Pioneer Fit – Don’t buy OUR belt, buy YOUR belt

If you have bought a belt in the past 5 years and you didn’t at least LOOK at Pioneer Fit, I’d be surprised. Bought a belt from another company? There is a good chance they use Pioneer Fit FOR THEIR BELTS. Pioneer makes some of the cleanest and best looking basic belts on the market. And their custom belts? Don’t even get me started. Actually… Yes, DO get me started. Adding a Pioneer Fit Belt to your garage gym is almost like a right of passage for a powerlifter. Let’s dig in.

Who Is Pioneer Fit?

Pioneer Fit is a general leather manufacturing company. In simpler terms, they make stuff out of leather. This began and continues to put them at the top of the pack for powerlifting belts. But in recent years they’ve expanded their lineup to include wraps, straps, sleeves, shirts, and even accessories like cable attachments and dog collars.

Pioneer Fit began in 1979 and has been making top quality leather weightlifting belts and accessories the entire time. Think about that. There is a solid chance that they’ve been making belts longer than you’ve been lifting, probably longer than you’ve known what powerlifting is, and maybe even longer than you’ve been alive. Pioneer Fit is a company ran business, as Matt the current main dude in charge (you’ve likely seen his face show up on their Social Media) is the grandson of the original dude behind the curtain.

In the heart of Texas, Pioneer Fit is hard at work making USA made lifting products. You can see in their videos across social media, their team is ACTUALLY there, in Texas, putting belts together. From the cutting, tooling, and stitching. To the highly customized belts that come out of their shop. One of their philosophies is “Always be small enough to care, yet big enough to keep up.“ Pioneer is one of those companies you just want to support, because they embody so much good stuff into their company and products.

What do they make?

Most people will find Pioneer Fit first and foremost for their belts. Good reasons too. You can start off super simple and snag a Pioneer Fit Stock Belt. These come in a few different cuts and sizes, even a few color and finish options. But these are the “gateway” belts. Meaning, these are going to get you where you need to. They are going to help you hit that new PR while lifting better and safer. But they aren’t going to have any sparkle, pizazz, no somethin somethin. These are the best bang for your buck, because again, they 100% do what a belt should do, at the best price they can afford.

The Pioneer PAL (pictured below), which is a Pioneer Adjustable Lever belt, takes the downsides of a lever belt and makes them disappear. If you had any adjustments with a lever belt in the past, you needed a screwdriver to adjust it. Have a cheat meal the day before? Maybe its that time of the month? On a bulk or cut? Every time you fluctuate, you were adjusting that damn belt. Talk about a great way to get out of the zone for a big lift session, by having to bust out the tools and adjust your belt.

The PAL lets you adjust the belt in half inch increments for a total of 2 inches of adjustments with no tool needed. It uses the notches in the buckle to keep you locked in, but give you that ability to adjust as needed.

My personal belt has been around for close to 15 years. I’ve had to drill holes in it to accommodate my bigger size days, as well as adjustment holes in between to accommodate when I’m dropping weight. Otherwise, you have a Goldilocks situation where one hole is too lose, the other too tight, and nothing quite fits. With a kid, I also fluctuate based on how well I slept the night before. Allergies bugging me? Overheating problems? Time to size up!

The Pioneer Cut belt addresses this. It has half inch hole patterns so you can accommodate those fluctuations. Or maybe you just like your belt a little different between Squat, Bench, and Deadlift… this belt gives you the freedom to adjust at every half inch where you see fit.

The PAL and Pioneer Cut were the culmination of working directly with lifters to produce a solution to a problem. Lifters said “hey, this sucks”, and Pioneer Fit said “I got an idea!”

Custom Powerlifting Belts

Lifting Accessories and Gear

From there, you can get everything from wrist wraps and straps, to knee wraps, shirts, hats, and even dog collars. One thing you might notice, is they have a few truly one-off items.

Take a look at their wraps and straps and you’ll see once again that Pioneer works with some of the strongest people on the planet to address the needs of ACTUAL lifters. Not some Amazon carbon-copy company, but strong people fixing decades long issues to up their games in the gym and on the platform. Even their Pioneer Performance Shorts are made specifically for the lifter.

Their newest offering is their competition knee sleeves. These take some influences from several knee sleeve manufacturers that recently launched a completely new style of knee sleeve. They are using a much thicker and stiffer material, which lends itself to producing a bigger BOUNCE out of the hole in a squat. The more support, the bigger bounce, lends itself to a bigger squat. In my first attempt at wearing these knee sleeves, I squatted 10lbs shy of my all time best Raw Squat at with 500lbs, and rated it a 6 RPE.

Oh, and I had a sun burn on my back too which made the bar feel extra spicy. These things are NUTS. They can support a 10lb plate on top of them, which is just an absurd statement.

Why do people like Pioneer Fit so much?

