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Fitness Equipment Review 2020 – Power Blocks, Stick Mobility, Vipr PRO, & more

Posted on December 22, 2021 Michael Hughes

I’m going to be reviewing some of my favorite pieces of equipment that I use and my team uses here at Jim nozzle on a daily basis. These are a piece of equipment that have the most value, and especially are awesome, and very beneficial, versatile for any new trainer looking to get into the equipment game for clients would be in your facility, or virtually at your client’s home. So when I thought about this list, I thought about boiling it down to its pure essentials. And what I would want to have and spend the least amount of money but still get the most amount of value, if I was to repurchase all my equipment all over again, especially as a brand new trainer, when you don’t really have all the funds that you would like to have. And you need to make some equipment purchases, again, for in facility or for your clients home. So you can train them virtually. And they have everything that’s required for them to get not only the expertise that you serve, but of course, that extra little bonus of what that tool that piece of equipment can offer them. So when I boil that down, I thought about again, what would I do if I didn’t have these five, and it really kind of was tough to really bring it down to this nice compact list of power blocks of MOBE sticks of foam rollers of plyo boxes, and of the Viper or the Viper Pro, let me break down each and every one of them what they are the pro and con as I see it, and then a few kind of demos in a sense of how I use it, or the massive amount of versatility. And therefore value that it brings me and my clients, I still start with the power block, which is a key essential piece and something I had to learn over the years of why I’m choosing the power block over any other dumbbell. And I would never go back. And I want you to tell a quick story in your mind about if you’ve ever been to a traditional weight gym in a sense, big box gym, and think about that line that pude rack of dumbbells that goes underneath the mirror, you think about that, look at all those options I got from five pounds and then way down there, or maybe hit some triple digits. And I look at that, and I say what an under utilization of square foot. In my facility, in most boutique training facilities, the amount of square foot that you have to train in is your biggest if not one of your biggest expenses rent. So in our facility, we try to maximize how much open square footage we have. So we can maximize movement. And I don’t want a dumbbell rack taking up a bunch of room. Not only that, creating a lot of room for some dust and other things to get underneath. So when I look at these power blocks, I look at how amazing it is that I can get 90 pounds of weight in essentially a one by two or a you know, a simple small footprint. Now, that’s what I love about it. And that’s an amazing Pro, of what makes this power block setup. So great. And what we have is for some of our athletes, we go all the way to 90 pounds for something that we actually only go up to 32 pounds. And what’s great about this is I can take this and easily make a select change. If you just like pulling out this handle, go into a color that matches the color on top of here, pull that weight out, and I’m ready to rock and roll in very, very quick amount of time. Because in circuit training or group classes, it’s important that you can change equipment very quickly, and make that selection not even about memorizing a number. But what we like. And I’ve given this a lot more is memorizing a color. And you can see around me there’s a lot of color. And that’s on purpose. Because it’s tough to find the weight you want when you’re staring out a small number, but it’s really easy to see a color selection and make that call and get rock and roll in for your workout.

