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I’m an exercise buff. Not a good one. In fact a pretty terrible one. Seriously, with the amount of time I wasted thinking about how I should exercise I could have probably actually done exercise and be all buff and stuff.
I can luckily say I’m not the foolish type. I may watch the infomercials with the AB King Pro! and that rocking back and forth thing, but my garage isn’t packed with the items I just never get round to using because I’m stuck living with my parents and my room is small. In fact being a martial arts/ natural type exercise person, I barely have any equipment. At this point all I’ve got is two dumbbells (I’ve got a barbell in the garage that came with them but I don’t use it) a punch bag that, again, is stuck in the garage and… The Iron Gym.
Long had been my days I wanted a chinning bar. I do climbing stuff you see and the logic is that if I keep clicking my ‘Build upper body and grip strength workout’ macro I’ll get more climbing areas unlocked. Pushups and weights helped but I wanted that simple action of pulling yourself up. A chin up being a full body exercise just screamed benefits. My opinion as of recent has been that if you want to gain strength and muscle, you need not simple exercises that focus solely on your biceps (like the good old rookie mistake of a bicep curl) you need a compound exercise that relies to a large extent on gravity above all else and hell, if you can get your hands to raise your body weight then that’s all most people need.
So the search began and immediately got complicated. The problem lay with the many, many types of chinning bar available for purchase. There were the simple bracket chinning bars. These you screwed into your door frame. You could remove them and leave the brackets in some cases, but you would always have the brackets there in your door. Remove them and you’ll have six holes.
Then there were telescopic chinning bars. Same thing, except instead of screwing you jammed them into place. I never tried one to be honest, so I use a derogatory verb like jam because of the bad stories I hear from it, stories that the bar could fall out of its jam before you finished your set, which is a problem if you like your knees and coccyx. For those who didn’t break their lower legs, the telescopic chinning would shatter their door frame if you tightened the bar too much.
Ceiling bars were a possibility, and they sound pretty good. Most ceilings can’t handle them though and you’ll need to drill them into brickwork or supports I believe. I’ll be honest, I haven’t looked too much into them. I can’t imagine they’d be good for beginners though, seeing as you have to jump up to grab them.
Performance wise, they’re all the same. It’s a chin up. It relies more on your ability to move up and down using your arms, back, chest and shoulders, and in the end, it’s just a metal pole. If you’ve got a tree in your back garden, that’ll do the job any piece of metal to stick in your door will promise you. If fact if you have one, STOP READING THIS ARTCLE AND GO USE IT. Seriously, geez.
Then, right before I was about to buy my telescopic bar and risk my door frame I found… the Iron Gym.
It’s from JML and let me get this straight. I hate companies like JML. Crappy infomercials that make themselves sound like they’ve got the answers to every question you’ve ever asked and it’s all solved by this one product and that all these random idiots you don’t care about endorsing it. Lonely, unemployed people who have the advert drilled into them because they only watch the JML channel are drawn to these products and I can only guess I’ve been without a job for too long now, because here I am, fully endorsing one of their stupid, retarded products.
The simple selling point of the Iron Gym that makes the extra ten units of currency appear worthwhile is that it’s fully removable. It’s such a simple method of securing the bar that you feel there’s one guy out there somewhere laughing in a pile of money while another ten thousand guys wished they had hurried up and got round to building up a prototype. The bar secures itself to your door and traps itself on both sides, leaving anyone below 300lbs/136kgs able to hang on it without breaking anything. You don’t have to screw holes into your frame, you don’t have to risk your knees, and you don’t have to jump up to your ceiling to reach it. Yes, the iron gym really is simple to install…blah blah blah salesmen spiel.
When you get the iron gym it’s five pieces of metal that are simple to put together and once you’ve got it setup installation is easy. You literally clip it to your door frame and you’re good to go. By the same logic, you can unclip it easily. This instantly beats all the other products I mentioned before. No drilling, no loss of kneecaps from sudden impact, no door splitting and no pokey things sticking out of the ceiling. Surely you can see that by demonizing the other products and making this one appear to be the piece of exercise equipment chosen by Jesus himself that I’m getting you a great deal by pointing out this piece of equipment as the best piece of equipment. And, both with and without sarcasm, I honestly think it is.
