Bow Classic 36" Isometric Exercise Equipment, Portable Strength Training at Home Gym Equipment for Back, Shoulder, Chest, Biceps, Abs, Arm, Ab Workout, All in One Exerciser for Men & Women

A little backstory:Growing up in the 1970s I saw the Bullworker ads on television. I even had some buddies who either owned one or their older brothers did. I wanted one so, so badly but my mother didn't want a muscle bound freak for a son and my father was terrified that the thing would slip or break and punt my head in to the neighbor's yard. As a result of my parents' fears, I only occasionally had opportunity to manipulate a Bullworker over at a friend's house. No, they weren't muscled freaks, and their heads were still firmly attached to their shoulders. I would marvel at how much effort it took to completely compress a Bullworker and quickly understood how effective of a training tool it could be.Anyway I got older and like my father before me, got in to weight training with free weights. As a kid I was all over it, developing my barrel chest and big arms that I still have to this day. I did train as an adult as well, but with the passing of time and my exponential laziness I just didn't feel like lifting heavy stuff like I did when I was younger. I was still in great shape, strong as an ox, and had muscle tone even without actively working out for years.Fast forward through years of sedentary lifestyle and the loss of my wife, who for 26 years made sure that I ate proper food. Widowed at 47 years old I quickly fell in to the trap of becoming even more withdrawn and sedentary, but with the added twist of a nearly 100% fast food diet. Tired of feeling bad and looking like a parade balloon in both size and puffiness, I was surfing on Amazon and was astonished to see this fantastic device available for sale. A brand new Bullworker! The fastest I've moved in three years was when I ran to get my wallet after stuffing my previously forbidden chromed object of my affections in to my shopping cart.Review begins here:It came today! As always, it came in attractive, plain Amazon packaging so it didn't scream "Hey, the guy in Apartment 2 is a whimp". Opening the box revealed a plain white box (I suppose doubly discreet packaging?) which when opened revealed a nice tote bag that proudly proclaims "BULLWORKER" up the side. Ok, no biggie... it's not like I am taking this thing in to the park and working out with it, like some elderly Tai Chi practitioner. Inside the bag was the Bullworker (duh), a nice spiral bound instruction book that has far too many exercises in it, an awesome non-slip pad that would be a badass mousepad, and a black spring. Oh yes, the spring. I had remembered it came with another one, and I had assumed that it was the lighter resistance spring. I had wanted to change it out to the lighter one and then work up to the heavier one since it had been so long since I had any real exercise. But, before I changed it out I gave the Bullworker a good tight squeeze from the ends and looked at my results on the power meter. I had almost gone the entire length! Yes, there was a good bit of resistance, but it was less than I was expecting. I assumed that since I was a kid when I had last touched a Bullworker that I was just weak and puny back then, explaining the greater difficulty of compressing the old school spring. So, I proceeded to change it out.Spring changeout is super easy. Just put the Bullworker vertically with the larger diameter of the cylinder up, then compress and turn the top handle. It's bayoneted to the end of the larger diameter tube, twist it off and then the spring carrier and spring will be right there. As soon as I did that with mine, I immediately noticed the spring inside was silvery, like a spiral notebook's spine, and not black like the extra spring. The diameter of the spring wire was also significantly smaller than the black spring. "Hmm...", I said to myself.Like a dingus I put the black spring inside the tube, placed the spring carrier (which can only go in one way, good engineering guys!) back in, and tried to get the handle back on. That's right, TRIED. It was almost as bad as trying to compress a truck's suspension coils by hand. I felt that I couldn't get the thing to compress enough with the black spring that I could get enough of the handle on it to lock it down without a pretty significant (read: head punting) degree of effort! So, I put the lighter silver spring back in. That's great - that means that there is a ton of room to grow in to this device and I was planning on training for endurance and definition, so I'm more concerned with doing reps than I am with resistance. The fact that there is plenty of resistance is just the cherry on top!So it's time to start training. I had stretched out well and opened the book to page 9 that detailed the 20 step 'Bow Classic Power Routine'. I flipped through the exercises, checking them out, thinking, "oh this is not that big of a deal... I'll do two or three sets of these tonight, just to get started". Little did I know...I didn't make it. In fact, I didn't even get all the way to Legs, and I wound up skipping a few up until that point. This is no joke - the compression stuff over your head and behind your back does not play. I'm a pretty strong guy, I'm 6'3" tall with a huge chest and developed biceps and triceps that are large, detectable, and hard when flexed, and I had trouble compressing on those exercises. But you know what? Just like me not being to comfortably be able to put the stiffer spring in, this is a good thing! It gives me a nice low baseline that I can use to achieve fast growth, because I know compressing this thing is going to make me stronger, and quite quickly. And when you see fast growth, you stay excited and you continue the exercises. It's an upward spiral, and it's what I need in my life right now.This thing whipped me, and hard. I was going to start out by doing 5 reps of each exercise of the 20 step routine with progressive breathing. You have to breathe and I smoke occasionally, so I have a lot of junk to fight in order to get oxygen in my system so my shredding muscles have a way to make food and to carry waste products away. I take a lot of supplements, including citrulline, and I don't like cramps or lactic acid buildup (burn) in my muscles. So, my first rep in the set would be one compression while breathing in, then exhaling as soon as 70% compression occured, also slowly releasing the Bullworker. The second rep would be inhaling and compressing, then exhaling but holding the Bullworker tight, then inhaling, and then finally releasing the Bullworker on the second exhale. Third rep, release on the third exhale, and so on. The inhales and exhales are done over several seconds and are nice and deep as you SLOWLY move the Bullworker to 70% or so of full power. I wanted to saturate my body with oxygen to encourage blood flow to my muscles and eliminate waste from them.Yeah. Wow. This thing beat me like a drum, but it's exactly what I needed. It didn't take long before I was realizing how weak I was and how difficult some of the exercises were. But, again, that's FANTASTIC! You're not supposed to be able to bottom out your Bullworker as soon as you pop it out of the box. You have to work up to it. That means taking a beatdown over and over until you overcome it. To the folks that say they can't compress it, I would tell them to check which spring is in the unit. Chances are they've got the big one in there. Even if you "can't" do it, I am sure you can compress some. If you get a 30 on the power scale, so what? Do your reps at 30 and before you know it you'll be to 100 laughing about the time you could barely do 30.The Bullworker Bow Classic is the real deal. This thing is so well built! You know when you pick something up and you immediately think of how well it would kill someone if you swung it at their head? No? Oh, must just be me then. But yeah, this isn't some "as seen on TV" rinky-dink piece of junk. It is at least as well built, if not better built, than the ones I saw back in the 1970s and 80s. I assure you that it will not fold up on you like a dollar store chaise lounge. Also, the book of exercises is awesome! They have the Basic workout and a regimen that takes you to 13 weeks (and beyond!). If you use this device correctly every day I can guarantee you that you'll have monstrous core strength and probably some well developed and defined musculature too.I love my Bullworker Bow Classic, and we're going to have some wonderfully terrible and painful times together. Tomorrow I'll work on my legs. The next day, back to my upper body and see if I can hit all those exercises instead of skipping a couple. Then back to legs. Repeat, and repeat for as long as necessary. Before long I'll be able to do all 20 steps and then I'll do another set. Looking forward to it!

