One could make a good case for certain pieces of gym equipment being worthy of applause as works of art or industrial design. But you rarely hear of gym equipment as being in the league of a well appreciated or admired bag, car, bike or wallet. But a few pieces readily stand out in my mind: 

The Watsons Dumbbells

Kabuki’s transformer bar 

Gungnirs Trapbar

Eleiko’s trapbar

Gorucks plate carrier 

Lacertosus stainless steel gymnastics rings 

Hyperwear sandbells 

Sorinex Centermass bells

RPM training’s pull up bar and jump rope 

Some of Technogym’s output too


At a minimum, well designed gym equipment has to live up to all of Dieter Rams’ 10 rules. And a few added ones too.

Good design should be adaptable to a variety of body frames, proportions and sizes without too much manipulation. And it should work just as well for everyone. 

And gym equipment should be unobtrusive. When you use equipment it should feel like you have distributed the load as evenly as possible as you handle it. 

One could say rules 5 and 8 captures both those aspects of gym equipment.