Bowflex Ultimate XTLU Home Gym [Discontinued]

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Bowflex Ultimate XTLU Home Gym [Discontinued]

Overview

Take fitness to a whole new level with the Bowflex Ultimate. It's one of our most effective machines giving you an incredible leg, ab and upper body workout.

More Info Click Here

Customer Review

I purchased this product just after Christmas 2007. It's now one year later, and I still use the Bowflex 3 days a week. I'm rating it 5 stars after using it for a year.

First, a look at the financial:
This Bowflex was just under 00. In one year, that means it was per month. By the end of next year, it will be a month. For a two person family, gym memberships are comparable in this area.

I've had gym memberships prior to this, and I always stopped attending. The time it takes to go to the gym was not worth the gain. And I like to workout alone. Not everyone feels like that, but I do.

So financially, this was a great investment.

Regarding "20 minutes, 3 days a week" statement:
Shortly after buying the Bowflex I also bought the Bowflex body plan book (2% more on the initial cost). Even though the book repeated a lot of information from the manual, I'd highly recommend it to Bowflex owners. The real gem of the book was convincing me to stick with a 20 minute workout, 3 days a week. Before buying the book I was doing 35-40 minute workouts, but the book gave weekly schedules that try to stay at 20 minutes. This was one thing that helped me stick with the Bowflex for a year.

The other advice the book had was a "short on time" workout that I'd do when feeling either tired or crunched for time. The beauty of this was that it was a short, 4 exercise circuit: no excusing for not doing it. After doing just one or two of the exercises, I'd end up doing the entire circuit. But if you are short on time, you can do a "core workout" that hits your most important parts in under 10 minutes. This is the reason I always failed at gyms but succeed at Bowflex: 10 minutes is enough for Bowflex.

Regarding results:
Short description is yes, I've seen results. I got it when I wanted to put on muscle and didn't care about losing weight. Over the year I doubled my bench press + doubled my bicep curls, and put 2.5" on my chest in 6 months (I stopped tracking during the summer after a plateau). I had to purchase one set of weight upgrades and am about to purchase another set.

While using the machine, my weight stayed steady. Then I had a 4 week break and put on 10 pounds in Europe. Coming back, weight loss was a goal. I've followed the book (again), and have steadily lost 2 pounds a week. A little "straight talk": I used to have problems losing weight, but it became easy on a different plan (the 8 minutes in the morning one, which helped me lose 35 pounds). After losing the 35 pounds, I discovered my own method for losing weight (which is similar to the 8 minutes plan and Bowflex plan: their diet is similar but exercise is different). So although I can say the Bowflex & Body Plan did help me lose weight, I don't know if it would have worked without first knowing how to lose weight for myself. Basically, I believe each person needs to discover how to lose weight. Bowflex works for me, but I've already discovered how to lose it. I don't know if it would have worked without the discovery phase elsewhere.

You can tell by the review here that I am a Bowflex fan. This machine worked very well for me: I saw results, I don't spend a lot of time on it but stick with the commitment it needs, and it was a sound financial decision. The cons of it (the unit is TALL! Measure first!) are far outweighed by the positives.

Home fitness and gym machines

Thursday, April 29, 2010