If you scan through Pioneer’s social media, you’ll see people talking about ordering their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, even 5th Pioneer Fit belt. Sometimes it is because they want a different belt for different lifts. They might like a lever for bench, a 10mm for deadlifts, and a 13mm for squats. Or, they just want a new design from a company they like spending their money with. You could spend your money on much worse than an extra belt from Pioneer. But why do people keep coming back, again, and again, and sometimes again and again and again?

First, Pioneer Belts are some of the most well constructed belts on the market. Even their lowest priced belts will be something you hand down to your grand kids. Whether you oil it, care for it, and protect it like one of your kids, or cover it in chalk and ammonia and toss it across the room (hopefully you don’t do that to your kid OR your belt), it is going to come back for another workout the next day. Again, and again, and again.

Second, as mentioned, their belts are 100% American Made, and ran by a company that treats their employees well. You can rest easy at night knowing that your dollars went to a high quality product that also helped put food on the table of some hard working Americans.

Third, their involvement with athletes and powerlifting as a whole is second to none. I’ve seen their powerlifting prize pools before. They are well known for having some of the BEST support of the lifters, NOT the feds, of any company around. And as mentioned, their products are directly influenced by lifters themselves. Pioneer has been our Fall Non-Profit Belt Giveaway supporter multiple years. Every time I ask Matt, he replies with “Say less, I’m in”. You can scroll through their social media feed and they are regularly doing giveaways, raising money for quality organizations, and simply sharing the love. Their stance, support those than support you!

Last, but certainly not least, is their attention to detail. You can get an INSANELY customized belt with custom leathers, designs, fonts, all kinds of stuff. As Pioneer says “Don’t buy OUR belt, buy YOUR belt.” Brandon Campbell has a few custom belts and they are awesome. Adam at Garage Gym Lab has custom belts. JB at Garage-Gyms.Com has custom belts. Danny Tran of Infamous Strength has a custom belt. My wife has a custom belt. Their social media is littered with INCREDIBLE designs. Custom logos, levers, prongs, and so much more. They take pride in what they do, and it shows.

Ok, You got me… What Pioneer Belt should I buy?

If this is your first step into buying a belt, I HIGHLY recommend you watch the below video and read this FAQ. Matt covers how to measure, the typical answers for size, shape, thickness, everything.

My wife has a custom Pioneer Fit belt and we went with the pioneer cut. After trying a lever belt, I think she would have enjoyed that a little bit more. I on the other hand do NOT like lever belts. I own a PAL from Pioneer. It is an arguably awesome belt. It just isn’t for me. I would take a standard single prong belt any day. The PAL belt is my “when friends come over” belt. I say the above not to say that we have the wrong belts, but to show that this is a personal preference kind of thing.

What will likely happen… my wife will eventually pass down her belt to my daughter, and we’ll order her a new custom lever belt. I’ll eventually break down and land on a custom design and order myself a Pioneer Cut single prong.

If you have access to a friend who has a belt you can try first, go that route. If not, prongs are a bit cheaper and a bit sturdier in my opinion, but a lever is quicker, easier, and nicer for athletes who have troubles breathing with a belt on.

If you have no friends (sorry), I’d start with a simple belt. Buy the most basic belt you can, get a feeling for it, and see where you go next. You might just decide that that is your forever belt. Or you’ll decide to go fully custom down the road. Here is what I’d buy:

• Pioneer Cut Double Suede Powerlifting Belt
• Choose your size based on Matt’s video above
• Single-Prong-Pioneer Cut
• 10mm
• 3″
• Use code GGC to save 10%
  • If you want to go even further, they sales around July 4th and their Christmas sale around the Black Friday window

You can definitely customize the belt from here and choose different colors, embroideries, etc. My personal stance would be, keep it simple. Pick a color you like, with the specs above, and order it. Use it, test it, figure out what you like and don’t like, and then buy yourself something fancy. You can keep your first belt for guests, hand it down to your kids, give it to a friend, or sell on Marketplace and likely get most of your money back. Then order yourself your dream belt, because it is going to be with you for a LONG time.

Pioneer Fit Wrap Up (see what I did there?)

Pioneer has been a mainstay as a GGC Sponsor for multiple years. They keep coming back because we love having them here, and they love the garage gym community. When I’ve asked Matt why he keeps coming back for the GGC, he basically told me “because you do cool stuff and I want to support it”. That simple of a statement is why I think people choose Pioneer. They do cool stuff and people want to support them.

Pioneer is our Official Belt Sponsor for the 2024 Garage Gym Competition. This year they are tossing in TWO custom belts at the Spring and the Fall events. Plus, we have code GGC that saves you 10% on your order of everything awesome from Pioneer.

If you want a belt that is 100% YOUR belt and no one else’s, Pioneer Fit is the place to be. And again, even if you just want a basic prong or lever belt in black, Pioneer makes em clean, simple and effective. Their team is cool people, Matt is a fantastic dude, and their company is everything a solid company should be.

You can check out Pioneer here., and remember to use code GGC to save 10% on your order.