Attempting to get a bit fitter and looking for some bits to add to my Fitness room. Primarily:

Sit-up Bench
Weight Training Bench

Would be interested in hearing of other fitness equipment you may have just collecting dust. Willing to pay a fair price.

I believe I have something like that in my roof... Cost a fortune when I bought it, has never been put together....

Hi,

Would be interested to find out more. What's the best option, come take a look maybe? (unless you have photo's / details / website).

Get a fitness ball, they will be much cheaper then a bench and much more versatile.

For pretty much all the exercises you do on a bench you can do them on the ball, and it does much more for you then on a bench. Doing something like a dumbell press on the ball will take in much more muscles and provide a better training effect then doing it on a bench. You can also do literally hundreds of trunk (Stomach and Back) exercises on it.

In my opinion money much better spent!

I'd recommend avoiding the sit up bench. They tend to cheapen the effect of a regular sit up by bring your legs/thighs into the sit up motion.

As for the weight training bench you could try the Migros Sport on Lowenplatz. Nothing beats a good old bench press for all round core strength!

These balls come in various sizes, what size is recommended? I guess that to use this as a seat when doing excercise, then one's feet should be comfortably on the floor with the legs bent close to 90 degrees ??

If you sit up straight on top of the ball, your knees and hips should both be at 90 degrees with your feet flat on the floor.

I use a 60cm diameter ball at about 180cm tall.

Brian makes a good point about mixing up dynamic and static exercises. These balls are great for stability/postural exercises and can help power type work too. But if your goal is to increase functional strength for a sport, then you will have to do more specific work too. But this argument can be made for the bench too.

If you are comfortable on the ball it is possible to do everything you can do on a bench and more!

Another advantage of the ball and/or bench is that you are using your stabiliser muscles at the same time too (hope i got the name right there..)
This meaning that unlike on a regular weights machine where you are only using the exact movement, using free weights on a bench or exercise ball requires you to keep your balance and keep the weight lifting motion stable at the same time.

You should try out in a gym some time how much you can bench press using a weights machine and then try the same thing on a weights bench......its going to be a big drop in weight!

Thanks for your replies. I recently picked up some weights and wanted to have the facilities to use them properly. Will have the chance to try out a bench and ball later this week.

I was in Ochner Sports last night and they just had one size of ball 55/65cm. They mention on the box the suitable heights and say 100degrees is recommended (which makes sense as when your legs are at 90degrees you have little power). They also had the suitable heights on the box and mentioned the other sizes available with details.

So sounds like you should have the next size up.

This is all to suppliment the following equipment:

Cross-Trainer
Concept II rowing machine (an old noisy fan one, not the nice new quite one's)
Road bike on track stand.

Plus: Cycling, Swimming & Kayaking when I can (which is not often enough, but I'm hope to improve this).

I love the conept II rowers. They're my favourite bit of gym equipment!

90-100 degrees for what you are doing with the ball is much of a muchness. Unless you actually have a goniometer to measure joint angle it is much easier to tell people 90 degs for this purpose as leg power is not what is being trained here. Rather all round, co-ordination and stabilisation of the trunk musculature as well as the individual muscles you are exercising (i.e. pec, triceps ant deltoid if you are doing chest press).

To be honest, in the past I have had a lot of dud advice form places like Ochsner sport, best to do some googling and ask advice from people you know before taking their word for it. It seems that in a lot of cases the sales people have done a general sales apprenticeship and have a small interest in sport so they work in a sports shop.

There are a huge amount of resources on the interweb about Swiss ball training, google is your friend, take a look around and don't just take my word for it. I'm just someone on an internet forum!


Nope, believe me I have the right sized ball. (Could be 65cm, but I haven't taken any notice of the actual size in a long time. just know it works!

You've got some gym set up there... You gonna sell memberships to other EF members?

The mention of 100degrees was on the box, not from an employee there. Yes I plan also to research this a bit too. I did take a quick look the other day and found a couple of books which I will take a closer look at.

I doubt anyone would want to use my Gym as it's not on many peoples doorstep. Just bought a new beamer for the Cinema room, so the old one will end up in the Gym / playroom so I can get rid of the TV and create more floor space.