Multigym/ home cable advice / intermittent fasting

[Igletpiglet]

Hallo!
I have been perusing mumsnet and had some great advice on setting up a home gym- thankyou!
I’m 45, and had gone over a certain weight of badness in summer holidays from eating chips and chocolate and booze with gay abandon. Now I want to claw back 6kg to a weight I prefer being at ( pre 3 kids), and build some muscle tone. The mumsnet fitties have influenced OH and I to go for water rower machine instead of a spin bike ( plus by 6 year old was chuffed that he might be able to use it - he can’t reach pedals of a bike!)

I am on day 2 of intermittent fasting ( it was fine - 16hrs fast 8hrs normal food) which I never thought I’d managed.
I have my eye on some facebay dumbbells and an online barre class.
But what I really loved about the gym was the cable machines. Does anyone have pne in their home, that they love?
I looked at this one from fitnesssuperstore and liked it but it was a bit big and very pricey!

www.fitness-superstore.co.uk/tuffstuff-six-pak-trainer.html

Fitness superstore staff said they didn’t rate the bowflex multigym

www.fitness-superstore.co.uk/bowflex-xtreme-2-se-home-gym.html
because of the way the resistance was not equal throughout the movement; I didn’t get to try it.
I also like the look of some of the York ones
but I think they are out of stock. www.fitness-superstore.co.uk/york-perform-multigym.html
Anyone got any of these?

This sleek little beauty looks perfect for both space making and doing the job-

www.nohrd.com/uk/slimbeam/model-overview/

but I can’t find many reviews. Does anyone have one? Please could you tell me what you think about it?
Thanks!
Xx

I've just spent the afternoon re-arranging our garage to make room for our beast which is coming tomorrow - I ended up going for a powertec workbench levergym. I drove myself mad looking at reviews but the weight limits on some of them (both in terms of user weight and lifting weight) was a bit limiting as I'm hoping DH will use it and he's quite strong and sturdy so I think he would have maxed out on the weights on some multi gyms. I also ruled out the bowflex for the same reason as you, and it looked a bit fiddly as well.

The nohrd is beautiful, very elegant if you have to have it somewhere quite visible. And goes well with the water rower (we have one of those too, I love it. So nice and smooth to use.

I didn't feel confident going for proper free weights as I mostly work out on my own in an empty house. Like you when I went to the gym I loved the machines and I think they worked for me - I've lost a fair bit of weight but found an older photo of me at the same weight but when I'd been going to the gym really regularly and I am noticeably slimmer in the older photo. I've been doing the cardio so it's the weights that are missing. I can't wait to get started again.

stats thankyou so much for taking the time to reply. Gosh, the powertec do look impressive; I like the option to use free plates , and it looks simple to get to the different muscle groups, if I’ve interpreted the pics correctly .which one did you go for? Looks really stable & sturdy too , which is always back of my mind , with kids in the house.

Yes, the saving space was a big factor in thinking about the nohrd; it sounds like you have used it- was it that the weight range is not likely to challenge? - I am interested in what put you off it. Wondering if I will miss a bench with the norhd. I can’t even find anywhere to try it out!

I am very jealous of you with your new toy arriving tomorrow!

We bought this one from Amazon.

There is a video which shows most options.

I don't know the names of all of the exercises but this does every arm one you can think of and does legs too.

You can sit in front and do a rowing motion too.

I also bought a tricep pull down rope thing for the back of the arms. You can clip it on the pull down cable.

We bought the basic one because we didn't want the punch bag etc. I think there are about 4 versions.

It is very good quality but does come flat packed. Fitting the cables was a bit head scratching.

Free weights and bands are good.

I also have an Olympic bar with extra weights that I love. We got the combined bench press and squat rack but you don't need to buy that straight away.

I usually warm up on the rowing machine first.

We bought the multi gym during covid so it too months to come and kept getting delayed but it was worth it.

The reviews say that you can't do large weights but I will never reach the limit. My husband also uses it and does not find it limiting but then again he is not a massive meat head. I don't know how strong people in your home are but we are not trying to get ridiculously ripped, just toned.