So a con unfortunately, a con about the power blocks is only one user can use a power block at a time because once that handle is out of that rack, Well essentially, there’s no one else that could use that weight. So I certainly get it right you have to understand that when you have a big row of dumbbells you have was made dumbbells per handles that you have. And PowerBlock has essentially only two handles. Again, that is a slight deviations because there is a setup that has two more handles here. But it’s only a set weight of five or 10 pounds. However, we looked about that and we understood that that is such a small insignificant detail that we should just buy more power blocks. Now again, that took us time to grow our business before we made that decision. But we have over 15 sets of power blocks. In fact, when I look at how much weight we have, we actually have more than 100 big box gym does just packaged. And people look at it and they walk into our facility like where’s your dumbbells? And like, the right there. And like, I didn’t even think about that. So it’s really this amazing space saving opportunity. Now, they’re not the cheapest, and by far, not even close to the cheapest, but I didn’t say what equipment is the cheapest, I said, what equipment is the most amount of value. And that’s, I think, the most important piece, because you don’t want to buy equipment a that’s going to break, and then it’s going to be down. And if you don’t have it for maybe a week, if not longer time, especially in this set of equipment shortage that we’ve found ourselves in. So it’s really important that you get quality equipment spend money the right way, the first time, even if it’s more. Now how to use that power block, we can use it any way that you can use a dumbbell. In fact, I like even better because it has a square shape to it, which basically gives me more stability on prone work. And my older clientele my baby boomer clientele loves that safety, that security, that where they can take it and doesn’t have that rolling away effect that would typically have besides just strength, I want to go back to the most ability, flexibility elasticity side. And I want to talk about this simple, super awesome contraption called the stick mobility or a moped stick, as we call it. And this amazing piece of highly blended plastic with some cool rubber handles in this orange look is an essential piece to our training and conditioning. Because essential for us is not just strength training, not just cardiovascular training, but flexibility training, mobility training, and sustainable training. And instead of having a bunch of those true stretches back there, which we absolutely love, but are super expensive, in a sense, right? But also add immense amount of value. I can get about 20 If not 30 of these guys. Maybe more than that for only one of those. So it talks about a group training class, I definitely recommend starting with one of these now, what is it again, it’s a stick, right? But what I do with that stick, the pro and con of it will it goes anywhere. It’s super easy to transport, it doesn’t cost relatively that much. And the effects of it is only limited by imagination and understanding of biomechanics of how to lengthen and tension this human body. Are there cons? You know, I don’t think so. I really don’t think there’s a single con with this stick unless you compare it against something like that, that true stretch behind me. But that’s a different classification. Right? That’s kind of a whole different playing field. So to me, this moped stick is only enhanced by your knowledge and the amount of moped six, you have to move six, even even better. So how do I use this tool? Well, it’s not just this amazing staff, we

start to do some taekwondo stuff. In reality, it’s I don’t even know if he uses tic tac on taekwondo or both staff. But it’s amazing how I can just set myself up as an example of just getting a lateral stretch right? Now what I like about this lateral stretch is that I can use my bottom hand as a tension agent, right, and I can push it away, which only magnifies the amount of effort of flexion I did here, and therefore opening up my extension there because this stick as it bows wants to bow back, and it pulls me it pulls me away as I hold this and therefore I get a stretch essentially, much easier. Now it takes energy down here. But to get more effect down there. That’s just a simple upright stance, like we can get super fancy with it, get underneath you open yourself up and start to really peel back shoulder. And so to give you the tip, now, this is not really a stretch out do but the fact of the matter is, it’s up to your imagination, of course, your understanding of biomechanics, and what that can conduce into the body. But think about this one as how I can set myself up not only for warmup positions, right, I can start to get some good thoracic spine motion, a big stretch a particular way to pervade isometric or active tension into a shoulder into a core as I drive that stick into the ground and create this this tension network through my lateral chain or etc, etc. We actually run entire cooldown or entire restoration or mobility classes by using this and the next tool that we’re about to talk about, which is the foam roller. Now, the foam roller as I’ve a bunch of them right back here is really this. I like to think of it as like a An artist using different carving tools for wood or for clay, or for a massage therapist, instead of using their hands, they can use other tools that we can’t reach through a screen. Or we don’t have the soft tissue skills to physically put our hands on a body. Because the fascial network of connective tissue in our body is vast. And if we don’t work on it, I’m going to highly encourage you, you understand as much as you possibly can about how the fascia plays into mobility, flexibility, strength, and this amazing thing called power that we want to train as much as possible. So let’s grab a few. And let’s understand what’s going on here. So if I was gonna go bare bones, basic, right, bare bones basic out, grab on to a trigger point, that’d be the brand ball, I think it’s called a and five in the small or they’re kind of half rollers right through through there. What I love about these tools is again, it’s like different heads on a screwdriver, right, we have a screwdriver, that’s a star shaped right was a Phillips and a flathead. Well, it’s still a screwdriver, right? Still foam rolling tools, but they have different purposes for particular aspects of the human body, much more tight, close areas, hip flexors, ribs, subscapular, muscles, shoulder blade, right getting into the inside thigh, or adding even greater pressure point because it’s an actual more of a point instead of a flat surface. But then you have the roller for broad areas, or for less focused intensity. And what I like what they did about this material, even have an updated ball, that’s our front desk that has the same grid pattern, as this roller does. So the ball and grip pattern are essentially the same, is that allows much more hydration and fluid transfer through the body versus a flat standard. Think about like a rain tire on your car, right? There’s a lot of channels and grooves, well, there’s a reason for those, right? It allows fluid to be pushed and moved out of the way. Nice job trigger point. And also has broad surface points, right, where you just want the most amount of contact as possible. Think about a tire slick, or a drag race tire, right? nothing but pure rubber on that road. Great job, trigger point. Thanks for thinking about that for me, because I want to get the most amount of results as quickly as possible. When we’re applying a foam rolling technique, or movement to any one of my clients. Amazing, amazing, quick, quick tools. If

