Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar - Extreme Edition

by Pro Fit

Product Features

• Upper body workout bar designed to strengthen your chest, shoulders, back, arms, and more
• Installs in doorway for pull-ups and chin-ups, or sits on floor for pushups, dips, and sit-ups
• Sturdy steel frame mounts quickly and removes easily without tools or fasteners
• Fits conveniently in residential doorways 24 to 34 inches wide, with 3.5-inch trim/molding
• 5 total grip positions for versatile workouts; holds up to 300 pounds

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Strengthen your back, chest, biceps, shoulders, abs, and more in the comfort of your living room or dorm with the Iron Gym Extreme Edition workout bar. An upgraded version of the original Iron Gym, the Extreme Edition boasts two additional grip positions for a total of five: the default narrow, neutral, and wide positions of the first Iron Gym, plus alternate wide and side grips. When installed in the doorway, the device lets you perform pull-ups and chin-ups, with several options for working the inner and outer back. Once you're done with your back workout, you can quickly move the Iron Gym to the floor, where you can perform pushups while facing down, tricep dips while facing the other way, or sit-ups using the Iron Gym for foot stability.

The Iron Gym is the ultimate workout tool for people who want to shape their upper bodies and tone their midsections. And unlike many other workout bars, the Extreme Edition installs conveniently in most doorway frames without damaging your walls or doors with a permanent installation. Just take it off the door when you're finished--no harm done. Sporting a durable steel frame, the Iron Gym Extreme Edition holds up to 300 pounds and is designed to fit residential doorways between 24 to 32 inches, with trim or molding up to 3.5 inches wide.

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 15.8 x 39 x 11 inches ; 7.7 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 8.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• Shipping Advisory: This item must be shipped separately from other items in your order. Additional shipping charges will not apply.
• ASIN: B001ND04U4
• Item model number: IRONGX-MC4
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (473 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74 in Sports & Outdoors (See Top 100 in Sports & Outdoors)
  • #3 in Sports & Outdoors > Exercise & Fitness > Strength Training Equipment > Pull-Up Bars

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2,148 of 2,275 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this more than my own mother., April 12, 2009

By 

Benjamin Bretz (Reno, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar - Extreme Edition (Sports)

I was a little leery of making this purchase. Normally, products that seem too simple for too reasonable of a price just never end up satisfying in the way you hope (e.g. The Dodge Neon, anything on Jack in the Box's value menu, my two years at DeVry). But this? Oh. Oh, my faith has been restored in cheap American products.

Because, you see, kids. This is a WELL ENGINEERED cheap American product. Yes, a rarity. I was worried that it would be difficult to assemble. I was worried that it wouldn't really hang from my door frame. I was worried that it would break under my underwhelming 155lbs. I was worried the Utah Jazz wouldn't be able to gear up and start winning road games as the playoffs grew nigh.

I mostly worried for naught.

I assembled the Iron Gym Extreme in about 15 minutes. Probably could have done so a lot more quickly, but I was distracted by Boston Legal on DVD, and by gunning my power ratchet wrench at my cat to stop her from playing in the packing materials.

(Note: You do NOT need your own tools to assemble this product. It comes with a little tool. But you can speed up the process with your own tools. You should have your own tools anyway, you know? Be a man.)

Once you assemble the Iron Gym Extreme, you'll need to pick a doorway. It seemed to fit all my doorways perfectly, but I have heard word of older houses having issues. You will need to insert a small metal wedge into the top of your doorjamb. This helps to secure the device and make sure it doesn't fall on anyone's head. It's not as scary as it sounds, you just kinda shove the thing behind the wood. Then you kinda wiggle it and say "Will that hold it?" Then a few minutes later you say "Gol-darn, it WILL hold it. Ain't that somethin'." Should any friends be standing nearby, this would be an excellent time to exchange high-fives.

I then chin-upped. Well, I tried. God as my witness I had no idea I was such a puss. I had like no upper-body strength. I'm pretty sure I heard my cat laughing at me somewhere down the hall behind me, but the blood was thumping in my ears so I can't be sure. But the bar sure worked!

I didn't give up and kept at the bar. Now, no, several weeks later I'm nowhere close to entering any Ultimate Fighting Competitions or anything, but I can do buttloads of reps now, and my cat has stopped mocking me.