We have converted a double garage and have other things and put in interlocking rubber floor mat. All in all it was quite expensive in total but we have cancelled two gym memberships and we both use it 2 to 4 times a week so, in a couple of years we will get our money's worth.

It looks and feels like a proper gym so we do use it regularly.

Lots of people also sell gym equipment on Facebook marketplace so that is a good place to start. We got the Olympic bar, weights and running machine from Facebook marketplace.

Good luck.

I looked into them but found them very expensive. You could get a lot of equipment for that price.
I ended up going for a TRX, a Reebok step, a dumbbell triangle, a set of kettlebells, a rack, a bench and a barbell for less money than the multi gym I was looking at and there hasn’t been a single exercise I haven’t been able to do yet. That said though if that’s what you want then go for it!

If you have the budget, Kinesis is amazing www.technogym.com/au/kinesis-personal.html saved our sanity during lockdown and great for everyone, any age.

Well done for choosing a rower against a bike!! You will have killer abs and arms as a bonus!
For Rowing video, I just love this guy www.youtube.com/c/TrainingTall/videos he has workouts and mistake correction.

@Igletpiglet

stats thankyou so much for taking the time to reply. Gosh, the powertec do look impressive; I like the option to use free plates , and it looks simple to get to the different muscle groups, if I’ve interpreted the pics correctly .which one did you go for? Looks really stable & sturdy too , which is always back of my mind , with kids in the house.

Yes, the saving space was a big factor in thinking about the nohrd; it sounds like you have used it- was it that the weight range is not likely to challenge? - I am interested in what put you off it. Wondering if I will miss a bench with the norhd. I can’t even find anywhere to try it out!

I am very jealous of you with your new toy arriving tomorrow!

I haven't tried the nohrd - there's a distinct lack of suppliers around here so stuck buying on reviews pretty much. Which is not easy to do, I found a lot of articles seemed to just regurgitate sales blurb and state the obvious but with no evidence that the author had ever seen let alone used the machines. And forum comments were inevitably bodybuilders saying "they're shit, buy a power rack and free weights" which, whilst I get their perspective, just isn't an option I feel comfortable with.

I probably wouldn't have gone for the nohrd in my circumstance as I wanted something with more options, with a bench etc, but if it was going to be somewhere visible in the house that tradeoff would be totally different. I think you'd be less likely to top out the weight too as it doesn't look like you'd be doing so many of the heavier lifts with the style of it.

As it is I have now fully claimed half of the double garage , there's currently a cross trainer, water rower and spin bike all lined up and the new toy will take up the rest of the side. But we moved out of the city last year so there no gym particularly close; if I wantes to start going to a gym again we'd realistically need to buy a second car which is a pretty costly outlay.

I've ordered the full levergym workbench - []www.powertec.com/workbench-levergymr-yellow this]] which is in two main bits once assembled as the bench is detachable so you can attach a bar for things like squats. There's also an accessory for doing leg curls and extensions - it attaches to the end of the bench - which I've ordered too. I ordered weight plates separately as I found somewhere cheaper. They turned up last night in quite a few boxes, the DPD guy was like "WTF is this!" I did originally plan to get the plates second hand but people around here are asking crazy money for used gym equipment just now so I found them cheaper new.

It's a bit of a beast but I'm on a serious weight loss journey and I've been getting a massive amount of use from my other stuff but I was really missing the weights. I think DH is a bit bemused.

statistically challenged so how is the beast?! I have moved no further on the nohrd except that someone fro’ marketing says I can comeTo London to try one!
Anyone else got a great home gym set up for toning and classes that they wouldn’t mind sharing? Anyone got a slim beam , or a barre?
Thanks

I love the beast, it's fabulous. I ended up getting a bugger of a cold which has wiped me out for exercise but it seems better this morning so going to try and get some exercise in later. But I managed a couple of sessions first and it's really nice to use - feels very smooth, stable and safe. Amusingly to begin with I found just the lever arms to be enough weight for things like bench press.

So far so good; cynical DH was pretty impressed too. He hasn't exercised for years but is naturally pretty strong, and I think my concern about him maxing out a lot of other options were pretty valid - he immediately was comfortable able to do sets with 40kg so it don't think it would take long for him to max out the 70ish kg that a lot of them offer.