I know you’ve all seen the total gym exercise infomercials on late night TV, and thought, I should get one of those, so I can stay in shape at home. Everyone wants to get into or stay in shape, and we all want to be healthy and fit and look our best. Many of us can’t afford a gym membership, or we don’t have the time or want to take the extra time it takes to go to the gym, so it makes sense that the answer is to work out at home.
There are a ton of home workout machines out there, most of them costing over a thousand dollars. The high prices of the home machines don’t really do anything to help the people that can’t afford a gym membership, and most of the home machines take up a lot of floor space in your house.
My wife and I moved to a townhouse recently and downsized significantly from the house we lived in for over 20 years. I had a fair amount of workout equipment that I ended up selling and giving away. I needed something that I could use to work out and that didn’t take up much space, and I wanted a machine that was not outrageously priced. That didn’t leave me many choices.
I had a Total gym that I got about 15 years ago, and over the years I used it for lots of workouts because it was a great way of hitting all the body parts on one machine, and face it, who doesn’t want to be like Chuck Norris?
So I started looking at the new models of the Total Gym, they were pretty much the same as before, just looked a little fancier and cost a whole lot more money than the one I had. I kept looking because I really liked the concept of the machine and then I found the Weider ultimate body works machine.
I don’t know if you know the name Weider. The designer was Joe Weider, the godfather of muscular building, and designer of Muscle and Fitness and health Journal, and a whole line of cost-effective exercise devices made for the common guy.
So I see the device on Amazon and I start evaluating the 2 devices. The Weider device is $129, the nearest similar complete gym is $799, the more costly complete gym is $3500, and it can’t even do some fantastic things that The Weider device can.
The 3 greatest variations aside from the price that I really like are.
- The way the device creases up to enhance level of resistance allows you to easier use the device from both finishes at once, so it makes it less difficult to change from one exercise to another by having the feet panel and the bars on at once.
- I like the way the feet go into the middle part of the structure instead of foldable in 50 percent like the complete gym has to. It’s quicker and simpler to set up and take down.
- There are resistance bands mounted under the board that can easily be attached to the bottom to add up to 50 pounds of extra resistance if needed. I actually had to build a special piece to attach to the total gym to add weights to for more resistance.
I’m not saying there is anything wrong with the total gym, I loved my total gym and used it for literally hundreds of hours over the years, replacing the cable on it was not an easy task, the Weider machine looks like the cable is made to easily replace, I like that as well.
As you may guess, I got the Weider machine, it took almost 3 weeks to get because they keep selling out of it at Amazon, but I so love the free shipping, especially on something that weighs 70 pounds. It was worth the wait, I have had it for a week now and love the machine. I can get a really good workout on the Weider machine in about 30 minutes that tones and builds muscle and is a cardio workout as well.
I was somewhat skeptical as well when I saw the price, I thought, how can they make something of quality at such a low price? It could have to do with paying Chuck Norris I suppose, but the Weider machine is a quality piece of exercise equipment that I plan on using for many years to come.
Paul Hickman
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