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.
Contents
Cost
Effectiveness
Versatility
Practicality
The Verdict
Cost
The bench I use cost me ¥12,000. It's sturdy, and through third party safety tests, it's reported to support up to 750 kg That is far more weight than it should ever need to support. As well as the flat and upright settings, it also has three incline settings and a decline setting.
For cost, I rate this bench two and a half stars.
Effectiveness
Using a bench for upper body exercises eliminates the need to support the weight with your lower body. This allows you to place more load on the muscles you are targeting, which is great for bodybuilding. A good example of this is the dumbbell shoulder press. By performing this exercise sitting down, it eliminates the need to balance using your legs. This allows you to resist more weight and achieves much faster muscle growth in your shoulders.
Being able to adjust the inclination of the bench also means you can apply stimulus to the muscles from many different angles. Not only is this more effective for muscle growth, but it also allows you to change how the load is applied to each of the activated muscles.
For effectiveness, I rate this bench five stars.
Versatility
Benches can be used for so many exercises other than just the obvious bench press and dumbbell fly variations. You can use them for back exercises like single arm dumbbell rows and chest supported rows. You can use them for shoulder exercises like reverse flys and seated shoulder presses. You can use them for arm exercises like preacher curls and skull crushers.
You can use them for bodyweight exercises like tricep dips, back extensions and reverse crunches. And you can even use them for leg and glute exercises like Bulgarian split squats, step-ups and barbell hip thrusts.
For versatility, I rate this bench five stars.
Practicality
By folding up this bench and storing it vertically, you can save a lot of space in your home gym when you're not using the bench.
The 750 kg resistance rating is also very reassuring, as the worst thing that could happen to you when you're doing a heavy bench press is to have the bench break underneath you. But of course, a bench is only really useful when you have other equipment to use with it, like dumbbells and a barbell.
For practicality, I rate this bench three and a half stars.
The Verdict
These are the results for this weightlifting bench, but now it's time for the big question: should you buy it, should you consider it, or should you avoid it?
This weightlifting bench is a product you should consider for your home gym. With a bench, you will be able to do many extremely effective exercises, but it is reliant on having other equipment like dumbbells, a barbell and a power rack. If you at least have a decent collection of dumbbells or a pair of powerblocks in your home gym, then I strongly recommend buying this product. But otherwise you can give it a miss.
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I am Tokyo Titan, an International Sports Science Association certified bodybuilding specialist fitness trainer and nutritionist. By utilizing advanced bodybuilding techniques, together, we will create your dream body. I provide fitness and dieting coaching at my private gym located in Ota-ku, Tokyo, just 4 minutes walk from Omori-machi Station on the Keikyu Line, and also online. The online sessions allow effective training, even with the busiest of schedules.
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