I bought my girlfriend a "Total Trainer" last year and it has become a $300 coat rack. She claims that she still uses it but I rarely see it move. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone uses one of these things and if there were any good routines using this thing? Maybe I'll give it a try.

Is this the one you have?
http://www.thetreadmillstore.com/specs.htm

Didn't your total gym come with an excercise book or instruction video? I could probably scan you a copy of my instruction book if you're interested.

It'll give you a good workout, and you can do practically all of the same excercises on the Total Gym as with free weights (sort of). It just feels a little different... If you're not working out at all today there's certainly no excuse not to begin if you have a Total Gym in your house.

If you commit yourself to working out on a regular basis you may find yourself wanting to upgrade to real weights. I know I do, so today I ordered a bench and a bunch of weights and will set up a proper home gym. This was partly because I just like the feel of free weights better (I push myself harder when using them), and partly because you can't add extra weights to my Total Gym, and that was already beginning to limit my progress since I'm doing all the excercises on the heaviest setting.

I see you can add weights to your model, so that'll allow you to progress further than I can with mine I think. If I had one of those I might have waited a bit before buying more equipment.

It's no good for squats though... I don't think any of these machines han handle the massive amount of weights needed to do that excercise properly.

I'll keep my Total Gym around for cardio... Did a 20 minute cardio program on it today and it felt really great!

It did come with a manual but I'm still looking for it. I do have the bar to add plates. I'm going to try and work it into my routine using it for upper body. It doesn't have enough resistance for most leg exercises. Thanks for the offer to scan the manual, I'll let you know if I need it but I think I know where I misplaced it!

What kind of cardio do you do on the total gym? I have one I don't use but might if I could get some cardio out of it.

I have a Total Gym and I barely ever use it. It's not really that good.

I have the Total Gym knockoff, called Weider Total Bodyworks 5000. It's basically a cheaper version ($150 shipped on Sportmart.com) and it has resistance bands that will add either 100 lbs of resistance. I got it cuz I don't have much room, I wanted something to complement my marathon training (no bulking yet), and the Bowflex-types were too expensive. It does not seem as sturdy as the real Total Gym, but it does all of the exercises.

I've used it for more than a month and here are my conclusions:
Great back workouts! the Chuck Norris move is very nice and so are the pullups. However, the chest, triceps, and biceps workouts are pretty weak. The butterfly seems to work more of the shoulders. Oh yeah, the resistance bands don't seem to work correctly for some exercises. For example of the pullup, when I put it on max, there must not be enough friction, because the board gets pulled back by the bands and it slips off. The bands are good when I am sitting on the board, unlike when I am lying on it (pullup/military press). Lower body workouts?? Just not enough resistance.

I have a dumbell set to supplement it, which I recommend. Overall I don't recommend it, and I'm looking to upgrade really soon.

I've never had the board slip off in any way, so that must be a problem with your model.

For biceps I like the laying curls. That's the one where you're lying on the board, head facing downwards and pulling the handles with approximately the same movement as straight barbell curls. On the heaviest setting that still gives my biceps a decent workout.

For triceps I like the tricep extension (lying down, head facing upwards, arms pulling the handles downwards) and kneeling kickbacks (kneeling on the board, facing upwards while bending over and pulling back on the handles).

The butterfly really is akward... I think the front press excercise feels much better, while seated bench press is also ok (but not nearly as good as a real bench press).

For cardio I warm up with the cardio pull (the Chuck Norris excercise) and then basically do many of the same excercises I would do anyway, but with much much lower resistance and higher tempo so I can keep up for about 20 minutes.

We also have a Total Trainer Storage Bench. It got used a couple times when we first purchased it and not much since. I found it to be very clunky and awkward to use. My husband still tries to make a go of it every once in a while so it doesn't feel like a complete waste of money, but I think even he realizes it wasn't a good investment.

I've never had the board slip off in any way, so that must be a problem with your model.

Like I said, I have the knockoff version which has extra resistance bands. The normal Total Gym does not have these bands and thus will not slip. I did see a Total Gym at Sears once that included resistance bands, but only two of them to add 50 lbs, not 100 lbs like the one I have.

I'm working out my triceps on the Total Gym now, writing between sets... Possibly this will be my last workout on the Total Gym ever - My new bench and weights are arriving tomorrow! :drool: I just spent the entire evening clearing a whole section of my room to make space for the new equipment, and now I can hardly wait. :bb: