I'm Such A Loser

In a followup to my earlier post on the Versa Stick, I mentioned that I thought it was a good idea, and that I'd jury-rig up my own "Versa Stick" alternative to my Bodylastics kit, and see how it works out.

Well, before I go into more details, here's a pic of my jury-rigging:



Yeah I found a metal bar in my home, leftover from a renovation I did a long time back. I never remembered why I kept it around, but I'm glad I did. It's made from solid aluminium or steel, or something, and it's super-light. The black straps you see in the picture are the ankle straps from the Bodylastics kit.

I did a few pull-downs (to work the back) and it felt almost like the gym machine. Almost. As you can see, I already had every band available hooked up, and it still felt "light". I calculated, that with all the bands up, I only had roughly 65 pounds of resistance. In the gym, I was pulling 90 pounds or so.

Now if you don't have a metal bar like mine at home, and you do have a chin-up bar (many people do), unhook it from your doorframe and use it as the "stick" like so:



Personally I preferred my own metal bar over the chin-up bar. As for how it feels, it feels alot better than just pulling on the 2 handles. The only problem now is that I can't seem to find a suitable "replacement" for the bench-press using the stick, to work the chest. Hooking the bands at chest height and standing a few feet away with your back turned still doesn't quite match the feeling since the bands tend to pull you towards the door when you're trying to push the stick away from your chest. There's nothing on your back to stop you from being pulled back towards the door.

So I guess, bench-press replication is still not possible (maybe it is, I just haven't figured it out) even with a stick on the Bodylastics kit.

For now, this jury-rigged stick is used solely for my pull-downs workout. All other workouts are still done as per the instruction booklet provided by Bodylastics.

Labels: Bodylastics, Versa Stick, workout

As usual, while out blog-surfing, I came across this article  about a new (to me at least) home-gym alternative called Versa Stick.

I happen to think this is a neat idea.

Why? Because since I have finally been to a real gym for once, I can see how Bodylastics replicates gym workouts. In some cases, Bodylastics has to do it in a totally different manner to achieve the same targetted areas of the body, simply because it's missing a metal/high strength bar. Like for pull downs, chest-press etc.

Versa Stick apparently closes this gap (from what I could glean from the website). It also boasts of over 100 different workouts that could be done with it, just like Bodylastics.

To me, of course, the best of all would be a combination of both Bodylastics AND Versa Stick. From what I could see from the Versa Stick site, the bands provided comes nowhere close to Bodylastics'.

Now after seeing this (and the price of US$79.95, eeks!), I thought I might as well rig up my own "stick" and see if I can hook it up to Bodylastics. In the past I have ordered a few dud home gyms. A couple come with some sort of a metal bar with rubberized grips. I could conceivably turn one of them into a "versa stick" knock-off by hooking Bodylastic ankle-straps to the bar and using it like a Versa Stick.

Or in a worst-case scenario - turn my Steel Bow into the "metal bar" :) There's enough places on the Steel Bow to tie the ankle-straps to, to ensure non-slippage.

I'll write more after I've given this idea a whirl for awhile.

Labels: Bodylastics, Steel Bow, Versa Stick, workout