you do not own several of these, if you’re in a group training environment, I highly recommend that you get them. Because again, this soft tissue network in your body, that connective tissue fashion, if that is not hydrated, pliable and elastic. I’m just gonna say this, it’s a ticking time bomb your client has inside of them before something rips, tears, strain sprains, and they no longer paying you because they can’t move without pain. So dig into this, check this out. But if you want to go the next level, if you want to take this a little bit higher, then I highly recommend something from what’s called hyper ice. And they make amazing soft tissue tools that have essentially vibrating motors inside of them. Now the price point is much higher. But the resale value at your front desk is also much higher, right? Because every product that we have, we also especially these ones, we offer our clients to buy to take home, especially in the virtual training era, where we want all of our clients to have this at home because we’re training them from a screen. So each one has have a vibrating motor and the vibration in these tools, different levels. And you got to think about vibration, what is vibration, do what does essentially two essential things, it loosens things up. And it activates more essentially neuromuscular transmission, right? If you keep it that simple. So if you want to, therefore loosen something up faster, you vibrate it, right. So another tool, don’t want to forget about these, again, not the cheapest by any means. But again, we’re not talking about cheap today, we’re talking about value, and what that value brings your client and therefore to your business. Now moving on, I want to think about this thing called these plyo boxes here. And I got every single one of them. And I got basically I’ll just call this one a two footer, a foot and a half a foot six, and then a three insure and what these tools do right. Why do I think about a Pio box will play a box for me is really not about jumping onto it. I certainly that is what they’re used for. But that’s not why I made this short list of only five pieces of equipment. It made the shortlist because of the versatility it gives so many different clientele levels. So again, we’re gonna jump on apply box but what else Can we do the play box? Well, we can kneel on it, we could sit on it, we can go prone on it, we could jump over it, we can step onto it. And I can go even further. Actually, we use these for jumping the least. It’s about saying, think about this one, guys, I need you to get to a prone position, and I needed to do a frontal plane hip drive, while on the ground, you’ve now put everybody at a full gravitational load on the ground. And they have to manage a dynamic hip motion for let’s say, one minute, that’s gonna be a pretty tough move. And you got to be decent amount of a level of athlete to accomplish that without failure, or putting undue stress on other parts of your body. But if I did that same plank, let’s say, on this box, here, I’m now two feet off the ground, I’m at a different angle, and then for gravity plays on my body at a whole different level. So now I can train, essentially, my 50 plus year old, whose core has been deconditioned, for the past 2030 years sitting at a desk, and they can still do that drill under the same time load as everyone else. Not only did they feel psychologically that they’ve won, kept up with the rest of the pack, but you have the availability to use something other than a boxes for jumping on. And that’s an amazing, amazing tool to have, and have that versatility. When you’re training a vast amount of clientele, especially as a group trainer, would a one on one trainer, I get it, you can change your environment use other aspects. But I’m talking about group training, when you go in to say, Alright, guys, we’re gonna do a side plank, or we’re gonna do a squat. And I want you to get down to that parallel position. What if there’s a safety net down there what something I think in squat down to not just as a safety, but again, as a goal to just shoot for versus just this open air squat.

