My Bowflex Review On The Bowflex Ultimate Home Gym 2

I was looking for a home gym that would motivate me to use it.

My answer was the Bowflex Ultimate 2 because it looks good and the price was enough that would motivate me to use it.

Before I decided with Ultimate 2, I read reviews on the internet and mostly positive except the price. I compared with other high end personal home gyms based on reviews and Ultimate 2 was the winner on my list.

I have another home gym that use weight stacks and I paid $300. But I dismantled it after using it only for couple months because I got to admit, I'm too lazy to work out.

But with the Ultimate 2, every time I see it in my family room, it encouraged me to work out because I'm thinking to myself, I didn't spend all that money for nothing.

I know it sounds stupid but it works.

Okay, now with my opinion with the Bowflex Ultimate Home Gym 2. I owned this Ultimate 2 for about 2 months now and I see changes with my strength and body.

I work out once a day 6 days a week for 1 hour each day. Now I feel a lot better than before using the ultimate 2. The machine itself is well built.

Believe me, unless you're a superman, you're not going to break this machine. So don't worry about the warranty. The power rod resistance is a lot different than weight stack.

The feel of it when doing exercise is different because you start with low resistance at the beginning and then when you pull or push the cable, the resistance progresses.

In contrast, the stack once you lifted say a 25lbs., you're lifting a 25lbs. I wasn't sure if I gained up to 75%-100% of strength on certain exercises because on my first week, I put resistance of #30 and now its combined #45-#60. Maybe because I wasn't used to the resistance at first and now I'm pretty mastered it.

Or, the resistance of the rod got weaker. Either way, if I needed more resistance, I just have to put more rods to it. Speaking of rods, I bought the one that only comes with 310 pounds resistance.

That's 4 #50, 2 #30, 4 #10, and 2 #5. You do the math and its 155 lbs. on each side x2 = 310 lbs. For $99 you get 2 more #50 rods which to me is not worth it.

I'm a pretty average guy but as of this writing, no exercise which I could put all rods at once and perform the exercise for 10 reps and 4 sets except leg press but I don't use all rods for leg press because its uncomfortable.

I rather use the squat attachment for leg and calf exercises which I love it. The good thing about the Ultimate 2 when it comes to squat is that you don't need a spotter.

If for some reason your knees gave up on you, just twist the right handle and there's this thing that will hook on one of the holes to lock the squat attachment in place.

You just have to be careful when hooking up those rods at the beginning because first you attach the squat then you hook up the rods. It requires you to bend the rod half way down in order to hook it up so make sure your face is not in the way just in case the rod slip off your hand.

Okay, the machine itself is pretty heavy. If you need the machine to move out of sight or out of the way after your exercise, forget about it.

The folded foot print is 44"X46" and the work out area is 6'6" X 9'4" according to their website and believe me, they weren't kidding!

That's not including the area where you put all the attachments that comes with it. So you need another 4'X 3' to store all the attachments.

Mine came with the abs attachment for free and its pretty bulky and heavy but I like it because I could see 6 packs developing on my abs now. Speaking of attachments, the abs attachment measured 48"x30".

The leg extension measured 30"x16". The preacher curl measured 20"x18". The squat 25"x15", and the rest of the attachments, well, its not bulky and heavy.

This is not the manufacturer's measurements. I added 1 to 2 inches for the purpose of storage. Now the price. I guess most people that comes to final decision comes down to price.

Well, I only paid $1622 at overstock.com with the $180 discount I got for using bill me later method of payment. That's including with abs attachment that normally sell for an extra $169.

The shipping I paid is only $2.95. Not bad for a merchandise that comes in 9 boxes. It is a refurbish but when I opened the boxes, I could still smell the leather smell and the parts still well wrapped.

All the parts are there so I had no problem assembling it. No evidence of wear and tear. But keep in mind, it doesn't come with the training DVD and the wall poster when you buy from overstock.com but you can bid those on e-bay.

It comes with the assembly manual and the Pre-owned owner's manual which contains the illustration of 71 different exercises. Yes 71, so I don't know what happened to the other 24 exercises because it says you can do 95 different exercises.

But it doesn't matter because all in all from head to toe, I only do about 20 different exercises. So far, I haven't got tired using it or loss my motivation working out and I work out 6 days a week which is I'd never done it before.

I definitely recommend this product!