Wednesday, March 10, 2010

New Piece of Equipment

In spite of the fact that I purchased and love the P90X program I am not generally interested in what I see on TV infomercials. My son, who is 4, loves all of them and thinks we need everything he sees on TV but that is besides the point. Given this I was surprised at how interested I was in a recent infomercial I saw. We had just finished a workout and I switched back to broadcast TV from the DVD and there was a commercial for the Dosho Gym 5000. As intrigued as I was I am still pretty skeptical. This device was apparently designed by the same guy who came up with the original bowflex stuff. I own the selectech 552 dumbbells from bowflex and I like them a lot so I thought maybe this is the real deal. After doing a little digging around on the web I have not been able to find many reviews of the Dosho Gym other than complaints from some bodybuilders who have actually never used the system so I am not putting much weight (no pun intended) behind what they say. Besides these are some of the same people claiming the selectech dumbbells are junk and I could not disagree more with that, you can't just drop them on the floor like iron dumbbells but they are pretty sturdy and a real space saver.

What I have found out about the Dosho is the dumbbells only adjust up to 45 pounds each in 5 pound increments but there is an add on you can buy that will increase that to 70 pounds, I would like to see more like 100 pounds but 70 is certainly better than 45 which is no where near enough. I am not sure how useful the "lift assist" part would be for me but the bench appears to be constructed pretty well and would give me a range of exercise capabilities that I don't currently have at home and variety is a good thing. I like the fact that the dumbbells are a sturdy metal construction. This is one of the complaints people have about the selectech dumbbells, they are a plastic and the adjustment mechanism can break if you drop them. I have not had problems with this but I am careful not to drop them. The Dosho dumbbells appear to be a design that would not suffer from this problem. The price is also attractive given that I was thinking about buying the next level selectech 1090 and the cost of the Dosho is $100 less, I would need to spend an extra $79 on the extra weight for the dumbbells but still cheaper. It appears the only way to get this equipment is by ordering through the web sit and this is a drawback. I would like to be able to go into a retailer and try the equipment first before shelling out that kind of money.

Bottom line for me is this looks like a promising idea but I think I will wait for some reviews and/or the ability to try the equipment in person before I buy. If anyone has any more direct experience with this I would love to hear about it.

2 comments:

  1. Very interesting read, I had not seen the Dosho gym before, however it is very intriguing. I know you like your selectech's but have you considered the powerblocks? They are less wide so they work better for exercises that require you to push the dumbbells above your head.

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  2. Chris,

    I did look at the powerblocks before buying the selectech's. I actually looked at a bunch of adjustable dumbbells and determined all but these 2 were junk. The reason I went with the selectechs is I found them easier to adjust and they felt like a regular free weight in your hand and the powerblocks did not. I agree though that the length of the selectechs is a drawback on certain exercises but so is the way you have to grip the powerblocks. That all being said I would not discourage anyone from buying either as I found them both to be top quality and real space savers.

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