Powertec Leverage System Home Gym

I made a mistake of bragging to my wife that I need a serious home gym. So she simply asked, "why not those stuff you see on TV?" Well, the simple reason was most of them could not handle even one session with me. Some of them are OK for the price but many of them don't last very long with continuous use. How could they at the prices they are sold?

Instead of replying, I just gave her one of my steely stares. She calmly, with a smile and without even a hint of being disturbed by my stare suggested why don't we go out shopping for a home gym.

I knew something is up but I couldn't tell what. I thought, maybe I should practice my steely stare in front of the mirror some more. I went along. Me, the guy who loves to order his suit from a drive through window, went shopping and set aside a whole weekend for it. After all I claimed to be a serious athlete not to mention a personal trainer despite a few gray hairs here and there. And, this was to shop for home gym equipment and not a suit. Little did I know that this little shopping trip would open my eyes to a world of adrenaline rush, pumps, pain and satisfaction through powertec leverage system that I never thought possible with a home gym.

Certain that I could not find what I was looking for in general sporting goods store, we began our shopping with a detailed route of the location of the "specialty exercise equipment" stores in our lovely city of San Diego. I wanted the best home gym equipment ever and what better place to find it than San Diego.

Too preoccupied with my search I didn't pay attention that I had lost a lot of weight due to a recent illness and I still looked sick and with my glasses on I looked more like a geek than a jock. So the sales people didn't take me very seriously when I asked them to show me some heavy duty equipment.

They showed me some stuff that were, well, insulting, especially in front of my wife. So, at some point I asked a sales person point blank, "What is the maximum load for this machine?" He confidently said 240 pounds. I just sat on the seat and said, "load it up!" He looked at my wife as if to get her permission and somewhat reluctantly moved the pin to the bottom of the stack. I held the handles and moved the whole darn thing in one smooth move in absolute silence. No heavy breathing or grunting for me. Then set it down slowly, I asked the sales person, "Can this machine be modified to handle more weight since I want to work out not to warm up?"

Smug? I know, but I felt justified.

We left that store and in the car I gently massaged my shoulder, 240 pounds was a bit too much without warm up. I forgot the first rule of weight training. "Leave your ego at the door!" and I was paying for it. I kept it to myself partly because my wife loves me and worries about me and partly because of pride. Love is a precious thing that needs to be nurtured and pride can get us into a lot of trouble, can't it?

Before we take the next step, let's visit the idea of home gym system. I like to separate your ability and creativity from the equipment's design and functionality. Let me give you an example. Consider what your creativity can do with a simple dining room chair. You can put one foot on top of the back rest and stretch the hamstrings, you can work out your pecs and your abs by doing push ups on the back rest, you can increase the intensity by putting your feet on the seat and doing push ups with hands on the floor, you can hold the back rest and do one legged squats. Your creativity can transform an ordinary chair to an exceptional piece of home gym. But the chair is really not designed for this purpose.

I cannot call a door gym, a set of expensive dumbbells or a DVD set with a hand weight a home gym. So I had to really think about a definition of a home gym or at least a definition that I can live with. This is it!

Home Gyms is something that can fit in homes, it is designed to create resistance to increase muscle strength, it is designed to allow you to perform various exercises, it provides stations for you to perform these exercises, it is designed to guide your movement along a predetermined path for best results, it allows full range of motion with safety features to prevent injury, it allows you to increase resistance.

I often work in ranges of 200 to 300 pounds for chest and around 400 pounds for legs without any problems. I am yet to work with a client who needs more with good form. So the increased resistance has not been an issue. The quality of the material is equivalent or better than what you get in commercial equipment. The range of motion is somewhat limited in certain exercises since one end of the machine is constantly fixed. Also you need to load and unload it. For a serious athlete that is not a problem but it could be tiring for those who are not used to it and in heavy workout days, I really wish for a selectorized machine. Then I remind myself that selectorized machines are often poorly made and they cannot handle heavy duty use.