Well Built and an Excellent Value
During High School and in the military I did a lot of weight training. Ok I'm not 16 nor 21 anymore. I'm now in my 40's and am an active cyclist and skier. I bought this machine based upon the Consumer Reports write ups (it was rated number one) so my wife and I can quickly and easily do some strength training. My key requirements were size Lat and Leg exercises and Durability/Quality. Only way to review this is to break it down a bit:
Assembly: A lot of parts Directions are passable but not great. Biggest problem I had was determining which bolt for which hole. It took a good 4 hours to assemble and I'm pretty good at this kind of stuff.
Customer Support: Had a plate break in shipping and it took under 2 minutes to get to a human being. (you deal with body solid directly for support.) He made note that a plate was broken and asked me to finish assembly and give him a call back to make sure I didn't need anything else. I finished up and had no other issues. Called back to his direct extenision and he drop shipped the plate from the warehouse. I'd say that was great service.
Exercises:
Leg Exercises - Leg lift for Quads is great. The standing one legged hamstring curl took a bit to get used to but given the small size of the machine I'll take it.
Bench Press - Very smooth and you get two hand positions one for more inner pec and the other for more outer. Downside is that the start position is a little far back but now that I think about it I may have the bench arm on backwards. Doh!
Lats/Back - This is where I believe this machine earns it keep. It provides a Lat pulldown and a seated row position. This was key to me and it performs as expected. (note I'm using this for toning and not body building. A 160 pound stack works for me.)
Shoulders/Arms - The curl bar thats included does has a static handle so its not good for curls. You will need to purchase a bar that has rotating handles. Since I use dumbbells for these exercises it didn't matter much. I'm ordering a single rotating curl bar so my wife can add some exercises.
Overall I'd say its a great value for someone who wants a smaller in home machine to cover a lot of exercies and wants to add strength training to their workout. If your looking to get 'Pumped Up' you'd be better with Free weights or a Gym membership. I looked for a used one but they didn't last very long and had a pretty high resale value. I am certainly happy with my purchase and now need to flip that bench press attachment around.
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