Adding Some Perfection to Home Workouts: Perfect Fitness Products REVIEW

[GolfSpy Dave]

 

How Effective Are Your Workouts At Home?

Let's address one of my workout truisms right up front. I do not believe that you can get as good a workout at home as you can with a trainer at the gym. I could probably shorten that to with a trainer. Having someone expecting you to show up for an appointment, and then motivating (aka yelling at you) to push yourself, just doesn't happen at home.

 

However, trainers and gym memberships can get expensive, and the time to even get to the gym frequently gets elusive. So many of us try to put together some kind of workout at home.

 

That's where I'm at right now. No trainer, trying to get my workouts done at home. I've got the usual stuff needed for the home gym: exer-ball, dumbbells, pull-up bar, TV, beer, and etc. Did I just say beer and TV? I did indeed. That's the problem with home gyms for me. I'd much rather hang out and drink a beer than grind out the exercises. Obviously, I needed something new/fun to motivate myself back to fitness. Enter Perfect Fitness.

 

As Seen On TV

There is nothing like watching a TV fitness infomercial to make me feel like a fat blob. Those Insanity workouts don't motivate me to order the DVD's, they just make me depressed and tired.

 

I do remember seeing the Perfect Pushup commercial and thinking, “that looks brutal, but interesting”. My trainer Charles had me do pushups on raised handles, and they were kind of fun. Fun Pushup sounds a bit like Fun Dental Visit, but I liked the handle push-ups, and I believe that the rotating handles of the Perfect Pushup could be fun too.

 

Like many things though, I filed that thought away for future use (i.e. forgot).

 

Recently though, I've been given the opportunity to add some other Perfect Fitness products to my home workout arsenal. I needed something “fun” to motivate me again. My hope was that the Ab-Straps Pro, Pullup Assist, and Ab-Carver Pro could get my body, and brain, back into a fun, or at least regular, workout mode.

 

Ab-Straps Pro

 

During our tenure together, my trainer had me do a ton of core work. No six-pack in sight, but I know that the muscles there (hopefully golf muscles) are stronger. Since the gallbladder came out last October, some of the core tone, and strength, has gone away. Funny how incisions, and inactivity, will do that.

 

My son already had a Perfect pull-up bar mounted in his doorway so the Ab-Straps Pro seemed like a natural addition for doing leg-lifting core work.

 

 

These mount to the bar instantly. They are easy to insert your arms into, and they flat out kill your core. Who knew that just lifting your legs could be so strenuous? Not bad strenuous, but good these-muscles-are-getting-worked strenuous.

 

I don't really have a measurable matrix to share for any of these products, other than these three points:

 

1. Is it easy to perform the intended exercise safely and correctly?

2. Do you feel the intended muscles being worked?

3. Would you incorporate this into regular workouts?

 

I'd say yes to all three questions for the Ab-Straps Pro. The only knock on these is that they really don't provide than many different exercise options, but they definitely do work. They are only $30 though. I actually also found that I could use them for some rowing (under the bar, pulling up on straps) exercises as well. I can definitely see continued use with these.

 

Pullup Assist

 

I could discount the Pullup Assist by saying that this is the product that my wife was interested in, that she was the one who wanted a bit of help with the pull-ups. That's a true statement, but it would be a lie by omission as I actually could use the help too.

 

In that mythical time called high school, I was a zero pull-up kid. Heavy and not strong, is not a pull-up recipe. I still remember the frustration of the Presidential Fitness testing. I bet Reagan at that time couldn't do a pull-up either!

 

The torment of the pull-up was that there was no real way to practice and get better. If you could already do a couple, you could do reps and increase your numbers. If you couldn't even do one, you just hung there in shame, never improving.

 

At 46, I can now do four pull-ups. Still not very many, but 400% more than I could do at 16. I wish that I had the Pullup Assist in high school. It's not complicated, you hook it to the bar, and to your foot, and then the elastic bands help you get the chin to the bar.

 

 

With the help of the bands, you can now do a pull-up, or likely even pull-ups. You can build the needed pull-up muscles, and as you do, you can sequentially remove bands, reducing the help until ultimately is not needed. At that point, you will not be using this $30 aide, but you will also be doing pull-ups on your own so you probably won't care.  That's my plan.

 

Ab-Carver Pro

 

This is the piece of gear that I was the most excited about. I had used a similar wheel device with my trainer, and it was brutally effective. There was no other exercise that blasted the abs, top to bottom, like that wheel.

 

The Ab-Carver Pro is just as brutally effective. Their tag line is it's simple, but not easy and it totally fits. In theory, all you need to do is get on your knees, grab the handles, roll the wheel forward, and then roll it back to your starting position.