Forgot just how great a piece of workout equipment this Bullworker is! Had one many years ago and saw this online and decided to give it another dance, and so happy I did. Just in week one but am getting a real nice workout from it.The spiral bound workout manual is a very, very nice touch and also shows the quality of this item.

Like many I also owned a Bullworker in the late 70s but being a teenager I lost interest in the device because I didn't know how isometrics work. A month ago I found a used model with the brown handles just like the one I owned back then.Suffering from back issues I was looking for something that would give me a good workout without much strain and the Bullworker fit the bill. The results I gained in just one month were so good I decided to purchase the New Bullworker Classic.As soon as I opened the package I was surprised at the solid build quality of the device, as much as I hate to say it made my 40 year old Bullworker seem like a cheap knockoff. I could tell I'll get many good years of service from this device.A couple of reviewers said the Bullworker was way too long, well, I'm 5ft4 and I can handle it with no issues at all. Also about the spring being too stiff, the unit comes with two interchangeable springs. The grey one is 50 lbs resistance and feels the same as my older model, the black spring at 100 lbs resistance is a beast, but that's how I prefer it for my isometric holds.I use the device in the manner it was first meant to be, 26 excercises with a 7 to 10 second hold on each one. There are a few excercises that are pretty tough and you may find it very difficult to compress the spring, but that's the beauty of isometrics. Your using your muscles against an immovable force, making them stronger with each worout. I found with my older model an excercise such as the overhead where I couldn't even budge it a hair, within a month I was compressing it an inch as shown on the power meter. It isn't the spring getting weaker, it's that I'm getting stronger.The Bullworker Classic is an all in one portable gym that will give you great results if you dedicate yourself to it and use it regularly. You will not become a bodybuilder, but you will become stronger, fitter and with more toned muscles. There are a few who knock the Bullworker, but I can tell you I'm old enough to remember when resistance bands were mocked and look at how popular they are today.There's a reason the Bullworker has been around for 50 years, they work. Try one out for yourselves, borrow a friends or start with a used one, you will soon find yourself wanting to buy the New Bullworker Classic, and why not? The results in your better health will surprise you.

Great way to get in a quick workout without having to pay a gym membership and the time it takes to do so. The classic bow is ruggedly built, quiet, compact, and easy to transport and take with me on trips. The different tension springs make it easy to find a level that will continually challenge you as you progress. Much better than the one spring Bullworker I had in the 70’s.