After about a year of using the War Machine and other pulley suspension gyms, while also continuing to use traditional suspension gyms, I no longer feel that pulley suspension gyms will ever gain any real traction as a must-have piece of exercise equipment, and if pulley trainers are even around in a few years, they’ll just be considered a fringe piece of equipment that allows you to perform a handful of fun and interesting exercises that complement an otherwise complete exercise program that uses more versatile and effective equipment.

The reason I originally felt that pulley trainers were going to become the de facto standard in system gym systems is that pulley trainers allow you to perform all of the same bilateral exercises that you can do on a traditional suspension gym (or so I thought), plus a bunch of unilateral and rotational exercises that are impossible to do on traditional suspension gyms. My thinking at the time was why would anyone bother spending money on a traditional suspension gym that only allows bilateral exercises (for the most part) when they can buy a pulley suspension gym that allows bilateral, unilateral, and rotational exercises.

Here’s what caused me to completely change my opinion on pulley suspension gyms. The majority of the most effective suspension gym exercises are tried and true bilateral movements. Chest press, chest fly, inverted row, reverse fly, jackknives, pikes, hamstring curls, Y raise, etc. Yes, I’m leaving out some great unilateral suspension gym exercises like single leg squats, lunges, mountain climbers, hamstring runners, etc, but with the exception of single-leg squats and lunges, it’s safe to say that the majority of killer suspension gym exercises are bilateral. Performing those bilateral exercises on traditional suspension gyms is awesome and the reason why suspension gym training has been one of the most popular exercise trends over the past several years. Performing those awesome bilateral exercises on pulley trainers is a huge pain in the ass.

In other words, when I originally thought that pulley trainers would allow you to perform all of the same exercises that you can perform with traditional suspension gyms, I was somewhat mistaken. I say “somewhat mistaken” because yes it’s technically possible to perform those bilateral exercises on pulley trainers, but the slip-n-slide pulley action makes it impossible to generate much force out of the movement since you’re required to focus so much on just balancing the pulley and preventing yourself from falling on your ass. Yes, performing those exercise on a pulley is tough, but force pretty much goes completely out the window and it just turns into a balancing act that might be somewhat useful for a circus performer.

So effective bilateral exercises are out of the question on pulley trainers, which leaves unilateral and rotational exercises as the only compelling reason to buy a pulley trainer. The problem I’ve found with those exercises is that there’s pretty much only four worth mentioning: single-arm presses, single-arm presses with rotation, single-arm rows, and single-arm rows with rotation. Cool exercises, but not exactly worthy of declaring pulley training a new category of exercise, and for most people, definitely not worthy of purchasing a dedicated piece of equipment for.

So if you’re in the market for a suspension gym, and you’ve narrowed your search down to the TRX Suspension Trainer and the War Machine/CrossCore180, and you want some help deciding between the two, as much as it pains me to say since I despise everyone at TRX, you should absolutely positively choose the TRX Suspension Trainer over the War Machine/CrossCore180. I actually can’t think of any reason at all for a first-time suspension gym buyer to choose a pulley trainer over a traditional suspension gym.

If you buy a TRX Suspension Trainer and later decide that you want to do some unilateral and rotational suspension gym exercises, and you don’t mind spending anywhere from $100 to $250 for a pulley trainer that will basically only allow you to perform four useful exercises, then at that point you can look into picking up a War Machine/CrossCore180, or one of the many other pulley trainers that are available. But if you’re just purchasing one suspension system, and you need to make a decision between the TRX Suspension Trainer and War Machine/CrossCore180, the answer is simple: choose the TRX Suspension Trainer.

If you sign a gym contract for a year or more, there’s a 99.99% chance that you’re going to want out of the contract long before it expires (it’s very likely you’ll want out of a 12-month contract after a month or two), and there’s a 100% chance that if you try to work something out with the gym in order to get out of the contract early, they’re basically going to say “fuck you”, and tell you that you’re shit out of luck and that there there’s no chance in hell they’re going to let you out of your contract even one second before it expires. That’s how gyms roll.

Of the Vancouver gyms I checked out recently, two in particular really impressed me, but one offered 3-month memberships (along with 6-month and 12-month memberships, which I had zero interest in), and the other gym only offered 12-month memberships. No gym exists anywhere on earth that I want to workout at badly enough to agree to a 12-month contract. Long-term contracts are pure evil. So needless to say, I passed on the 12-month only gym, and chose the 3-month gym.

I’ve never met anyone who signed a long-term gym contract and didn’t end up regretting it (usually sooner rather than later). Most people rarely use their gym memberships (if they use them all). That’s a fact that’s been proven over and over again. The only reason most people even have a gym membership is because they foolishly signed an evil contract that makes it impossible for them to cancel their membership any time soon.

So please never sign a long-term gym contract. If you do sign one, I promise you that you’ll regret it. Only join a gym that will allow you purchase a membership on a term length of 3-months or less. If you enjoy the gym and decide to renew your membership a few more terms, great, but I guarantee you that you’ll never regret spending an extra hundred bucks over the course of a year to have the piece of mind of knowing that you’re not ball-and-chained to a long-term gym membership that you never use and desperately want out of.

Also, I’m a passionate believer that Olympic weightlifting takes years to master, and should never be taught by people without a minimum of several years of training and experience learning how to safely and effectively perform, and teach, Olympic lifts. The idea that CrossFit coaches with zero prior experience with Olympic weightlifting can attend a weekend seminar on Olympic lifting and then turn around and start teaching Oly lifts to beginners is beyond absurd.

The other main problem I’ve had with CrossFit over the years is that I’ve found most of the people who teach CrossFit in Vancouver to be clueless buffoons that I want absolutely nothing to do with. I originally discovered CrossFit back in 2005, and at the time, the people teaching CrossFit in Vancouver struck me as some of the most rude, annoying, loud, offensive, and generally unlikable people I had ever come across.

It wasn’t until I discovered Jon Gilson at Again Faster that it dawned on me that CrossFit as a whole isn’t rude, loud, offensive, etc, just some CrossFit gyms. If I lived in Boston instead of Vancouver, and my original impression of CrossFit was based on what I’ve seen of Jon Gilson rather than what I seen of various clowns in Vancouver, I probably would have started doing CrossFit years ago.

So my take on CrossFit is that parts of it are really good, and parts of it are really bad, but in general, joining your local CrossFit gym is likely a far better choice than just getting a health club membership that you’ll never use, or joining a useless dinky hand-weight boot camp with certifiably inept instructors, or spending $75+ per session with a dumbass personal trainer who will have you jumping on BOSUs, or any of the other wacky options that exist out there.

I used to do ab rollouts using a traditional ab wheel, but I recently picked up a pair of Ultimate Body Press Split Ab Wheels and I really enjoy using split ab wheels for rollouts because using split ab wheels makes it very difficult to cheat with your dominant side, which makes the exercise a lot more challenging to stabilize.

I also really enjoy some of the other exercises that are possible with spit ab wheels, such as chest flys (goddamn tough exercise), and Y rollouts (hybrid of regular ab rollouts and chest flys). If you’re in the market for an inexpensive piece of home exercise gear that will allow you to perform some of most challenging and effective abdominal exercises of all time, definitely check out the Ultimate Body Press Split Ab Wheels.

I wish there was an adult gymnastics training centre in Vancouver similar to the place Georges trains at in Montreal, but I’ve looked high and low and haven’t found anything even remotely similar in Vancouver or even in the greater Vancouver area.

Take a moment, close your eyes, and imagine what your dream gym would look like. Take a step inside and open your eyes again, you will see something very close – this is Tactix gym.