 

 

Even though there is a spring inside the Ab-Carver Pro to help you, this is not an easy task. You really feel it in your core. You will wish that you were doing a five-minute plank instead. It just rips muscle.

 

Since this is a ball, rather than the more traditional wheel, you can also add twists to the side to work the oblique abs, adding new levels of fitness (aka soreness) to the workout. You will get some work in on your arms as well, but this is really all about the abs.

 

I love this thing. It's effective, and just enough of a toy/game to make me forget that I'm really working the abs quite a lot. My 15-year-old son really likes this one too. He is convinced that this will help him get “pool ready” for summer, and stronger for rugby. Can't quite get him on board with golf yet...

 

BONUS PRODUCT: Perfect Scale Pro

 

I don't obsess about my weight as much as I have in the past, but I do still monitor it to make sure that I'm not falling back into old habits. The Scale Pro is a cool looking digital scale, but it is more than that. First, it also measures/estimates body fat via Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis. It's likely not going to be as accurate as the direct fat percentage measurement that I had with the trainer, but it will establish a baseline and let me know if I am going up or down.

 

Right now, I'm at 196 pounds, with a reported body fat of 17.6%. I think that my last direct measurement with the trainer was 194/15%. So the Scale Pro numbers are pretty close, and they do let me know that surgery and decreased activity has not been totally catastrophic to my fitness program.

 

An additional benefit of the Scale Pro is that it can communicate with your phone via the Perfect App, recording your scale data so you can see how it changes over time. That's a nice little bonus.

 

Summarizing Perfection

None of these Perfect Products will replace a professional trainer, but they are great additions to a home workout program. Each one is easy to use, a relatively small cash investment, and most importantly effective.

 

As always, I can only write about them based upon my experiences. I don't think your mileage should vary much though. As with any fitness thing, make sure you talk to your doctor before doing anything new. You and your doc know if these products are OK for you more than I do.

 

That being said, I'm continuing to use the Perfect Products as components of my home workouts, especially the ab stuff. I don't think that my one-pack will ever become a six-pack, but I know that my core is getting stronger, and that's all I'm really shooting for anyway.

 

If you want to know more about the specific workouts that you can do with these and other Perfect Fitness products, follow this link.

[apprenti23]

Glad to hear some of those things really do work! You did forget two staples though... Especially the shake weight, looks like more fun than exercise!

 

Can anyone fix it so my gif works?

[jdiddyesquire]

I built a full olympic lifting platform in my garage last year.

 

Bumper weights, plyometric boxes, gym grade matting, pull up bars, olympic rings...

 

I'm installing the rope climb sometime this year. #FITNESS

 

I will say though, while I can get as good a workout at home, it's harder to carve out the time now. Kids want me when I'm home. So much easier to detach and go to the gym.

[Kenny B]

I had been thinking about joining a gym for the last year...  just thinking mind you.  As you pointed out, it is expensive.  But there really was no alternative since our house is small and there is no place to put any equipment.  Enter my wife.  

 

She informed me that our community college has a complete gym, and I mean complete!  It's huge!!  One whole wing just for weights; a complete circuit training machine area; about a dozen bicycle machines; half a dozen stair steppers and the same number of ellipticals.  It also has a floor area with mats, heavy balls, kettle bells, and resistance bands.  I probably left something out.  OK, so now I know that there is another gym in town.  Right?  So what? How much does that cost?   Well, it turns out that for people 60+ years old, you get a Gold Card "student ID card" for $1.50 and Viola!, I'm back in college!!  That's right, one dollar and fifty cents.  I can take any course offered for $1.50 per credit and don't have to take any tests or do homework if I don't want to; basically auditing the class.  Well, as a student I can use the gym any time it's open but I have to pay a $11.50 "gym fee".  So, I get to use the gym basically all I want for $14.50 a quarter!

 

The best part... college girls work out there too!!

[apprenti23]

Only reason to join a gym for me- Yoga Pants. Nuff said

[sp0rtsfan86]

I'm lucky my work covers a gym. However, it's not open 24-7 so I end up paying for one that is anyway. I've been to two gyms, a national chain and a local one. I think owning a gym membership makes it easier to go, because your paying for it anyway.

[txgolfjunkie]

My company has a 5 story building solely dedicated to health and wellness. They have everything imaginable. Sauna, intense weight room, health consultants, massage facility, etc. However, my company decided to charge employees $50/month to use it. It's employees only. No spouses, no family members, no nothing. Nothing like having your obnoxious co-workers spot you on the squat rack.

 

With that being said, I spend $25/month at a local gym with better people watching despite the added increase in (fake) tanned meat heads.