Total Gym Review with 11 Great Exercises (Including HIIT)
The Total Gym is unlike any other home gym system out there... but is it right for you? From full body workouts to isolation and HIIT, there are a ton of options to get a great workout with this space saving device. This guide will give you all the details about the Total Gym, and provide 11 great exercises (plus 1 extra HIIT) to get you started.
Already want to purchase a total gym? Use this link to pick out the best Total Gym for you (although you may want to read the guide first).
What is the Total Gym
Total Gym is the model name for a line of health and fitness workout gear created by same brand global Corp, advertised and sold by the brand’s Commercial Limited Liability Company (LLC) and the brand’s Fitness LLC. The system assures you of well-built muscles, lean body, and weight loss. It also heavily used and endorsed by Chuck Norris.
Active centers use this gym equipment. These centers include medical clinics, gyms, recuperation centers, elite athletics groups, university, and home exercisers, and wellness studios. You can access these Total Gym Workouts kits directly from the web, TV, global, and retail dissemination channels. Tom Campanaro and Doug Marino built up the central Total Gym unit in 1974 in California in San Diego.
How Does the Total Gym Work
It allows you to do more than eighty workouts at your convenient place. These total gym workouts provide excellent full-body training, helping you get results if you do it for only 20 minutes daily.
The workouts focus on each significant muscle bunch from the deltoids, pectorals, and lats in the chest area to your hamstrings, glutes, calves, and lower body. They accompany plenty of assistants to ensure that you focus on those muscles all around. An extreme exercise for the chest area is given by your getting the plunge and squeezing up bars.
You will have the option to properly prepare your lower body by playing out the leg pull and squat. The framework likewise includes the abs-Crunch and wing connections for your center. The system is a conservative framework, so you won't have to have a great deal of room to begin living more fit.
Why Total Gym Different From Other All In One Gyms
The main difference between workouts in this gym and all in one Gym is the initial gym's versatility. The exercise equipment in the in the initial system has unique options to enhance High-intensity interval training (HIIT). This exercise involves whole-body muscle groups ranging from cardio, strength training, stretching, and activities as per customers’ choice. On the other hand, all in one Gym uses weights and cable structures to give the resistance required for weight training.
Each bundle of the workout incorporates a full supplement of equipment to satisfy all the exercise moves. This satisfaction is not experienced in all in one Gym. In the all in one Gym, you pull your body's weight vertically and horizontally the rails using ropes and pulleys to work out your muscles.
Among the available bundles with this gym are the workout system is Pilates, clinical, strength training, standard accessories, etc. These packages adapt the design to fit each unique style of exercise and practice, even if the core exercise system is the same in each bundle.
These packages adapt the system to fit each unique exercise and training style, even if the core exercise system is the same in each bundle.
The all in one Gym requires dumbbells, kettlebells, weighted armbands, weighted jump rope, and balance balls as a kit to complete the fitness equipment.
Total Gym Benefits/Pros
One benefit of this bodyweight resistance home gym is that it is very suitable for people with little space at home since it is easy to install and store.
If you love cable exercises, this kit is right for you as it offers many benefits compared to free weights. The cable exercises are safe to use since you do not need to load heavy free masses.
Another great benefit of this gym is that it allows for a full array of actions from all angles, thus protects you from getting stuck under a barbell should it fail. This protection assures you that you can efficiently train on your own in the absence of an expert trainer.
It is also appropriate for anyone of any fitness level; you can enjoy using this machine, whether you are a beginner or an intermediate trainee. It does not have the massive resistance capabilities of a home gym with weights. The commercial homes and private homes enjoy the use of this machine.
Total Gym Disadvantages/Cons
However, the gym suffers some setbacks, as highlighted below.
First, the maximum resistance may not be adequate if you are looking for full-size muscle build-up as the machine does not equal the fine-tuning of free weights as may be needed by some users.
Secondly, it does not offer an alternative for crouches, deadlifts, bench presses, and military presses to build your muscles that you may require in your workout. So if you are looking for total muscle gains and power, this is not the machine for you.
It is also not the best exercise for you if you want to increase your muscle mass as it works towards losing weight as you burn out your calories.
Another limitation of this machine is that it is not intended to exercise the cardio, as you may expect.
Differences Between Individual Total Gym Packages
This Gym comes in four packages as Fit, GTS, Supreme, and XLS and they vary in 4 main ways as tabulated below.
Package
FIT
GTS
Supreme
XLS
Levels of Resistance
12
22
12
6
Number of Exercises
85
200
60
80
User Weight Capacity
450 lbs
650 lbs
275 lbs
400 lbs
Warranty /Guarantee
Lifetime warranty on frame, 2-year extended warranty on parts
5-year warranty on frame and 1-year warranty on parts
1-year warranty on frame and 6-month warranty on parts
Lifetime warranty on frame and 6-month warranty on parts
Can You Do HIIT Using the Total Gym
HIIT aims at burning body fats intensively in any exercise that has short phases of rest. It then focuses on keeping your body burning fats long after your workout. In the gym, it is highly effective as it transforms your body by burning calories and shedding away fat at intervals. Since it aims at vigorous burst working periods and rests at intervals, it is best used in this gym as a form of interval training.
11 Great Total Gym Exercises + 1 Solid HIIT Session
The following 11 Total Gym exercises give you a strong foundation for a total body workout, including a nice HIIT option:
AB Exercises
These exercises are done on a glide board while using shackle pulleys and squat stand. The activities aim at strengthening stomach muscles, commonly known as abdominal muscles. In this gym, the twisting actions pile up your abdominals. The exercises involve sitting sideways on the gym slide and twist or sweeping the cables sideways through your abdominals to burn the abdominal fat.
Chest Exercises
Chest exercises involve getting the arms together to your physique; it is crucial for your posture, chest, and injury prevention. Many chest exercises that build up muscles are dips for chest, incline dumbbell press, and incline bench cable fly, flat bench dumbbell press, barbell c press, and machine decline press. In all these exercises, your main chest muscles get to increase breast tissues but do not change the breast size, thus making you breathe easier and creating a better posture.
Back Exercises
The exercises involve sitting on the glide board, keeping your hands in the usual position, chest up, pulling the rib cage towards your body, and keeping your arm's stiffness without naturally working for the middle back. The upper and down back pull the straps cable up and down straight towards your body, respectively.
Arm Exercises
This exercise requires you to lie on your back on the glide board, bend your knees while holding the handles above your shoulders, bend your elbows and palms facing upward. Then, slip the glide board up by gliding the handles towards your knees while keeping straight your arms. This strengthens your biceps muscles.
Total Body Exercises
Total body exercise gives your body the best shape through stretching, strength training, and many activities on legs, biceps, triceps, chest, or shoulders. Through the smooth, controlled, and slow movements of your entire physique, this gym delivers the bigger and better strong muscles you need.
Leg Exercises
Leg exercises deliver the muscle strength in the legs as well as the chest. Lie on the glide bar on you back, lift one leg high as you slide backward and forward on the glide bar. Repeat this on the other leg and also lie on your stomach on the glide bar as you repeat the moves.
Shoulder Exercises
Sit on a low-back bench and grasp a dumbbell in each hand at the shoulder position, palms facing frontward. Sit upright and lift the dumbbells overhead towards one another rather than touch at the top.
Pilates Exercises
Pilates exercises involve a breathing exercise that strengthens the spine's stability and the back of the body plus the abdominals. Practice performing Pilates exercises thrice a week to experience the strength and flexibility of the muscles.
Neck Exercises
In these exercises, keep your chin upright and push the head back to align with the shoulders, stretching the scalene muscles while standing sideways. Do this simple stretch to strengthen your neck muscles. When sitting, always ensure that your neck is straight up and not bending to avoid endangering your posture.
Hamstrings Exercises
Lie on your back on the glide bar while your legs are tightly attached to the hamstrings as you slide backward and forwards on the glide bar.
Lateral Raise Exercises
Lay with our feet up while holding the pulleys in each arm. This motion will focus your shoulders in an out and up motion to isolate and further build shoulder muscles.
HIIT Exercises
The flexibility of the total gym is great for High Intensity Internal Training (HIIT). You can target smaller muscle groups or go for complete body HIIT training with smooth motions to help prevent injury. The video below offers a great example of HIIT on the Total Gym.
Conclusion
With a huge range of workouts, and years of proven success, its hard to go wrong with the Total Gym. Like all fitness products, you have to use it to get the benefits. To that end, its critical to have a partner or some sort of consistent workout program to stay accountable.
If you using it for HIIT, check out the HIIT workouts you can mix in while using the Total Gym as your base.