My son Gabriel had another Taekwondo belt testing at CMA Martial Arts (CrossFit Langley). This time he was up for his Green Belt, so far Gabriel has received his, white, yellow, orange, camo and now green belt. Gabriel has been training in Taekwondo under Master Darren Clark for about 10 months now and has done really well, I am super proud of him!
Gabriel is very athletic, not just in Taekwondo but he also does well in pretty much any sport he puts his mind to. If anything we have to hold him back sometimes ;)
I have a goal in mind to hit a 500 pound Deadlift this year, I am probably pretty close if I where to actually go for it and do low rep warm ups, then go for it? I have done 453 pounds for 5 reps before, that I would say is my best Deadlift effort to date. Once over the 450 pound mark, a bit of a mental mind game kicks in for me.
In this video we are doing a 5x5x5x5x5 Deadlift session, not ideal when going for a Personal Best, too much work on the front end of it but I thought I would give 475 pounds a try and see where I was at? The day before I did a pretty intense back workout so going for a Deadlift PR the next day is far from optimal, perhaps I am closer to a 500 pound Deadlift than I think?
Anyways, enjoy the video, I have also thrown in a few video takes of some of my workout partners also lifting 475 pounds, one of which is 52 years old! Goes to show, age is only a number...
This is not a full review but rather a preview or overview so my Website Post will not have a lot of detailed info for the Inspire Fitness FT2 Functional Trainer.
Some of the main points I share in this video review (Bottom of Article) is how versatile, cost effective, compact and well built the Inspire Fitness FT2 Functional Trainer is. I do share one negative point that has to do more with a customer service issue I had with Inspire Fitness.
Getting back to the good points, the Inspire Fitness FT2 Functional Trainer is really well thought out and is one of the only Functional Trainers I have seen that incorporates a Smith Machine that engages the weight stacks so no free weighs are required! And the way the Smith Bar easily goes from adjusting the height and locking into the pulley hubs to pushing the weight stacks is really kind of brilliant and also super safe since it allows for built in safety stops.
Of course you have lots of hook in points top and bottom and along the two adjustable pulley sliders, allowing you to do virtually any type of cable based exercise you can think of, that combined with the Smith Bar and Pull-up bar makes this machine one of the most versatile compact home gym systems I have come across.
When I was looking into acquire a new home gym system, I looked at a lot of other similarly sized Functional Trainers and even though most of them where not as full featured as the Inspire Fitness FT2 Functional Trainer, they generally cost more money. You might think that a lower cost unit must mean it is built to inferior standards, well that is simply not the case! The Inspire Fitness FT2 Functional Trainer is pretty much professional quality and has a lifetime warrantee on mostly everything when used in the home, and a 10 year warrantee when used in a professional gym setting.
I hate to leave on a negative point, because overall I am super satisfied with just about all aspects of the Inspire Fitness FT2 Functional Trainer. This last customer service issue could just be a temporary thing, perhaps a glitch in their communication system, or maybe the gatekeeper went on holidays? We can hope this is the case? Either way, when you make a significant investment like I did in purchasing the Inspire Fitness FT2 Functional Trainer, I want to be reassured that I can contact Inspire Fitness if I have any questions or need support of some sort for my FT2 Functional Trainer. Prior to my purchase I reached out to Inspire Fitness to let them know that I was a Fitness YouTuber and Blogger that was considering buying one of their fitness systems, and that their product would be highlighted on my YouTube Channel and Web page, not just in one review but ongoing since this would be my new home gym setup.
Often times when you reach out to a company, they may offer to send you some promotional items, perhaps a shirt or hat or banner or if you are super lucky, they may even help subsidize your purchase. I was not expecting anything monetary from Inspire, just a confirmation of my email and perhaps a quick reply letting me know at the very least that they got my emails. I am sorry to say that after several attempts to contact Inspire via their contact form and even sending emails directly to their agents Jeff and Fred, I did not even get so much as an automated reply back from Inspire. I hope other people have had better luck contacting them but for me this part of my Inspire Fitness experience was not a positive one.
UPDATE: Inspire has contacted me since this video was posted and apologized for not getting back to me in a timely manner, they are in the process of relocating their business and with limited staff have fallen a bit behind... These things happen :)
Well either way I do not expect to have any major problems mechanically with my Inspire FT2 Functional Trainer. Look forward to many more videos featuring the FT2 Functional Trainer!
I decided it's time to replace my almost 20 year old home gym Smith and pulley machine. It still works OK considering al the mileage I have put on it but I have been interested in a multi-function duel stack and pulley system for a while now, I have been doing some looking around to find one that will be suitable for my needs.
I wanted a double stack system with multiple hook in points, not just on the side rails but also top and bottom. I also needed it to have a smith machine bar for things like Squats, Presses and even Deadlifts. I needed it to be good quality yet affordable! Well I found the perfect system for me in a machine made by Inspire Fitness. The unit I am interested in is the Inspire Fitness FT2 Functional Trainer and it has everything I requires. I even opted to add an extra 50 pounds to each side weight stack taking the total of each stack up to 200 pounds per side, which allows me to use up 420 (Smith bar added) of weight when using the Smith Machine bar!
The Inspire Fitness FT2 Functional Trainer has a lifetime warrantee on all parts when used for non-professional use. I will be getting it delivered and setup this week sometime so look forward to lots of future videos of me using the Inspire Fitness FT2!
This video isn't meant to talk down towards people who go to the gym and don't push themselves so don't get me wrong, at least those kinds of people are getting off their buts and doing something to better their health and fitness, even if they are not really training to get all that much stronger.
The problem is, I see a lot of people at the gym doing the same workout every time, never really getting stronger and kind of just going through the motions, not pushing themselves, not taking it to the next level. Sure they are getting blood to their muscles, raising their heart rate and burning calories at the same time. But to be honest, many of these people doing what they are considering to be weight training is really just a more diverse form of cardio.
If you are lifting 50% of you max for 20+ reps every time you workout and not going to failure, then you are basically telling your muscles that there is no need to get any stronger so guess what, they don't get any stronger. You need to tell your muscles they are weaklings by overloading them to the point where there is no choice but for your muscles to get stronger in order to accomplish this new workload you are exposing them to.
And guess what, you don't even need to workout longer or more often to do this, you can even workout less often and for shorter period of time if you use a high intensity workout approach. At the end of the day, your objective is to get to your hardest working set as quickly and safely as you can and exhaust the muscles to the point of total failure, even if you have to cheat the last few reps or even not get full range of motion on the last couple reps.
Here is one example of what I am talking about and I am not bashing people that do CrossFit since I am one of them, but in all fairness I do my CrossFit in moderation and pick workout days that compliment my weight training days. People often make fun of CrossFiters because they work so hard but seem to never really get all that jacked. Often the goal of the CrossFit athlete is to have amazing conditioning with useable strength and there is no doubt that a CrossFit workout will get you in amazing usable condition. The downside is that the high workload done at many CrossFit gyms can be counter productive to getting "strong" in other word it can eat your gains and in some cases lead to strain and injury! That said there are top CrossFit athletes that have proven conditioning and strength can both be obtainable but these athletes do dedicated strength training with very heavy weights on a regular basis.
OK, so here it is in a nut shell, train hard not long, make your last working set as intense as you can to the point of complete, muscles exhaustion and failure. Keep challenging yourself each workout, a plateau happens when your brain has decided you can not go any further so change the way you think and train like the person you want to be, not who you think you are.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015 at 11:16PM ;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