And what if you want to do some dynamic cardiovascular drills, we want to put a foot up onto a box, not just jump onto it, but but do a lateral switch over in the sense, right or run around it use it as a slalom. So it’s not only a box to get onto, but to actually avoid or get around. It acts like cones, in a sense, we’ve been set types of obstacles. So we really love it for again, it’s versatility of how we can train so many different levels of clientele, and have so many different options where a they feel safe, well taken care of, and most importantly, leveled appropriately, even if they’re amongst higher level athletes. And again, I’m gonna say this once more colorful, bright, colorful, I’m of the mindset and of the methodology that a gym environment should be colorful, why are all playgrounds for children colorful, it’s exciting. Now, again, this is my methodology, and my play, because there’s certainly a lot of garage gyms that are wood, and metal. And there’s not much color at all. But again, I will say just we have a difference of opinion on methodology of our business and how to train clients. However, I want somebody to quickly know I’m a blue. And I don’t want them to know that it’s a foot higher, they’re just blue, or they’re orange, or the red etc. And I like it, how it communicates, and follows the same pattern as our pile, excuse me, as our power blocks. Again, universal communication, clients understand where they’re at, and it makes the session run smoother. Let’s go to the end. And my last, and what I saved for the last is the Viper, especially the Viper Pro, we have a custom rack behind me that we’ve built and developed again, for space saving, and floor print versatility, right? What I love about the Viper in particular, and especially this new Viper pro is that this tool is unlimited. It’s on limited in its potential in what it can do. And I’ve been using this tool for almost nine years now. And I’m still caught with things that I haven’t thought about yet. So let’s talk about the basics. Right? It is a loaded weapon, right? I use the word weapon as a as a joke, right? It’s a loaded utensil, where I can do multi directional mass, momentum. And therefore strength building techniques. If I connect it with the ground, I now have a stability tool. I can not only take it on land, I can take it in the water for any type of people who are on the beach, around lakes or a swimming pool. It is an amazing water tool, that there’s not that many tools, you can add that much load to it and bring in the water and still be confident that you bring it out of it, it’s not going to get ruined. And what I love about is it again provides this color coded selection where I know where again, my color versus my weight. Now what you can do with this When we think about loading as a as a multi directional, multi planar way to move and to grab, and to move through a system, or a spherical space, Does that not mean I can’t do a traditional hand clean and oppress? Right? I can certainly do all those aspects, we use the Viper, as essentially, a traditional crossfitter would use a barbell, they may have 15, or 20 of them or more in their box. Well, in our training facility, we have 75 of these. Because, as a CrossFitter, would say, look at the versatility all the things that can do with it, like say the Viper can do more, what it can’t do is load above about 70 pounds, he would say, Gosh, Mike was 70 pounds. That’s not even a warm up weight for most people with a deadlift or with a cleaner drink, in fact, doesn’t even touch. Even the initial level, that strength needs to be developed to stimulate the tissue, I would say, you’re definitely Right, right. It’s not it is not everything. But I would question back do you need that much weight in functional, everyday training, and how it starts to edge that case and my favor, because we don’t, we simply just don’t. And for the vast majority of clientele, we need appropriate loading versus over loading. And again, this is my opinion on it. But it certainly has served me very, very well having weight that stays in the 20 to 50 range versus going into the three digit range.

In terms of my sustainability, my clientele, the success I’ve had my clientele, and the overall longevity, again, I’ll say that word a little differently versus the sustainability, the longevity of a paying client, and how their body feels and therefore moves better, then doesn’t mean I don’t have barbells here, then we apply a barbell. So it’s great training tool, great versatility to and is endless in its application. They are certainly on the more expensive side. But again, we’re not talking about cheap from a value. And I save pound for pound, the most valuable tool I’ve ever owned in my facility. And I highly recommend picking up as much as you can. If if you want to follow strengthen conditioning, metabolic conditioning, mobility, and the versatility, the versatility of movement, there’s this great saying that the best ability is the availability of your options. And if your motion, and this tool certainly brings that punch every single day. Hope you loved this content and hope you appreciated the simplicity of what it takes to open a facility with the middleman equipment, or the availability to bring this quote in someone’s home. If you love this content, like subscribe, we come up with content every single week, helping out the trainer and also the consumer on what they can learn from the inside scoop behind the scenes of what trainers are talking about. Use this material, ask questions though in the comments. And we’re here to serve you to build your business, build your practice, and of course, those athletes out there to have you this insight. So you can make the best decisions for your own training and not have to learn from someone who doesn’t have the experience that we have, with over a decade building functional fitness and having that multi dimensional outlook of how to train for the vastness of what the human body gives us. I’m Michael Hughes with Janaza Have a great day.

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