Building a budget home gym but not sure what to buy? In this article, I review a belt for pull ups and dips based on cost, effectiveness, versatility and practicality, and tell you whether you should buy it, whether you should consider it, or whether you should avoid it.
Contents
Cost
Effectiveness
Versatility
Practicality
The Verdict
Cost
There are many products available for home gyms and garage gyms, so it can be hard to know which ones you should buy. In this tiny room, in a small house in the middle of Tokyo, I've collected a lot of training equipment and built quite an impressive home gym. In this series, I'm going to review all the home gym products I’ve purchased based on cost, effectiveness, versatility and practicality, and tell you which products you should buy, which products you should consider, and which products you should avoid.
This is a dip belt. With this belt, you can easily add resistance to tricep dips, pull ups and chin ups. Just unclip one end of the chain, pass the chain through the barbell plates, re-clip the chain onto the belt and you're good to go.
I bought this product from Amazon Japan for ¥1,980. Taking the simplicity of the design and the cost of materials into account, this probably a little bit of a mark up on that price, but ¥1980 isn't that expensive and is still a reasonable price.
For cost, I rate this product four stars.
Effectiveness
Normally, pull ups, chin ups and tricep dips are bodyweight exercises. When first starting out, that's not a problem as you'll only be able to do a few reps in these exercises. But as you continue to train and get stronger, the number of reps you can do in these exercises will slowly increase. So why is this a problem? Well, hypertrophy, or training for muscle size, usually happens training close to muscle failure between 6 and 15 reps. But in order to get stronger, it's best to train close to muscle failure between 3 and 6 reps. So if you continue to do these exercises just with your bodyweight, the rate at which you increase in strength will slow down.
If your main goal is increasing the size of your muscles, this might not sound like a problem, but it is. More strength means you can lift more weight, which means you can apply more load to your muscles, which means you can apply more stimulus to your muscles, which means more muscle growth. So even for bodybuilders, doing these exercises only with your bodyweight won't be as effective.
A few years ago, when I hit a plateau in my bench press and just couldn't get the weight to increase anymore, I started doing heavy, low rep weighted tricep dips with this belt. In just two months, my one rep max on the bench press increased by ten kilograms. For someone who has been training for several years, this is a huge increase in weight for such a short amount of time!
And the same thing for pull ups. When I first started using this dip belt to perform weighted pull ups, very quickly, my pull up strength increased. And this had carry over into my other exercises, too. For example, for dumbbell rows, now I have to use the maximum weight on my powerblock when doing low rep strength training, as anything else is just too light. I have a really well-developed back, and that is largely thanks to this dip belt and weighted pull ups.
For effectiveness, I rate this product five stars.
Versatility
One downside to this product is its versatility. The only exercises you can do with this dip belt are weighted tricep dips, weighted pull ups and weighted chin ups. I have also tried doing belt squats with this product.
A belt squat is where you either squat by attaching the plates directly to the belt, or where you use a landmine to load up just one side of the barbell, wrap the chain around the barbell and squat. Unfortunately, the chain is just too long to do either of these things effectively. A few years ago, to try and solve this problem in a commercial gym, I got two benches, put them parallel to each other with a gap in between, stood up on the benches and tried squatting with the plates dipping in between the benches. I'm sure I looked absolutely ridiculous, but it did work.
The only problem was that to make this exercise effective, I had to use a lot of weight. This caused the belt to really dig into my waist and was very uncomfortable. Plus, trying to get up on the benches with so much weight attached felt really unsafe. I'm sure that if I kept doing it, I would have injured myself at some point. Very quickly, I realized I was much better off just doing free weight exercises for legs using dumbbells and barbells. So unfortunately, beyond tricep dips, pull ups and chin ups, there's no other exercise you can use this belt for, or at least none that I'm aware of.
For versatility, I rate this product two stars.
Practicality
A big factor for me in buying home gym equipment is whether it reuses any of my existing equipment. Especially products that utilize barbell plates, they are so useful in a home gym setting, as they will take up less space. So the fact that this dip belt adds resistance just by clipping on barbell plates is a huge advantage in my books.
The belt itself is really compact. Before building my home gym, I used to keep it in the bottom of my training bag and just take it with me to the gym. Now that I have my home gym, I store it just by hanging it on a hook.
The only factors that may prevent this dip belt from being a practical home gym purchase is whether you already have a rack that allows you to do pull ups and tricep dips, or whether you have a pull up bar and a dip deck. Obviously, if you don't have any of these things, it makes this belt pretty useless. For practicality, I rate this product 3.5 stars.
The Verdict
Now it's time for the big question: should you buy it, should you consider it, or should you avoid it?
This is a product you should consider. If you want to cause a drastic increase in your upper body strength and use that increased strength to build even more muscle, then this belt will be absolutely crucial in achieving that. But it is reliant on already having barbell plates and a power rack or some other form of equipment that allows you to do pull ups and tricep dips in your home gym.
If you already have barbell plates and some way of doing pull ups and tricep dips in your home gym, then absolutely, I strongly recommend buying this dip belt. But for people who don't already have these things, it would be a large investment. And of course, if you can't fit any of these things in your home, then obviously that just wouldn't be any point in buying this dip belt for your home gym.
For effective training, contact Tokyo Titan!
I am Tokyo Titan, an internationally-certified bodybuilding specialist personal trainer and nutritionist. Using bodybuilding techniques, together we will create the body that you want in a short amount of time. Lessons are provided in three formats: online, in-person at my private gym in Ota-ku, Tokyo, a few minutes walk from Omori-machi Station on the Keikyu Line, and in-person at a convenient location for the client, allowing for a flexible lesson style that suits each client's preferences and schedule. As a bilingual Japanese native English speaker, I can provide lessons in either Japanese or English, allowing customers to train both their bodies and their language skills at the same time. For more information, inquire today!
Comments