With the Total Gym 1800 Club home gym, you have everything you need to start your own personal fitness center. The gym offers more than 60 different exercises to help you tone and strengthen every major muscle group in your body. In particular, it can help you tone and condition the muscles you use every day to stand, walk, lift, and turn.
The product is designed so that you lift a percentage of your body weight against gravity, making the resistance smooth and fluid. As your strength and conditioning improves, you can increase resistance by increasing the incline.
Features include ab-crunch boards, a Pilates bar, dip bars, press-up bars, a wing attachment, a leg attachment, and auto-lock height adjustments. Also included are an exercise flip chart, an exercise mat to protect your floor, and a DVD featuring two workouts. The gym is easy to assemble and folds away for convenient storage. It has a maximum user weight of 275 pounds.
Manufacturer's Warranty Every Total Gym is covered by a limited lifetime warranty, which means a lifetime warranty on the frame. The Total Gym 1800 Club has a one-year limited warranty on all moving parts.
About Total Gym Total Gym made its start on television 11 years ago and now can be found in over 3 million homes. With over $1.2 billion in sales, it has become one of the industry's longest running home fitness successes.
What's in the Box? Total Gym 1800 Club home gym, exercise flip chart, exercise mat, and workout DVD.
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
My wife has been wanting to buy a Total Gym for some time now, and we're glad we waited, because the Total Gym 1800 seems a bit better than the 1700 for a very similar price. We had a hard time finding enough info on the 1800 but decided to take a chance. Although we're not familiar with the 1700, there doesn't seem to be anything "missing" and the 1800 does include a few extras such as larger glide board, and ab boards. It also has leg pulley kit, one foot harness, dip bars, press up bars, and the wing accessory, many of which I think are included in the 1700 as well.
Pluses: Convenient and easy to exercise many different muscle groups, compact and reasonably priced. Adults and older kids can use it comfortably. I don't find it difficult to make adjustments even raising and lowering, but may be difficult for people who weigh only 100 lbs or less.
Minuses or things that may take some getting used to:
(1) Lot of adjusting required. Different exercises require different attachments, some of which get in the way of each other so you don't (can't) have everything permanently attached. At least with the hitch pins it's easy. What's not so easy is adjusting the effort level, because the only way to do this is by raising or lowering the glide table so it's inclined at a different angle (all exercises require raising your body on the glide table, at a steeper angle this requires more effort). So where I've started is level 1 (easiest) for a few exercises, then I adjust to level 3 for a couple of other exercises. While I do expect to get stronger at the level 1 exercises, I kind of doubt that I'll ever be at the same setting for all exercises.
(2) Mechanical design leaves something to be desired. (a) I have yet to find a good place to keep the handles when not using them so they just kind of rattle around on the floor. (b) There's a safety hitch pin, but either I'm not using it right or it doesn't fit well - there's a hole it seems it should go in, but it either goes in cockeyed or it bangs up against the main spring loaded pin that holds one end of the glide table up. (c) There's a velcro pad on one of the rails, the pulley fitting rubs against this and it's going to come off sooner or later. (d) There's a foam pad that goes under the unit. But when you raise or lower the glide table, the distance between the feet changes and the foam pad shifts around. Minor nuisance keeping the unit on the foam pad, I'm inclined (no pun intended!) to get a nice big plywood sheet and keep the Total Gym on that. (e) Depending on the attachments in use, the plastic-sheathed cable may rub on the attachment.
(3) At first it was awkward getting started with each exercise, but I'm getting the hang of it. Seems to help to grab both handles of the rope-pulley and then adjust your body position. And empty your pockets ;-)
(4) Be careful with loose hair. First time my wife tried, her hair got caught in a pulley assembly.
Drawbacks notwithstanding, a good deal for the money.
