Tuesday 21 April 2009

Not so Dumbbells

The Gym
We have a pretty OK home gym, as you may have seen in a number of recent "accident reports". In addiction, I mean addition (Freudian or what) to the dangerous cuplprits of the rower and bench, we have a treadmill, a recumbent exercise bike, a smalll (fixed weight) multi-gym along with a set of adjustable dumbbells, and very little space in our cellar.

Free Weight Limitation
A couple of months ago I started to run out of available weight on my old dumbbells set for some exercises (things like rows, chest ext., tricep ext. squats etc). I.e. I am getting stronger.

I used to have a personal trainer, so that would'nt have been a problem in the past, because he had all the gear on earth. Unfortunately I don't have him any longer for various reasons, most of them being money (sorry Mark).

To get more weight in the free weights area required either getting a higher weight adjuststable set (2-20kg) rather than my current 1-10kg set or going over to a Bar Bell (long bar) and (more) weights. Ideally I would like to have gone for the Bar Bell but unfortunately that space limitation would have been a problem without dumping something else (no option). So the only option was the bigger Dumbbells.

The non-physical pain of using dumbbells
Now if you have ever used adjustable dumbbells you will know what a pain it is to adjust the weight on the bar. You have to either unscrew or unclip a retainer on each side of each dumbbell (for 2 hand exercises) change the old weights for the new ones (which are almost certainly attatched to another dumbbell). When you go to the larger weights it gets even worse moving them around. All this fiddling adds significant time to workouts.

Get Selectored
Nowadays it is possible to get some HI-Tech adjustable dumbbells whose weight are changed mechanically by moving a pin or by turning a dial. This makes it much easier and quicker to change the weights with the slight disadvantage that they a bit long.

Guess what Ian got for his birthday........More weight and faster workouts.
Thank's Carol, you are far too good to me.

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