Bowflex has become the most trusted name in the home gym industry with their power rod based home gyms. They continue their power with the success of the SelectTech dumbbells which have quickly become the top home dumbbell solution to people who just enjoy the ease of use, affordability, and space saving quality of these game changing weights.

Additional accessories include an adjustable weight bench, a sturdy SelectTech dumbbell stand, and durable equipment mat.

Benefits of Having SelectTech Dumbbells

Covers only small space. The biggest benefit, obviously, is the truth that they take up very little space. You can factually put these Bowflex dumbbells in a corner of any room. Yet they provide the same flexibility and functionality as a huge set of dumbbells that would normally take up a whole wall or more. This is enormous for anyone who doesn’t want to allocate a whole room to a weight set or weight machine — or simply doesn’t have the floor space available.

BowFlex Revolution

Current Price: US $1,200.00

BOWFLEX UPGRADE ROD BOX-Xtremes,Sports,Ultimates,Blaze

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Adjustable Dumbbells. These adjustable dumbbells are in fact very easy to use. You literally change the weight amounts with the turn of a dial. It’s very instinctive and takes about 2 seconds to adjust both of the Bowflex dumbbells. No more messing with strange device that require changing pins or flipping switches. In addition, of course, no more of the annoying clamps, bolts, or weight plate-swapping associated with normal free weight systems.

Good Quality. The Bowflex SelectTech Dumbbells actually look good. Their stylish design and high-quality structure positively sets them apart from other types of adjustable dumbbells, most of which are ugly to say the least. The SelectTech dumbbells are very smooth and most people won’t have a problem putting them in an area where guests can see them. Another good thing is that the person weight plates are enclosed with molded plastic which eliminates the clanking noises associated with other adjustable dumbbells and free weights.

Exercising “Core” Muscles. When exercising with dumbbells, your body has to work harder because it has to stabilize itself.

Various Exercises. Dumbbells offer a good variety of exercises for each major muscle group.

Exercise both Sides of Your Body Evenly. Everyone has a leading, stronger side to their bodies. The Bowflex dumbbells enable you to develop and tone each side of your body evenly.

Increase Bone Density. Exercising with actual “weight”, increases both bone density and ligament strength. This is particularly important for post menopausal women and athletes.

Drawbacks of the Product

The only real unhelpful regarding this Bowflex dumbbell is that they are a bit expensive. Depending on where you buy them, expect to pay between $350 and $400 per set, as well as another $140 for the optional stand. Also, if you have them shipped, it can easily cost $50 – $100 (unless the merchant offers free shipping, as many do these days).

However, there is what we call positive drawback of the machine. Listed below are some of those.

• Learning Curve – if you are a beginner (haven’t used free weights regularly), it take some time for your body to learn to do each exercise “correctly”. It is essential that when beginning a new exercise you start with a light weight.
• Much like learning to ride a bicycle, your body needs to learn how to do each exercise correctly.
• Safety – it’s very significant to understand what amount of weight is right for you, specifically if you train by yourself. Though the Bowflex dumbbells only can go up to 52.5Ib, there is still a possibility of injury due to poor exercise form or using too much weight. Please be safe.
• Momentum – having proper exercise form is also important for eliminating momentum. Momentum starts to creep in when a person does an exercise too quickly. You can eliminate this by pausing at the bottom and at the top of each repetition.

Bowflex SelectTech Dumbbells and High Intensity Training

Everyone that workout gets to a point where what they have been doing stops being as effective.  Muscles get accustom to recognizable movements and grow fuller, faster when they are hit with varying exercises. Another well-liked way to alter a workout once a month is to use High Intensity Training.

High Intensity Training is a type of training where repetitions are fewer but the few reps are killers.  The desired result of High Intensity Training is to make muscle reach the complete type of failure necessary for optimum muscle growth.

This is how it a set of Bowflex SelectTech Dumbbells High Intensity Training would go.

1st set

• Start the first set with good chunk of weight
• Do slow reps with the main focus being form.
• Pick 6-8 spots while slowly lifting and lowering the dumbbells have a wonderful 5-10 second pause.
• Fun begins once you cannot continue to push the weight up anymore.  This is where you continue to hold the weight in a static position.  Pretty soon the weight will begin to slowly drop.

2nd set

Same process as set 1 but with a weight drop around 20% (Personal Preference)

3rd set

Same process as set 2 but with a weight drop around 10% – 20% (Personal Preference)

And you have done that muscle group and should not do High Intensity Training for that muscle group for 3 weeks.  Trust me every 3 weeks is plenty.  The rest between the High Intensity Training is crucial for optimum muscle group.

So if you are looking for something new to try with Bowflex SelectTech Dumbbells High Intensity Training could be the jump starts your routine back into a new growth period.

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Fitness equipment and exercise machines don’t work unless you do!

That is to say, they are only as useful as you make them. If you don’t use them, they are very, very expensive paperweights. That’s it. They aren’t even the most attractive decorations. They take up a lot of space. It’s not cool to buy an exercise machine only to let it collect dust.

Most people are guilty of this and it’s not like I can blame you. I grew up in a house with a very nice little home gym in our basement with weights, an exercise bike (with an uncomfortable seat), and even a nice rowing machine.

I don’t think anyone in our family ever got much use out of any of it. For maybe one year my brother used it quite a bit and it helped him get into fantastic shape. Othewise, nobody really made much use of them.

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Over the years our family accumulated even more equipment. Eventually I think my parents threw all of it away or maybe gave it to Goodwill.

