Tuesday, August 29, 2017

What’s The Best Ab Roller To Buy? https://t.co/JVgOhCWAkK


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August 29, 2017 at 03:56PM
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Home Gym Rubber Flooring Guide https://t.co/xXyuexios6


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August 29, 2017 at 03:56PM
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Rogue Bolt Together Utility Bench Review https://t.co/KnCZctAqSG


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August 29, 2017 at 03:16PM
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Best Power Rack Guide https://t.co/OVLG5MQsbh


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August 29, 2017 at 03:16PM
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What’s The Best Ab Roller To Buy?

This will be a relatively short post, but a pretty important one that coincides with The Definitive Guide To Strength Training At Home.  As your training progresses you naturally start to experiment with new/different exercises.  You continue to get stronger, logging your workouts and then you hit a plateau.  What happened? In my case I usually ended up dropping a movement that I didn’t really think was too important and low and behold, training and strength suffers.  It happened most recently when I dropped out my adjustable dumbbell work for some heavier barbell movements.  Strength off the chest decreased and so did my bench.  Another thing that usually sends my squat/pull into the hole is a lack of core strength.  I do a lot of squatting and pulling variations without a belt as assistance work, when I get lazy I usually drop the direct ab stuff and after a month of that I find myself folding over in the hole.  One of the biggest bang for your buck ab exercises that I do/have done is something so simple that you tend to even forget it’s there….the ab roller.

Should I buy an ab roller?

For less than $20 this is a no brainer, YES you should have some sort of ab roller or ab wheel ( we are talking about a wheel with two handles not that weight thing that holds your head up). Think of this exercise as a plank on steroids.  Nothing gets my core stronger faster than adding this exercise in twice a week for multiple sets and reps.

Is it SAFE?

The good old fashioned ab wheel roller does come with some safety issues.  It tends to be rough on your back if you go into hyperextension.  The best way to avoid this is to keep your stomach braced and roll out and stop before you feel any discomfort.  The range of motion doesn’t need to be crazy as you should be bracing the entire time.  I like to do more sets and few reps because of this, fatigue sets in slower and keeps me in a good position.

The other issue that I suffer from is wrist pain.  I need to wrap up my wrists when I do anything that involves me supporting my own bodyweight with my hands.  There are two other options to dealing with wrist pain and they deal with the design of the ab device itself.

Using an old gym scooter (the kind you used to ride on during PE class) has helped my wrists because I can keep my hands further apart.  The alternative to this is finding an ab wheel with ergonomic grips such as the Perfect Fitness Ab Carver

Regardless of how you choose to perform this exercise, it’s definitely made a difference in my strength training and my lifts.

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Home Gym Rubber Flooring Guide

The Ultimate Guide To Home Gym Rubber Flooring

Home gym flooring gets a lot of searches online for good reason, it can be a really expensive project to protect your floor from dropped weights. Like I mentioned before, our basement floor is concrete, you don’t necessarily want to be dropping weights on a concrete floor because something has to give….either the plate, your bar or the floor. If you have wood floors then this problem is compounded.

There are a few ways that you can protect your floor from abuse while you train. First, consider your training style. Originally, I wanted to operate off one sole platform for everything. This basically implies that you will squat bench and pull from the same space. I decided that this would leave an already small space very cramped. Plus, it leaves no room for accessory work if you have a training partner. If you don’t have a training partner then this might be the best option for you. Likewise, if you have little space then this will have to be how you get the job done. If that is the case then skip right to our DIY platform guide.

Home Gym Flooring Options

You basically have two options for flooring, rolled rubber that you can lay down, or the puzzle piece garage flooring that I ended up purchasing. In both cases, they WILL NOT protect the floor from damage. I used this option solely for our squat/bench station as a way to get traction and keep the dust and dirt at bay. Here is what we went with.

Rolled Rubber Vs. Puzzle Pieces For Your Home Gym

Here is an interesting story that actually made part of my decision in how to install flooring for our basement gym.  I initially went to tractor supply to get both rolled rubber and horse mats.  Here are the horse mats just for reference.

Thickness

The horse mats are 3/4″ vs the 1/4″ mats of either rolled rubber or puzzle pieces.  This makes the horse mats ideal for a deadlift platform, I felt that they were just too big of a pain in the ass to put under the power rack.  Yes, they will work but they don’t offer the same options for utilizing floor space and square footage by changing how you put them together.  Horse mats are fairly easy to cut with a utility knife….but not so easy that I would want to do it multiple times.

So, when I went to get rubber flooring for both a deadlift platform and the actual surface of our floor the sales associate REFUSED to sell me a roll of rubber flooring.  She was adamant that they rubber flooring would rip and not protect the floor.  This was odd and I explained that I really didn’t care, I just needed to cover up the bare concrete.  Either way, she wasn’t having it and I didn’t feel the need to present a case just to buy the stuff.  I just grabbed the stall mats and left.

This ended up being a blessing in disguise because the next day we went to get the rest of the materials for our DIY deadlift platform from home depot.  We started looking around the garage flooring section and grabbed the puzzle pieces.  This let us set up a rectangle to cover just the surface under the squat stand and that was it.  I am really happy with how it worked out for a few reasons.

  • We get occasional water in the basement, we can move the tiles to clean if need be
  • Should be we want to expand later we can with more puzzle pieces
  • The tiles have a rough surface that makes it much easier to get traction for leg drive etc

I don’t believe it is cost effective to completely cover the surface that you will train in with rubber. Save your money for the actual equipment and make due with these suggestions.  Here is the final setup

​Final Thoughts

Get an idea of your square footage for training and then get a LITTLE BIT MORE. That is it. This isn’t rocket science and the stuff is expensive.

Pro tip: Look at home depot/tractor supply for this stuff rather than a fitness retailer. It is the same material but way cheaper.

 

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Rogue Bolt Together Utility Bench Review

If you checked out our best bench press rack guide then you know that our solution to benching at home in the “dungeon” was a flat bench inside of our Rogue SML-1 Squat Stand which we consider the best power rack out there.  Here is a full review of the rogue bolt together utility bench.

Rogue Bolt Together Utility Bench Specs Review

The rogue bolt together utility bench was the first product that I considered simply because I knew I would be ordering the squat stand from Rogue.  It just made sense to try and order everything from the same place in order to save on shipping.

*Pro tip- Try to order everything at the same time in order to save on shipping, the costs really add up over time because most of these products will weight over 50lbs.

The basic criteria that needed to be met for me to purchase a bench had to deal with the pad width.  I really did not want anything less than 12in if possible so that we could mimic a competition bench set up as close as possible.  I searched for hours to try and find benches that would be the correct height and then finally gave up, most benches that come from a weightlifting/powerlifting retailer will be CLOSE.  I would not advice you to buy a flat bench from anyone other than these types of retailers because you are going to be bringing weight capacities into play.  It makes no sense to buy something that you could potentially outgrow.

One thing that I really liked about this bench was the actual set up was minimal.  Less bolts=less things to go wrong when you are on your back holding weights over your face.  Rogue also offers thicker, bigger pads that you can upgrade should you want to.

The pad material is vinyl and does a good job of keeping us in place while driving during a bench.  We haven’t had too many instances of losing an arch as compared to the slicker surfaces that you will find on many commercial gym benches.

 Watch our video review of the Rogue Bolt Together Utility Bench

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