Complaint Review: Bowflex - Bowflex Revolution - Internet

All posters need a little more research or to be more specific. 

1) The power rods DO wear out, any spring no matter how much testing, no matter what material they are will wear out. Even extremely fancy expensive materials like titanium will wear out eventually, that being said it could take decades for this to happen since most people will not use their Bowflexs often. Question on the warranty though, is it transferable? if it is then the 2nd hand shops could be a great bargain.

2) The Bowflex machines DO WORK, they will can make you stronger and lose weight; they're essentially universal weight machines w/o traditional weights. To follow up on an earlier comment about the resistance not being consistent over the entire range of a lift this is true, unlike free weights the resistance increases the more the rods are bent. However, free weights also DO NOT produce consistent resistant through out the entire range of many a lifts. This is because gravity ONLY pulls straight down imagine you're doing a standing bicep curl, as you begin to lift you have less resistance, it peaks when your elbow is bent at 90 degrees, and decreases as your hand nears your shoulder. It's physics so not everyone will understand ;-)

To "feel the burn" experienced lifters will just have to attach more rods. I recommend upgrading to the 310lb or 410lb weight packages for most men. 

3) Someone said you need to do more than one exercise per muscle group to make real progress and that is dead on. Their statement that Bowflex doesn't allow that is incorrect, on most models you can do tons of variations on any lift since there are multiple pulleys one can use. For curls alone you can do standard curls, decline curls, hammer curls, preacher curls (with the right attachment), concentration curls, and over-hand-grip curls. 

The Bowflex isn't for everyone but it's super convenient to own one and if you get one used online they come in at about $200 so they really are a bargain. However, the price of a new one is, indeed, outrageous.

Responding the negative rebuttal from the supposed bowflex employee. I never said the power rods break, but eventually they droop and don't offer the same resistance anymore. And YEAH the rods don't work and bowflex changed to the spiral crap. Looks fancy and is overpriced. I don't use any of these types of products because they don't work. In case your wondering I owned one of the older ones, so I do know what I'm talking about. The reason they don't work is because bowflex has only one excercise per body part people. You have to use variety in movements to make your muscles grow and lose fat. Hows bowflex sales going anyway? I don't know one person who uses one anymore. I think people have moved on like me. Time for bowflex to be laid to rest. Oh and if the product isn't bad enough, look at all the financing problems bowflex has. Sounds like too much trouble and IT IS! And thanks for rebutting years later.

I will have to disagree with you since you said that for starters the revolutions power rods are going to break on you. Because the revolution does not even use power rods it uses the spiralflex technology. You also mentioned that the power rods are expensive. If you buy directley from bowflex there is a no time limit warranty on these power rods. You really should do more research if you are going to bash a product you obviously don't know anything about. Also the idea that the power rods wear out is incorrect. When they put out the power rods were tested on a machine up a million revolutions. That is a documented fact. I would like to thank rip-off report for allowing me to post this rebuttal

Use to hang around the "serious" weight lifting crowd. They use to make fun of all that equipment. It wasn't worth a d**n. They use to laugh about their commercials. They hired some of the most serious steroid users in the business to be filmed in their commercials. You too can have a body like this, IF you use our equipment AND shoot steroids all day long. My brother bought a piece of their equipment and used it to hang his wet laundry on. It makes real pretty furniture and converstion pieces but not much else. Laugh at all those yuppie fools buying it. Spend a couple of hundred dollars on a starter weight set instead of a couple thousand on a useless piece of equipment. Look at some of those second hand equipment shops. They're full of them. IMO