By 

Benjamin Bretz (Reno, NV) –

  

I was a little leery of making this purchase. Normally, products that seem too simple for too reasonable of a price just never end up satisfying in the way you hope (e.g. The Dodge Neon, anything on Jack in the Box’s value menu, my two years at DeVry). But this? Oh. Oh, my faith has been restored in cheap American products.

Because, you see, kids. This is a WELL ENGINEERED cheap American product. Yes, a rarity. I was worried that it would be difficult to assemble. I was worried that it wouldn’t really hang from my door frame. I was worried that it would break under my underwhelming 155lbs. I was worried the Utah Jazz wouldn’t be able to gear up and start winning road games as the playoffs grew nigh.

I mostly worried for naught.

I assembled the Iron Gym Extreme in about 15 minutes. Probably could have done so a lot more quickly, but I was distracted by Boston Legal on DVD, and by gunning my power ratchet wrench at my cat to stop her from playing in the packing materials.

(Note: You do NOT need your own tools to assemble this product. It comes with a little tool. But you can speed up the process with your own tools. You should have your own tools anyway, you know? Be a man.)

Once you assemble the Iron Gym Extreme, you’ll need to pick a doorway. It seemed to fit all my doorways perfectly, but I have heard word of older houses having issues. You will need to insert a small metal wedge into the top of your doorjamb. This helps to secure the device and make sure it doesn’t fall on anyone’s head. It’s not as scary as it sounds, you just kinda shove the thing behind the wood. Then you kinda wiggle it and say “Will that hold it?” Then a few minutes later you say “Gol-darn, it WILL hold it. Ain’t that somethin’.” Should any friends be standing nearby, this would be an excellent time to exchange high-fives.

I then chin-upped. Well, I tried. God as my witness I had no idea I was such a puss. I had like no upper-body strength. I’m pretty sure I heard my cat laughing at me somewhere down the hall behind me, but the blood was thumping in my ears so I can’t be sure. But the bar sure worked!

I didn’t give up and kept at the bar. Now, no, several weeks later I’m nowhere close to entering any Ultimate Fighting Competitions or anything, but I can do buttloads of reps now, and my cat has stopped mocking me.

This product has been excellent. Buy with confidence.

The Utah Jazz, however, appear to be headed towards a first-round sweep at the hands of the L.A. Lakers.

Crap.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comments (131)

The big question when deciding to buy the Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar – Extreme Edition is…what will it do for you? Well buy this piece of equipment if you want to strengthen your upper body and stomach muscles. More specifically, you will be able to work your biceps (front of arms), triceps (back of arms), latissimus dorsi (the back muscle that give you that V-shape), pectorals (chest muscles), and abdominals (stomach muscles). Note I would not expect this piece of equipment to work any of your leg muscles- if used conventionally. Of course there’s a lot of accessory muscles that might get a little workout too, such as your forearm muscles, because you’re gripping a lot, and parts of your shoulder, but the major muscles that will get worked the most are listed above.

So how do you use it? You do a lot of the exercises hanging. Therefore, if you’re not into hanging on to things to get your exercise in, skip this piece of equipment entirely. The first big exercise you can do on it is the chin-up, where you’re pulling yourself up to the bar and then lowering. This will work you biceps and lats the most. BTW, chin-up, pull-up, they’re both the same.

You can vary the grip, more so with the extreme edition. Know that using a palms up grip is best when doing chin-ups, simply because you’ll be putting your biceps muscle in its most mechanically efficient position to contract- and so you’ll able to pull up more times than if you used, say, a palms-down grip. Try it- you won’t be able to do as many chins with your palms down, or in a middle position either for that matter. In fact, the palms down grip will work your biceps a lot less, so if you want bigger biceps, use a palms up grip! Switch grips for variety if you must- I’m just sayin’ what’s more productive and what works what the best…

The next big exercise is the dip. The dip will work your triceps and your chest muscles the most. Your front deltoid will get a fair workout as well. However, because the exercise is called a “dip”, and setting this thing on the floor to do dips doesn’t allow you to “dip” down very far, don’t expect to get much of a workout doing a dip with the Iron Gym.

Next is the push up. You put the bar on the floor and do push-ups with it- which will work the triceps, as well as the chest. This is a good, productive exercise, and the Iron Gym makes it harder than a regular floor push-up- simply because you are up off the floor and can lower yourself lower- which gives you more range of motion, a good chest stretch, in addition to making the push-ups harder.

Lastly is the sit-ups. You can put this bar on the floor to anchor your feet to help stabilize your body better to do a sit-up. Contrary to popular belief, if you are doing a sit-up with maximal effort (i.e. doing them until you can’t do another one), EMG studies have conclusively shown that your ENTIRE ab muscle is contracting. Sooo, know that you’re not working the “upper abs” more than the “lower abs” when using this device to do a sit-up- rather your whole abdominal rectus muscle is contracting at once and getting worked and stronger.

Okay, so those are the major exercises you can do, although I guess you could pick it up and make up a few of your own moves if you wanted to. A few details. Some people have had trouble with this thing fitting in their doorway. My advice is to just try it- if it doesn’t work, ship it back to Amazon for a refund and call it a day. If you’re so inclined, look at some of the other reviews that have given precise dimensions, get out your protractor, and measure away to be sure it will fit. For me that’s just way too much work…

Will this get you stronger? Absolutely- but only so much (which might be enough depending on your fitness goals). Anyone reading the strength training research knows that once you can do more than around 20 reps or so of an exercise in a row, you’re going to be building muscle ENDURANCE more than muscle STRENGTH. That’s the major beef I have with these kinds of pieces of exercise equipment- there’s no way to “easily” make the exercise harder over time as you get stronger and the exercise becomes easier. And if you can’t make the exercise progressively harder, the muscle isn’t stimulated to get bigger and stronger as time goes on which means you will reach a point where you’re simply maintaining – unlike exercise machines with a weight stack that enable you to gradually increase the weight to constantly challenge the muscle. Trust me, the guy in the YouTube Iron Gym video didn’t get arms like that by just doing chin after chin using just his own body weight. Perhaps he had a small child grab his legs as he did the chins, or had his girlfriend sit on his back as he did pushups…

Overall this is not a bad piece of…

Read more

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comment

Like many of the respondents, I looked around at a number of different pull-up bar options before purchasing the Iron Gym Extreme. I really had two major questions in my mind:

1) Should I get a basic bar, or a more complex (Extreme) bar? The simple answer is to ask yourself what you will be doing with it. The Extreme bar is the same quality, and has many of the same features, as the basic bar, with one important difference: grip variety. Not only does the Extreme version have additional, wider tri handles, but it also has wide lat handles, which I would argue give the best workout. Plus, the bar places you farther away from the door for some of the exercises, which helps for comfort and range of motion. If those are not important, I see no reason to not buy a basic model, but for the relatively small additional cost, I think you get more options, and better fitness benefit.

2)Should I get this, or a more expensive bar? I can’t attest to the other bars out there. I wanted to do P90X with it, and, well, they have their own bar. Is it any lighter, stronger, or more durable? Who knows, but the Iron Gym Extreme is well built and does everything I need it to do for much less cost. For all intents and purposes the two (and others) have the same look, feel and features, so unless there is compelling reason, why pay more? Like a lot of things in life, it’s nice to have “matching” items, but with this, there is no need. Use the extra cash to go buy some more protein shakes or something.

With the decision made, here are my general comments on the bar:
1) Assembly: Pretty easy. It came fully wrapped for protection, and all of the pieces fit together perfectly. The manual was essentially a diagram, but it was easy to follow. It even came with a little spanner tool to tighten the nuts and bolts, although I would probably recommend a proper tool to tighten it fully.
2) Build/contruction: Very good. Lightweight steel with a high quality painted grey finish. The nuts, bolts and washers are a bit lighter than I would have expected, but they appear to be strong enough for the job.
3) Set-up: Really easy. There is a small metal door wedge that slides between the wall and trim to keep the bar on the top of the door frame. While the wedge doesn’t appear capable of resisting much force when applied, it doesn’t need to, as it firmly does its job of keeping the bar on the frame.
4) Grips: Standard foam, but quite comfortable.
5) Weigh-bearing/noise: I am about 175lbs, and the whole bar feels really sturdy under my weight. There is no visible flexing of the bar when in use, and the only noise is from the slight rubbing of the foam pads against the frame when initially bearing the weight on the bar due to initial flexing. It is not at all concerning to me (it’s simply physics), and there appears to be no strain on the door frame, wall or joists.
6) Frame padding/marking: Some respondents seem to get scuff marks on their frames and walls, some do not. Personally, I have not seen any with a few weeks of use, but I expect that when the foam breaks down a bit with the friction that I may see some in the future. However, tape a piece of paper to the frame and you have solved the problem.
7) Other uses: I’m not about to do dips with it, but the handles are very useful for push-ups (similar to push-up handles, which cause less wrist strain and give a better range of motion), and I could see the benefit for securing the feet for sit-ups.

With that being said, here are some of the reasons I did not give it a full 5 stars:
1) The ab straps are not included. I knew this going in, and they are “free” with mail-in insert (can’t order online, which is odd), but at $8 for shipping, you might as well buy from the store at $10 and get them instantly. Honestly, they should just be included in the packaging.
2) The bar is designed for a maximum 32″ doorway. At 34″, it will still straddle the doorway with about 1″ overlap on each side of the frame, but I wouldn’t want to try using it. Again, I knew this going in, and I found another doorway that worked, but the extender bar is $10, plus $8 shipping. Really? Couldn’t it come with a longer bar to begin with? Most wheelchair accessible doors are 34″, and therefore the bar won’t really work with that door width right out of the box.
3) No wall chart or DVD (without paying more money to Iron Gym and waiting for the mail). Personally, I don’t need them, but for those without much experience, I feel it’s important to be taught correct technique and variety of exercise. For pennies per package, Iron Gym could have provided a great deal more product.

So, full marks for performance and “bang for the buck.” If Iron Gym weren’t so cheap on the accessories and modifications, it would be the perfect package. Most importantly, I am seeing results, and I was in very…

Read more

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comment (1)