This product has been excellent. Buy with confidence.

The Utah Jazz, however, appear to be headed towards a first-round sweep at the hands of the L.A. Lakers.

Crap.

157 of 168 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful Piece of Equipment, December 2, 2010

By 

BillT - See all my reviews

This review is from: Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar - Extreme Edition (Sports)

The big question when deciding to buy the Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar - Extreme Edition is...what will it do for you? Well buy this piece of equipment if you want to strengthen your upper body and stomach muscles. More specifically, you will be able to work your biceps (front of arms), triceps (back of arms), latissimus dorsi (the back muscle that give you that V-shape), pectorals (chest muscles), and abdominals (stomach muscles). Note I would not expect this piece of equipment to work any of your leg muscles- if used conventionally. Of course there's a lot of accessory muscles that might get a little workout too, such as your forearm muscles, because you're gripping a lot, and parts of your shoulder, but the major muscles that will get worked the most are listed above.

So how do you use it? You do a lot of the exercises hanging. Therefore, if you're not into hanging on to things to get your exercise in, skip this piece of equipment entirely. The first big exercise you can do on it is the chin-up, where you're pulling yourself up to the bar and then lowering. This will work you biceps and lats the most. BTW, chin-up, pull-up, they're both the same.

You can vary the grip, more so with the extreme edition. Know that using a palms up grip is best when doing chin-ups, simply because you'll be putting your biceps muscle in its most mechanically efficient position to contract- and so you'll able to pull up more times than if you used, say, a palms-down grip. Try it- you won't be able to do as many chins with your palms down, or in a middle position either for that matter. In fact, the palms down grip will work your biceps a lot less, so if you want bigger biceps, use a palms up grip! Switch grips for variety if you must- I'm just sayin' what's more productive and what works what the best...

The next big exercise is the dip. The dip will work your triceps and your chest muscles the most. Your front deltoid will get a fair workout as well. However, because the exercise is called a "dip", and setting this thing on the floor to do dips doesn't allow you to "dip" down very far, don't expect to get much of a workout doing a dip with the Iron Gym.

Next is the push up. You put the bar on the floor and do push-ups with it- which will work the triceps, as well as the chest. This is a good, productive exercise, and the Iron Gym makes it harder than a regular floor push-up- simply because you are up off the floor and can lower yourself lower- which gives you more range of motion, a good chest stretch, in addition to making the push-ups harder.

Lastly is the sit-ups. You can put this bar on the floor to anchor your feet to help stabilize your body better to do a sit-up. Contrary to popular belief, if you are doing a sit-up with maximal effort (i.e. doing them until you can't do another one), EMG studies have conclusively shown that your ENTIRE ab muscle is contracting. Sooo, know that you're not working the "upper abs" more than the "lower abs" when using this device to do a sit-up- rather your whole abdominal rectus muscle is contracting at once and getting worked and stronger.

Okay, so those are the major exercises you can do, although I guess you could pick it up and make up a few of your own moves if you wanted to. A few details. Some people have had trouble with this thing fitting in their doorway. My advice is to just try it- if it doesn't work, ship it back to Amazon for a refund and call it a day. If you're so inclined, look at some of the other reviews that have given precise dimensions, get out your protractor, and measure away to be sure it will fit. For me that's just way too much work...

Will this get you stronger? Absolutely- but only so much (which might be enough depending on your fitness goals). Anyone reading the strength training research knows that once you can do more than around 20 reps or so of an exercise in a row, you're going to be building muscle ENDURANCE more than muscle STRENGTH. That's the major beef I have with these kinds of pieces of exercise equipment- there's no way to "easily" make the exercise harder over time as you get stronger and the exercise becomes easier. And if you can't make the exercise progressively harder, the muscle isn't stimulated to get bigger and stronger as time goes on which means you will reach a point where you're simply maintaining - unlike exercise machines with a weight stack that enable you to gradually increase the weight to constantly challenge the muscle. Trust me, the guy in the YouTube Iron Gym video didn't get arms like that by just doing chin after chin using just his own body weight. Perhaps he had a small child grab his legs as he did the chins, or had his girlfriend sit on his back as he did pushups...

