If this is the year you resolved to get fit, you still have 50 weeks left. It’s not too late to make a move — even if you haven’t yet started. Every day is a new day; start small and find a way.
My goal is to find ways for everyone to get fit, regardless of their likelihood of getting to a gym.
Home machines can make it easy for you to stay in your house; they can also make working out convenient, comprehensive and cost-effective.
What Is It?
It is the SoloStrength fitness system, a system that includes the Fuse — a gateway to a stronger, leaner, fitter body. Looking like a modern sculpture, the SoloStrength Fuse is basically a floating bar and a frame on a workout platform.
Depending on your fitness level, you can lock the bar into position at different heights to assist you or resist you during pushups, pullups, squats, lunges and core/abdominal exercises galore. By aligning the bar appropriate to your body weight and body position, exercises can be incredibly easy or incredibly difficult.
The advantage of such a system is that regardless where you start, the SoloStrength has the capacity to support and sustain each fitness improvement you make. It comes complete with fitness programs designed for the beginner, intermediate and advanced fitness acolyte. Once you are on a roll, the SoloStrength offers more than 50 advanced movements that can be completed with Solo on its own or using various common accessories such as balls, bands and light weights.
When not in use, it folds up to be about 1.2 square metres.
Who Would This Appeal To?
If time is of the essence for your workouts or if you hate the idea of sharing sweat time with people you hardly know at gyms, you may like the SoloStrength. Small fitness centres, schools, community centres and personal trainers will find this unit appealing because it doesn’t take up much space and can do a lot.
Who Would Hate It?
If your fitness program and happiness lie in big bench presses, squats and dead-lifts, you’ll hate this.
The Klutz Factor
As long as you are capable of listening to your body and reading instructions, it will be difficult to get injured on the SoloStrength. While great for people with extensive fitness backgrounds, it also comes with an easy-to-follow, detailed instructional manual and online support for those less versed in exercise protocols. One of the SoloStrength team’s goals was to create a product usable by people with no previous knowledge of fitness. They succeeded.
When I tried it, I began with 15 minutes of skipping to get into a groove. Then I did 20 repetitions of everything: an easy set of chest, a set of back, a set of legs and a set of abdominal exercises. The second time, I stepped up the degree of difficulty and backed the repetition number to 15 and did the same full body order. Set three consisted of an advanced exercise for each previously mentioned body part for 10 repetitions. Just like that, the entire workout sans the skipping was a rare 22 minutes of non-stop “exertainment” (the rare combination of exercise and entertainment). When it was over, I was breathing hard, my muscles were spent and I was sweating like a tax cheat at an audit.
What Do You Need and Where Do You Find It?
You need space to accommodate the size of the machine and the host of videos and manuals that are available to you as a customer at solostrength.com. The SoloStrength system is sold directly online and shipped to your door via the same website.
What are the Costs?
The SoloStrength lifestyle system costs $1,499; payment plans are available. It sounds expensive, but if you really use it (for exercise — not hanging laundry) for five years, it would be like having a gym in your house for which you paid a membership fee of $25 per month.
Bottom Line?
I’d use it.
Pete Estabrooks B.PE / The Fitness Guy is a personal trainer and writer plying his trade at Probodies Health and Fitness in Calgary and virtually everywhere in the world from petesclass.com