Now let’s take a look at the exercises you can do on the iron gym. The box recommends a variety of them and I’ll be recommending exercise routines you can setup for yourself in a later article.
Neutral lift:
Other than its easier setup and installation (are they the same word, who cares), the Iron gym has one thing most other chinning bars don’t. A neutral grip position. Not too short as to put all your pressure on your arms; not too long as to put all the pressure on your chest. Neutral grip is a great starting exercise for people who don’t do chin ups too often. These are usually only included on the assisted weight chinning bars you’ll find at the gym which usually aren’t suited for home use (before you start thinking that may be a better idea) but they fit smoothly on the Iron Gym and are a great starting position.
Neutral grip, as the name implies, puts no emphasis on any muscle group in particular. Arms, chest, back and shoulders all get a good workout from this position and it’s a good place to learn your full range of motion when using a chinning bar.
Narrow grip
Just one thing to make clear to you, these first three exercises are all essentially the same. I’m hoping its obvious to all that all you’re really doing here is going up and then down with your legs hovering magically off the floor. Narrow grip isn’t completely different from neutral in the slightest. All you’re doing is moving your hands to the inside bars. But by doing just this, you’ll bring more pressure to your arms and while you could just live off the neutral grip the entire time, the narrow gives variety to keep your muscles entertained and will make your arms grow stronger faster, leading to ye olde bulging biceptacles and woman swooning as you pass them in the street because you oh so sexy now (want to buy Iron Gym? Why, just click on this here Affiliate Link!!!
Wide Grip
I’m bored of telling you the difference between five centimeters in certain directions. Look at the pictures I’ve probably forgot to include and know that this version of the exercise puts the focus on your chest. Women love resting their heads on manly chests and now you can too by clicking on my Affiliate Links!!!
and getting me money for suggesting a product to you>>. Let’s get onto other exercises that help make the Iron Gym all wow, special and shiny.
Other exercises
Push ups
Whoa there, boy! Don’t have that aneurism just yet. Wait until the steroids start to slowly kill you as you turn into a testosterone bulk that even your family is scared of. Yes it may sound incomprehensible, but you can even use the Iron Gym to do push ups.
You see, it sits on the floor too.
And when it does you suddenly have push up bars.
Push up bars are great. I’ve always loved them, simply because they don’t provide a crippling agony to shoot throughout my wrists and elbows when I do said push ups on them. A regular push up on a hard surface will cause unnecessary tension that doesn’t add to the exercise. With a push up bar, your wrists remain straight, so the tension ain’t there and the damage doesn’t slowly cripple you (for beginners this is vital).
And the Iron Gym has these built in, so you’re essentially saving yourself a whole other product to purchase which, if you try to think about it in a way that doesn’t get too hypocritical about the obvious flaw in logic, makes up for the spending ten or so units of currency that you would have done on that other slightly cheaper chinning bar that breaks either your door or your knees.
The biggest benefit of push up bars, besides their injury prevention strategy of being a bar that you hold, rather than a floor your crush your hands under is that they’re raised. This by itself doesn’t make for anything great but it does allow for full range of movement beyond what the floor would. Before it would be ‘rest your chest against the floor to get full range of motion’ and that would instantly relieve the pressure. Now, you’ve got the three centimeters you needed to keep a good exercise going.
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Triceps dips
I can essentially say the same thing with this that I said with the push ups. Not crushing your hands. Full range of motion. This is true but in all honestly, I’ve found the triceps dips not worth it. Two chairs do a better job. But this isn’t an issue really. It’s like finding the cigarette lighter in the second hand car you just bought doesn’t work. You don’t need it.
Bad point: The biggest problem with these is that they don’t really provide full range of motion when doing a triceps dip. You have to have your butt sticking in the air in order to get this done properly. And even then; two chairs, the forces of gravity; much better exercise.
Sit-ups
Okay, they’re in the manual but I get the feeling they were just looking to fill space when they got to them. It’s just a sit up. Yes you jam the bar against the door and use it to keep your feet in place but I wouldn’t recommend it for the same reason I wouldn’t recommend anyone holding your ankles during a sit-up. It takes pressure off the abs and puts them onto the Hip Flexors, a muscle group which really doesn’t need that much focus. Honestly for this, do bicycle ab curls or just ab curls on a stability ball. These are the best types of exercise for this.