The point is that hundreds of dollars were spent on machines with the intention of “saving money” by not joining a gym. On that point it worked. We never joined a gym and so that’s one less bill each month.

It’s just that we never made much use of the equipment either. It took up space for years and when we moved, the equipment moved with us, which was a huge pain. In the second house, it still didn’t get used much.

If you go on to Craigslist for your city, you’ll probably find tons of weight benches, treadmills, and so on that all have the same empty promises – save money by putting the equipment in your own home and not paying to use it at a gym.

Now, for some people a home gym can work wonders. Some people are too lazy to go to the gym to work out, but they can find the time to do something in their own home. To those who can make that work, that’s awesome. I commend them.

For the rest of us, I can just say that most of the different kinds of fitness equipment can work incredibly well….IF YOU USE THEM.

Exercise machines are by their very definition designed to help you exercise, which means you have to move your body and exert enough energy to sweat. If you aren’t sweating, you probably aren’t working hard enough to get the real benefits of exercise.

To get a good workout you should work up a good sweat.

To work up a sweat you need to actually USE the exercise machines that you own or the weights or the fitness DVD’s or whatever your workout program is.

That’s all there is to it. If you want to get in shape, you just need to actually put the work in to get there.

If you aren’t willing to put in the hours of exercise over weeks and months of training, you can’t expect to see results.

Just look at a show like The Biggest Loser. Do the trainers have the contestants just going for an easy walk around campus? Do they just do some simple, slow biking? Of course not!

On that show people get off their butts and the trainers force them to work out hard for hours at a time if need be. That’s the only way they are going to see the results that they need to see to be health human beings.

Is it starting to sink in yet?

The reason those people lose weight so fast is because they work incredibly hard to get there. I don’t mean just 20 minutes a day 2 or 3 times a week. I’m not talking about 8 minute abs. I’m talking about working hard for an hour or more every day. That’s how hard they are working to lose the weight and get fit.

How are they doing it? They aren’t working hard by sitting on a couch watching television. They’re using the machines and the training available to them.

That’s what you need to do. You need to use the equipment that is avilable to you in your own home or gym or whatever. If you have a treadmill, USE IT. If you have some weights, USE THEM.

If you don’t have fitness equipment littering your house and you want to get in shape, no problem. Buy a fitness DVD like P90X, Tae Bo, or something from Jilian Michaels for like $10-20 and USE IT.

It doesn’t matter what kind of exercise route you go. If you work out hard for say 1 hour a day, 3-4 times a week, 52 weeks a year, you’ll see results. If you aren’t willing to work hard and USE IT, then don’t expect to lose any weight or look like some kind of fitness model.

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The equipment ships in the same kind of box you’ll find in stores probably later this month or year anyway. It’s exactly what you would expect it to be. It’s the two sets of 3 resistance bands attached to pulleys and the door anchors. It has the leg straps as well as the handles to use both arms or legs with the X-Factor.

The three included DVD’s seem to be pretty good quality. Last night I watched the Explosion Workout DVD. If you compare it to P90X, it’s not as intense of a workout tempo. That’s not to say that you won’t get a great workout doing it. It’s just that the pace of the workout is more designed to teach you how to do the exercises. For beginners or people who haven’t used the X-Factor before, this is awesome and a great place to start.

The exercise chart is huge. Seriously, this thing is massive, which I love because it really gives you a ton of great ideas for what you can do with the X-Factor. Just looking at everything you can do with the X-Factor my mind started reeling with the possibilities. I just had to attach it to a door and try it.

I live in a very old house with old doors that aren’t always the standard size. That being said, the Weider X-Factor was incredibly easy to setup. They aren’t joking when they say it attaches to the door in about a minute. You literally just attach it to the bottom corner and then pull up to place it on the opposite corner of the door. It’s just about idiot proof.

BowFlex Revolution

Current Price: US $1,200.00

BOWFLEX UPGRADE ROD BOX-Xtremes,Sports,Ultimates,Blaze

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The only problem I encountered thus far is that when you take the X-Factor off the door sometimes the resistance bands can get twisted a bit, but it’s very easy to fix. Not a big deal.

Now, on to the real question. Can you get a great workout with the Weider X-Factor?

Yes, you can.

This machine is awesome. As I said, I watched the Explosion training DVD last night and so this morning my workout was based around the moves I saw in DVD. I used my Timex watch to setup a 1 minute timer for each exercise.

Holy moley, this thing is a workout. Admittedly, I’m not in any kind of “peak physical condition”, but I’ve done my share of Football and distance running training and let me tell you, this thing is a great workout.

What I would suggest is picking a 4 or 5 exercise circuit and do 1 minute for each exercise with a little break in-between. This is similar to what you would do for P90X. In fact, I might just have to try using the X-Factor for some of the P90X workouts instead of free weights.

Anyway, doing 3 or 4 circuits would give you a straight up awesome workout in probably 20-30 minutes. A lot of te exercises work both your upper body, lower body, and core all at the same time, so you don’t have to spend a lot of extra time targeting specific muscle groups unless you want to.

So, after one day do I think that it was $100 well spent?

100% yes. For sure.

The Weider X-Factor is a great piece of equipment. It’s super duper versitile and it really works. My muslces are tired and I feel great. It’s definately something I’m going to be using on a regular basis, and even when I travel to visit family, I’ll probably take it with me just because it’s so convenient.

So those are my first impressions of the Weider X-Factor. I’ll probably wait a few weeks before I give it a “full review” because I want to try the other workouts as well as just to see what kind of weight loss/fitness benefits even a month of training with the X-Factor will bring.

This is going to be fun.

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