Hi everyone,

I am thinking about purchasing the weight bench Sears has on sale for $80.

What do you think of the bench/deal? Mind you, I'm female so it's not like I will need something that will support over 300 lbs.

http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/product.do?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes&vertical=FIT&pid=00615034000&tab=description#tablink


Thanks,
Cori

I got a Weider bench (Weider Pro 235) from Sears for $100 back in September, and it has served me well. But there is one thing I noticed that made a big difference in my buying decision: The Weider benches generally are split into two categories:

(a) More features but low capacity (Usually the manual for these shows a maximum barbell capacity of 110 lbs.)

(b) Fewer features but higher capacity (Maximum barbell capacity of 300 lbs.)

The only way to really be sure is to check the manual. Fortunately, the Weider website has a huge list of PDF manuals (http://www.iconfitness.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce/ExecMacro/wr/user_manuals.d2w/report), so you can check out the capacity of any potential purchase.

As far as I can tell from the model number, the bench you mentioned is the Weider Pro 230, which would fall into category (a) above. I'd recommend spending a bit more to get something in the (b) category, just to be sure you (or anyone else who might use your equipment) won't outgrow it too quickly.