About a month ago, on impulse, I bought the last Iron Gym on the shelf in Walgreens.  It was $29.99 and I walked home thinking “Man, did I just throw away my money?”

I have a history of impulsive buying, especially of makeup, shoes, and home exercise equipment.  I don’t often wear makeup, prefer to sport my sneakers everywhere, and as for my exercise equipment, well, they’ve mostly been gathering dust.

I have a treadmill; it was a great buy for $30 from Out of the Closet despite the fact that it maxes out at 5.5 MPH.  It is now a rack for my purses.  I have a set of 10-pound dumbbells that I got from Target that I hardly use, a jump rope I have never used, a twist board that I feel silly using, a Swiss ball that just sits there, and a set of the Perfect Pushups that I try to use but just can’t.  So of course, with my track history, it only made sense that I buy the next trendy thing: the Iron Gym.

If you haven’t seen the commercials, the Iron Gym is a contraption that claims to turn any doorway into your own home pull-up bar.  They call it a “gym” because you’re also supposed to be able to use the thing down on the floor to do dips, push-ups and ab crunches, but honestly, it’s just silly to use it for that.  It was designed for one thing and some marketing guy came along and thought it would be lucrative to pitch it as a multi-tasking piece of equipment.  I have no desire to use it for anything else but push-ups/chin-ups, and to my pleasant surprise, it’s great for that.

First things first: set up and assembly.  It wasn’t until I got it home that I saw the box said it was for doorways 24″ - 32″ wide.  I measured one of my doorways and it was nearly 35″ wide.  Uh-oh!  Then I noticed an even bigger problem: the doorway I wanted to use it on goes all the way up to the ceiling.  I guess I wasn’t very observant during the commercials and didn’t realize how the Iron Gym works: part of the Iron Gym needs to rest on top of the molding/frame at the top of your doorway.  If your doorway goes all the way up to the ceiling, or has no frame around it, you can’t install the Iron Gym there.  There needs to be several inches between your ceiling and the top of your door’s frame for the Iron Gym bar.  Check out the picture below:

As you can tell from the picture, it fit on my bathroom door despite it being wider than 32″.  You can see behind it a type of door that would not work.   That door goes all the way up to the ceiling so the Iron Gym bar would not have any room on top of it.  What this means,  though, is that in the above picture, on the door frame that the Iron Gym is on, the other side of the door also goes all the way up to the ceiling (my ceiling is higher inside the bathroom than it s outside).

I would have prefered to install it the other way around, but obviously this isn’t possible, not only because of the lack of room above the door frame but also because the actual door itself would be in the way.  With the above pictured setup, I was worried about not having any room to do a pull-up, but once I actually did one I realized that you don’t need much room on top unless you have a gigantic head; you don’t go above the bar much higher than your neck.  Also important to note from the above picture is that you can’t have a very wide door or else the edges of the lower bar will have nothing to lean against for support.

Okay, now that the technical details are out of the way, the Iron Gym in my opinion is great!  Actually, I should say in my experience because I have been using it every day.  It feels very secure and safe and lets me do pull-ups and chin-ups any time I want in the comfort of my home.  Even though I do go to the gym, I don’t like doing pull-ups there.  The main reason is that I haven’t been very good at pull-ups and have been too self-conscious to be struggling through 2 pull-ups in front of others.  However, all that is changing!  On a good day (plenty of rest, water, light meals), I can do 10 reps before fatigue!  This is awesome considering many people can’t even do 1 pull-up, and most people can’t get beyond 4.  On a normal day, I can do between 5 - 8 per rep.  What’s great about the Iron Gym is that, simply because it’s there, I often just do a pull-up or 2 whenever I walk into or out of the bathroom.  Pull-ups are really fun to do and give a great sense of accomplishment when you’re able to pull yourself up and lower yourself back down; it’s almost like an instant high.  Plus, they are one of the best exercises you can do.  It’s a really powerful move that works your entire upper body, including your abs.

Since I’ve gotten the Iron Gym, my upper body strength has obviously increased by the numbers of reps I can do.  Also, my torso is trimmer and my abs are more defined.  I want to be able to do 20 reps in a set; this is a lofty goal but hopefully with the help of the 20 Pull-up Program I’ll be able to do this in 8 weeks.  I just need to pick a day to start Day 1!

P.S. Tim’s been using it too, more intensely than I have and there’s been a definite change in his physique in less than a month, namely, his upper back and abs are getting really cut!  If you really want a great piece of home exercise equipment that really works, I highly recommend getting the Iron Gym.  Even though it’s nearly thirty bucks, I do think it’s worth it, however, if you can’t even do 1 pull-up, you need to build up your upper body strength or this will be a waste.  Check out this link for ways to build your strength up so you can do pull-ups.  When you’re ready, can you find the Iron Gym at a number of places like Target, Walgreens, and Amazon.

Other resources:

---