The last two exercises kind of bring it down, so I’m gonna remind you. The Iron Gym (I keep wanting to say Ab King Pro. Don’t know why. Definitely don’t buy the Ab king pro. It’s a super expensive, less versatile Stability ball) is the best piece of exercise equipment for working your upper body that I can think of. This is because chin ups remain one of best four exercises of the upper body group (the others being push up, bench press and shoulder press). You could live off these for your upper body and need nothing else. I do use nothing else for upper body since getting the Ab K-Iron Gym (what is wrong with me) and out of the exercises I just mentioned in brackets up there, it’s the most dynamic of those four exercises. It’s of huge benefit if you’re into climbing or tennisesque sports.
And on top of all this, it has another of those exercises built into it; the push up.
But I don’t believe in endorsing an item as the best thing ever without showing you why it’s not the most perfect thing ever. The Iron Gym does have its faults. The triceps dip and sit-up aren’t completely bad. You can still use the Iron Gym to do these exercises. It’s not like JML (the bastards) were lying to us in any real way. It’s just there are more effective ways of doing those two exercises and I’m not going to let efficiency suffer just because I intend to get money through suggesting a product.
So let’s go through the Actual Flaws.
No flatpacking
The Iron Gym is a one time setup. It only takes five to ten minutes to put it together but you tighten everything up so you can’t take it apart easily. And sure you can easily unhook it from your door so you don’t have something obtrusive banging you in the forehead when you’re rushing round the house but once you’ve got it put together and it’s sitting on the floor, you’ve got an object that raises 16cm in the air. In other words, it doesn’t flat pack! This hasn’t been a problem for me personally as I’ve gotten into the habit of falling onto in the morning to do a set of pushups after the shower. But it’s not easy storage like, say, a telescopic chinning bar.
Don’t jump to it
Jumping while holding on is fine and a jerk lift into starting your set won’t cause problems. But as my nine year old niece will attest if a kid jumps up to grab it, they’re likely to unhook the Iron Gym and send them both crashing. This is only for kids though (and short people by proxy I guess). You have to lift and twist the Iron Gym to get it off. As long as you start off holding the bar, you can’t unhook it easily.
It’s possibly the only safety issue the equipment as, and it’s never going to collapse when you’re on it, (say like, a telescopic bar) and shatter your kneecaps (say like, a telescopic bar), but it’s worth mentioning.
Triceps dips are useless
I’ll type it again. The triceps dips really are useless. I’m trying to be nice about it but seriously. Two chairs, let your knees dangle. Up. Down. That’s all your need there. Add weight when it gets easier and don’t bother using the Iron Gym for them.
Leg raises
On the side of the box it mentioned that you get free sleeves that attach to the Iron Gym and allow you to do Leg raises. The old Caesar’s chair leg raises are a great exercise for building up ab strength. Only one problem is THEY’RE NOT IN THE BOX. You have to send off for them. They’re free, so not a problem. But honestly, unless you’ve got a tall door. This is a difficult exercise to get the full range of motion on. You can do it with bent knee easily enough, so it’s not too much of a problem. Even so, the more I look at it, the more I see that the Iron Gym ain’t for a full core workout. But it wasn’t supposed to be in the first place, so don’t buy it expecting such.
Arm space
This is a problem with all door based chinning bars really but if you do a wide grip set with your palms facing away from you, you’ll have to contend with your elbows either trying not to smack into the door frame or trying not to rest on them to make the exercise easer. Small nitpick really, but worth mentioning.
I’ve mentioned a lot of bad things, but this is one part because all the good things are great on the basis that they’re simple and yet oh so effective and the bad bits are just nitpicking and two parts I like to try and make my articles as long as possible in order to make me sound smarter overall in some retarded way which is negated by my own babbling.
The Iron Gym is, simply and effectively enough, the best piece of home door chinning bar equipment you can buy on the market. It’s worth the extra cash (which isn’t that much and is actually cheaper than some chinning bar products). It doesn’t get in the way of day to day life by asking you to ruin a door and you can do other exercises on it. That’s really all there is to it.
Be a smart person and think it over for a bit. If you want a strong upper body that relies on our monkey like body principals and want the best way to do it in the comfort of your own home, then you’ll want an Iron Gym. Once you’ve done, come back and click on me Affiliate Link!!!
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