Overall this is not a bad piece of equipment, you just have to know its limitations- like how strong it can get you, and what muscles it works.

A few tips. If you can't pull yourself up and do a single chin-up (have your wife or girlfriend try one for fun), just use a chair to stand on to get you to the top position, and then slowly lower yourself to the floor while hanging on to the bar- then repeat until you can't do any more. You'll find that after a week or two of doing chins like this (just the lowering part), you'll soon be able to do a full regular chin-up where you can pull yourself up to the top position no problem. This works because you're about 50% stronger lowering something than you are lifting it. Exercisers who want bigger arms might also be interested in Smokin' Hot Guns!!: How an Average Guy Can Get Big, Muscular Arms In One Workout A Week. Stay fit.

660 of 733 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Damages doorframe, January 8, 2010

By 

Oavde "oavde" (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar - Extreme Edition (Sports)

Product works, and is strong enough for a 100kg person, but it damages the door frame.

Product has changed through time, mine came with a metal block not a plastic one (probably since the plastic ones were breaking) and knurled handles for the pushups. Pushups and dips are WORTHLESS on this, they should never have compromised it to suit those purposes. The knurled plastic pushup handles are the same parts of the device that apply pressure to the doorframe - the ridges indent into the wood. Probably this can be fixed by slipping a piece of thin wood between the device and the doorframe, but it is an unnecessary complication and the damage is done.

The bolts I received, instead of 8 of the big kind and 2 of the flatheads, I got 10 of the big kind, rounded head bolts .... the two bolts that were meant ot be flathead, well the roundhead went through the wall, denting the soft wall above the frame. I have fixed this by sliding a thin piece of wood between the bar and the wall, and I put a piece of paper between the bolthead and wall and the paper was undamaged so it is not touching the wall anymore. BUT COME ON! Stupid bolts. Wish I had noticed first, I had even read a review by someone else and missed that point.

If it does not fit your door, you are stuffed. So, here are the elusive measurements that I could not find anywhere. Tags for poor customers searching the internet are here

iron gym deluxe extreme measurements dimensions width door size

Width of support bar on top of door: 45.5cm total width, 34cm between the connecting bars

Width between the ends of the bars that will destroy your doorframe if your doorframe space is not at least this wide: 73cm

Width your doorframe should be as a minimum to allow the "padded" (that is, knurled destructor bits) ends to be on the frame: 81.5cm

Max width of the device: 105cm

Now I have only given it 1 star because the door damage infuriates me, it is unnecessary. Also I don't like reading the instructions where the first step is "with an electric drill, drill 8 holes in the wall to mount the two brackets that will hold the device, with 4 screws each". It does not need these mounting brackets, but annoying they would even suggest such a thing - the whole point of it is to NOT damage the wall.

One more gripe - they should have made the main bar solid, not two-piece. It was designed two-piece to minimise packaging, and then, they made a mess of the packaging so it is still quite large. I know it is cheaper to have a package that is shorter and wide, but I would have paid more for one that is long and narrow, with a solid bar. That would make it a rock solid product. Alas, it is a bit wobbly and creaky.

Is it a good product otherwise? Apart from door/wall damage and creaky construction, problems that can be fixed, yes it is good. I give it 1 star because I am so annoyed. Fix the door damage problems and I would give it 4 stars. Solid bar, I would give it 5 stars and pay 20% more for it.

Good handle positions. Great variety of pullups and chinups etc... although, not stable or strong enough to climb around on it like a monkey, jumping from grip to grip, turning upside down. You could do all this, it won't break or fall off (unless you start jumping up or swinging wildly). For steady, controlled work, it is fine.

Too low? Need to bend knees? This really isn't a problem, and is probably safer because you will fall a shorter distance if it breaks :) seriously though, the height is not a problem. In fact if you have a low ceiling the lower height bar is probably a bonus.

Note that when you go up, your head generally goes between the handles, which is good. Better than hitting your head on a bar, anyway.

So if you want to get it, please check the measurements, investigate the screws and reinforce the doorframe with thin wood to protect it. If you do all that, it can be a good device.

If you like this review please hit the button so more people notice it - my ramblings are not worth much but the measurements I think are essential for everyone to see. I searched for days and only found one reference to any measurements.