Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

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676
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ranked #21,483 most helpful out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
Excellent even at a higher cost
You won’t see this Total Gym on their website, but it’s made by the same company and seems to be very high quality. I’ve only had it five days now, but I will update this review if anything changes. Quality: Very high. Stated weight limit is 375 and I believe it. I’m 225, and this feels very sturdy to me while using. Tubular steel and attachments all feel very sturdy and high quality. Cables do too. Heavy duty pulleys as well. The pad on the glide board is not super-thick, but I don’t think it is on any of the Total Gyms. It’s not Trying to be a bed or couch. Experience: So far a big thumbs up. Glides very smoothly and the included exercise book and cards show you some creative and challenging ways to use the machine - a wide variety of exercises. The attachments fit perfectly, and I have total confidence they will support the weight as needed. It is pretty easy to switch the machine’s configuration to perform various exercises, and I like that it’s so quick, as it does not introduce an unintended cool-down time. I haven’t come across any configuration changes yet that take more than 15-20 seconds. The exercises are all super-smooth and non-jarring if you do them correctly. Great full range of motion. Setup: comes fully assembled. Several boxes to open that contain the attachments. Read the directions for how to “unfold” it if it’s not clear to you. Storage: no wheels, so if you plan to store it away a lot, you might not like that, but I just leave mine out unless I have company over. Opening and closing takes a minute to sort out, but it’s easy once you understand it. In the box: I went with this model over some others like the XLS mainly due to cost and the fact that it includes the leg rope, the wing attachments, the squat stand and the dip bars. Other stuff: Although it’s not included, this model does have the holes if you want to add the weight bar, so that was a nice plus to discover. That said, this is a tone machine more than a hulk-out machine. At the highest setting, you’re using 60% of your own body weight and I think if you add the weight bar it supports up to another 180 pounds (not positive on that though). So if you need more weight than that for your workout, this won’t really work for you. It’s also a long machine when open. Plan on having a good 10 feet available length-wise and, depending on the types of exercises you do, and how long your arms are, at least 5or 6 feet of width clearance. Overall, I am very happy and even impressed with this machine so far. Update 6 months in: Still love it. No complaints. Update one year: I added the optional weight bar. It is great for tweaking the “feel” of the resistance to get it just right. It’s still a great machine. I use it four times a week for about 30 minutes and over the year have dropped 30 pounds and greatly increased my strength. I’m surprising myself how easy it is to lift things I used to struggle with. The absolute best thing about this machine is how easy it is to change the difficulty. At one point, I had hurt my back working in the yard. I was able to set the resistance way back - all the way back to #2 - and still do some really light work while my back healed. No idea how I would have done that with most other equipment. And, if I had completely taken off the four weeks it took for my back to get right, I might have stopped exercising entirely. Instead, over those four weeks, I slowly moved from 2 back up to 8 as I could handle it. That’s a really great thing about this equipment that isn’t obvious at first.
April 2020 · Sports and Outdoors · verified purchase
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