LifeCircuit Equipment anyone?

T

Techo

New Member
Hi all, there is some LifeCircuit equipment at the Bally fitness I go to. The equipment is all electronic - you set the weight you want to lift by typing it in a key pad. It measures your +/- of each rep.

1) Do any of you here have experience w/this equipment and can you recommend it while doing HST?

2) I may be wrong here, but can't you set your weight to only go on the positive or the negative? If so, wouldn't this be an excellent resource for negatives??
 
I have used these before and found them to be an excellent machine. I got extremely pumped when I used them. I am sure they can be manipulated to use with HST (you may have to have a progrssion chart for + and - ?). I think at the least they would be great for negs for someone training alone...
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Insane_Man @ Mar. 30 2004,3:23)]That sounds cool.
Although free weights are cooler to lift :D
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Besides the added benefit of using stabalizing muscles and the increased challenge, I wonder why more people don't use machines. Something like LifeCircuit appears to be quite a useful tool if your goals are hypertrophy or strength (w/no spotter). If you goal is to enlarge the ego then free weights would seem more ideal ;-) ...then again, to be sucessful at HST you must "check your ego at the door"...
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Techo @ Mar. 30 2004,3:15)]to be sucessful at HST you must "check your ego at the door"...
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Very true, especially during the first week of 15s.

For the compounds though, I think that free weights are irreplacable.
 
If I'm thinking of the right stuff, those machines are cool because you can set the positive and negative parts of the rep to different weights, so your negatives can be heavier. I know of a guy who uses the machines for just this purpose.
 
Excellent! I'm quite certain I will be using this equipment on my next cycle. It's to bad I'll have to find my RMs again, but I think it may be worth it. Machines kind of bring you "back to basics". That is, you spend more time focusing on the muscle contractions than on stabalizing a weight in a three dimentional environment. I've haven't experienced any gains this cycle but I suspect it's for two reasons: low calories and not enough focus on the eccentric portion of the lift. These machines not only provide you with the benefit of different +/- weights, but they also apear to cut time by quite a large degree... I'm doing drop sets in my 5s now and waste half my time shuffling plates around the gym.

Well, looks like it's time to read up on negaties. Either that or you'll be seeing a post from me about this fairly soon ;-)
 
Since I have no training partner I'm using a machine for incline bench instead of free weights. I think the Hammer Strength is good, or maybe better than the Smith machine for keeping tention on the muscle.

Since we have to go so light for dips (I've done weighted dips with 70 lbs before though) I'm using a machine there.

I usually use all the excercises which include the lower back like bent rows, deadlifts, squat, et al. Maybe that's why my back is usually sore. Bryan pointed this out and recommends alternating workouts for legs like: squats / leg press.

So, I'm also doing a machine for hamstrings. I think it is Nautulis.

There is also a Hammer Strength neck machine that is good to me.
 
Yeah, I'm not sure about this life circuit equipment... Originally I was under the impression the con/eccentric phases could be completely independant weights. While they don't need to be the same, they are based on a set percentage. For example, concentric can be set to a certain weight but the eccentric can either be exactly the same or 20% more. Ah well, still better then nothing =) I'm taking extra long to find my maxes to make sure my form gets corrected and all the bugs are worked out....

We have hammer strength equipment too at this Bally's. Maybe I'll default to that if this LC equipment really flops....
 
Well, just finished the summer bulking on this equipment. Gained about 10 lbs and ~3% BF. If any of you are interested in using it I'll put some brief comments below:

Probably the two biggest complaints with the equipment is that you cannot (or at least I couldn't see a way to) set the +/- values independently, and the resistance decreases if you slow down too much... Not really big issues, but just a couple things that came up. Also, the machine will beep at you if you don't do a "complete" rep. This is good in the sense that it encourages proper form, but can also be rather annoying...

I've got another week and a half of negs on this then it's time to define my new free weight routine. I might keep using this equpment except for the fact that I'm changing gyms...
 
Sounds like interesting equipment. I know a lot of wannabes that would set that machine to beeping non stop the way they swing their bodies and do partial reps as fast as they can and use the "free fall" method for eccentrics so they can load up the bars and look good (at least in their minds).
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