Bought the powertec leverage multi-system gym on ebay. I'm sure I got a good deal even though I had to drive 150 miles to pick it up so a good 7 hours round trip.

The instruction booklet is daunting as there appear to be more pieces than go to make a car. However, luckily I won't have to assemble the whole gym from scratch as on picking it up it was disassembled into 6 main pieces and 5 smaller pieces, which should save a lot of time.

Tools needed - leather gloves to protect hands, ratchet, spanners and pliers.

The first thing to do is to join the bench seat to the central section.

Central Pillar - That's the easiest section done. The next ones a real killer, that's lifting and placing the central pillar at the heart of the machine, it is a heavy lift for one person but doable.

Bench Press Arm - After attaching a few small parts that connect to the central plank, i.e. the foot rest for the squat station, it's time to add the next big part which is the bench press arms that you have to feed a metal rod through, and it is a real pain getting it just right. Remember originally it's assembled without the arm bench arm fully built so much easier in terms of weight load.

Squat Arm - The bench press arm was just a warm up for the Squat arm, it is heavy and it has to be lifted and positioned to shoulder height!

Lat Arm - Its the last of the big pieces to go on. I enjoy torturing myself, my advice is to dismantle it into 2 pieces, only 2 bolts to make the task much easier.

Abs / Curl Seat - Attaching the top half of the seat for ab pull over's is relatively easy.

Finished!

Now time for my first test of the multi-gym, hoping it is not going to collapse on me!

SQUATS - Pass

BENCH PRESS - Pass

Total time to assemble was 3 hours, I imagine it would take at least twice as long to assemble if it were fully disassembled. My tip is if you buy it second hand when assembling disassemble the main lever arms as you join them to the central pillar, which will make it much easier to put together.

First thoughts of use are that it is a great piece of equipment for those looking to train on their own as you can do the two main exercises of bench press and squats in perfect safety. However contrary to the advertising, only one person can use it at a time else people are likely to get injured by all of the moving parts, so it is a single user not multi-user gym.

By Nadeem Walayat

http://www.walayatfamily.com

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