drilled out holes for the D-10 pin, put in my D-10 pin. Now I have a safety lock. I have a one inch hitch pin holding it here.

And I have these brackets, even though they don't go the full length of here, they're still mostly catching it. When both arms are together, I can do things like use this bar as a foot support for leg press. I can use it as a back support for squats, pendulum squats, calf raise, anything you want. Now I've just connected the two bars to one. So now I'm simulating a straight bar across.

It doesn't get much better than that, to be quite honest. One of the last things I would suggest is a leg roller or pad attachment. A bunch of different companies make them. I'd use this as a back pad for pendulum squats. You can use it as a knee pad for calf raise. With lever arms, you can literally just, whatever you can dream of and whatever you can think of, you can use this for. So I highly recommend some tools like this.

These are great additional add-ons. The last thing I would say is going to be something like a lat seat and or a chest support pad. So I personally like the Darko lifting fresher pad.

It's a pad, mounts here. You can do, use it as a chest support for things like chest supported rows to be able to do dumbbell rows. You can also then use this as a back support pad if you ever want. Or in this case, it's perfect to be used as a lat seat. Move this to flat.

Move this lower. And now, assuming you have a Voltro or a cable system or something, you're now using this for pull downs. Or again, you could even just use it as a seat for shoulder press, something like that. So man, I mean, the fact you can adjust the arms to any angle, you can lock them.

The fact you can use different handles. You can decide how you want to load it just according to gravity with the weight horn. Do you want it evenly distributed on top? Do you want it on the side?

Which specific lever do you want with the Vendetta bracket? Do you want to start high, low? Do you want to store it up out of the way?

Do you want to store it low out of the way? Those are the pros in all of this. Simulating any machine, small flip-rit. The cons are going to be the price. It is not cheap to do this. Cost about $500, $600, $700 for a base set of lever arms. Then if we're talking weight plate holders anywhere from 50 to 100 to 200 to 250, then you start talking about handles, things like the mutant metals, somewhere in the $100, $150 range.

Roman strength handles or even a little more. The Vendetta brackets themselves are about $400 to $500. So now you're talking about $1,000 for a base pair of lever arms plus Vendetta brackets. Once you add the handles, maybe the plate horns, you're at about $1,500.

Things like a seed or the little post attachment for the carabiners or leg holders. Now all that in, you're about $2,000 all in. And $2,000 is not cheap, but I will say is a worthwhile investment if you like machines and or want to use machine to your training.

Because if you don't, you don't need any of this. Go back to the old adage that people say, weight is weight, you just need dumbbells, get a barbell. Yes, I understand that is one way approach to weightlifting strength training. But if you like machines and or you just want to maximize functionality in a small space, lever arms are truly one of the best ways to go. So that's it for today's guide on the best way to start building out your lever arms, just who your needs. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below.

I'll be happy to answer or at least try. Thanks for tuning in to the Jungle Gym Reviews. We'll see you next time. Take it easy. Peace.