Bowlfex Kicks Butt, 30 Day Results

By Paul Piotrowski on Jun 28, 2006 in Health and Fitness

Well, it has been officially 30 days since I began my 30 days of working out. Before I share my results in terms of stats and percentages and numbers, let me first describe how I feel after the 30 days.

Firstly, I feel great about the fact that I’ve been able to stick to the plan for 30 days straight in spite of various excuses and opportunities not to workout or to take a break.

Secondly, I also feel stronger in general, my muscles feel a lot harder and more defined than before and a lot thicker in the arms, shoulders and chest especially. I am far from being on the cover of Muscle Mag, but I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot of gains in a relatively short period of time.

Let’s go through some stats comparing from May 28th, 2006 to June 28th, 2006.

Firstly, my total body weight went up from 186.0 lbs to 192.8 lbs, which means I’ve gained about 6.8 lbs. Although I didn’t measure my body fat % on May 28th (I wish I did!), I did measure it in April (when I was 186lbs as well) and it was 27.0% body fat, and as of June 28th it is now 22.4% which means my body fat % went down by 4.6%.

I am not 100% sure if my calculations are right here, but if my previous fat % was 27% and I was 186lbs, that would logically mean that I was carrying around about 50lbs of fat. (186×27%). Now that my weight has changed and my fat % dropped I am carrying about 43lbs. (192.4×22.4%).

Unless my calculation is wrong, that would mean that I lost about 7lbs of fat.

At the same time, however, if I lost 7lbs of fat, my weight should be 179lbs now (186lbs - 7lbs) but it’s not, it’s 192.4, so that would mean I’ve gained 13.4lbs of something other than fat. Since I’ve been told that gaining 13.4lbs of muscle is pretty hard to do over a period of a year, let alone 30 days, I would suspect the 13.4lbs gain is probably a combination of muscle + water + possible increase in bone density? Either way, I’m happy with the gain.

I started my bench press reps at 80lbs x 8 reps x 3 sets on May 28th, and by June 28th I’m now doing 130lbs x 8 reps x 3 sets which is a 62.5% increase in weight (50lbs more).

I started my squat at 160lbs x 8 reps x 3 sets on May 28th, and by June 28th I’m now doing 300lbs x 8 reps x 3 sets which is a 87.5% increase in weight (140 lbs more).

My seated abdominal crunch went from 60lbs to 80lbs and my calf raises went up from 100lbs to 300lbs. There are about 8 other exercises (bicep curl, chest fly etc.) where I saw similar results.

Overall I’m very happy with the results so far.

Specifically talking about the Bowflex machine I must say that I am very impressed with it. When I first saw Bowflex on the TV Infomercial I’m sure we’ve all seen, it looked like such a gimmick. I have always worked out with free weights when I was younger so I thought that there is no way this thing could offer the same kinds of benefits as free weights. When a friend of mine bought his bowflex I tried it out a few times and it was kinda neat so I finally decided to get one a few months ago.

What I really like about the Bowflex is the speed at which you can switch exercises and weights. Since the bows don’t really weight much you can quite easily pull them onto the pulley system without exerting much effort - no more doing a workout before you do a workout! That is one thing I didn’t like about free weights; always having to take plates off and put other ones on etc.

The cable / pulley system provides you with an amazing array of exercises you can do with each one isolating a different muscle group. I was especially impressed with the lying down bicep curl. Since you’re not working against gravity, you’re actually pulling on the cable that bends the bow, you can do your bicep curls while lying on a bench, which makes it basically impossible to cheat by using your back muscles to *throw* the weight up like you see people do at the gym when they pack on too much weight onto their bicep curl weights and then end up rocking their bodies back and forth in bad form instead of lifting with their biceps. The bowflex makes it really easy to isolate the muscle group you want to work out and just work that muscle.

My only complaint against the bowflex would be when switching from the regular pulleys used for the majority of exercises to the secondary pulleys at the bottom which hook up to the squat bar or the leg extension attachment. It’s a bit of a pain to have to hook up the cables, taking an extra 5-10seconds but that’s STILL a very small amount of hassle compared to regular weight systems. It’s probably not as convenient compared to having a dedicated machine for each exercise like you’d have at the gym, but then again it is at home, it is much more convenient and you don’t have to wait for anyone to get off the machine before you can use it.

Because it was so easy to move from one exercise to the next, I was able to easily get my workouts down in about 25-30minutes a day.

I’ll give the Bowflex a 9.5/10 rating in my books.

Next, onto supplements.

As I wrote in my original article, I decided to try out a combination of Muscle Tech supplements, namely Nitro-Tech, Cell-Tech and Anator-p70.

My first day experience with Cell-Tech and Anator-p70 wasn’t very favorable as I drank them one immediately after the other with WAY too much water and the combination caused way too much bloating followed by diarrhea. I decided to cut out the Anator-p70 at that time and just stick to the Cell-Tech (Creatine) to start. The next day I just took the Cell-Tech with less water and didn’t take the Anator-p70 and things were much better. I took the Nitro-Tech protein mix fairly regularly as well. After just one to two weeks on the Cell-Tech I noticed a big bulking up of my muscles, most probably because they were being filled up with more water. This is probably also due to the fact that prior to May 28th I didn’t drink nearly enough water each day and increased my intake of water significantly since.

The greatest thing about the Cell-Tech which surprised me was the fact that it actually tastes really good! I had a creatine product I purchased from Costco before and it tasted horrible. Cell-Tech tastes good! I got the fruit-punch flavored crystals and they are very easy to drink. No chugging required.

As the weeks went by I was still feeling quite a bit of bloating and slight stomach cramps (no nausea thank god), so I decided to get off the Cell-Tech / Nitro-Tech mix at the end of week 3. After about 3-4 days the bloating disappeared and my stomach felt much better. I still wanted the benefits of Creatine though so I decided to try it out taking only one scoop per day instead of the 2 scoops they recommend. The first day at 1 scoop didn’t cause any bloating.

That same day I went to GNC and asked an employee there about the bloating which he admitted was a common side effect of certain Creatine products. He recommended something he’s taking called Kre-Alkalyn Creatine which is basically creatine buffered in an alkaline buffer which allows you to take only about 1.5 grams of it and it produces the same result as 15grams of regular creatine. The reason for this is because regular creatine begins to break down in water or liquids so you have to take a crap load of it (15grams per day) in order for 1.5 grams to reach your muscles (hopefully). With Kre-Alkalyn Creatine whatever you take reaches your muscles without breaking down first. This results in having to take much less creatine to produce the same result and it also means that you won’t have the same bloating or stomach cramp effects as regular creatine.

I’ve only had the product for a few days but so far I’ve been taking it and have felt absolutely no bloating or stomach problems. I’ll stick with this product for now and see how I like it. If it delivers the same results as the Cell-Tech creatine I’ll use this instead as I really don’t like the bloating I got from Cell-Tech. Besides that though, I was happy with Cell-Tech. Reading on the Internet I read that a lot of people don’t get bloating from Creatine but some do, like me. If you try Creatine and get bloated, do your research and try out Kre-Alkalyn Creatine instead. You might like it better.

As for Nitro-Tech, I’ve kind of been taking it sparatically because I was trying to figure out if it was it or the creatine that was causing the bloating. Now that I know it’s the Creatine and now that I have that problem fixed, I will be taking a protein mix more regularly.

Today, however I discovered that there is a whey-protein product out which uses Stevia as a sweetener instead of Sugar or Aspartame or even Splenda. I’ve already done some research on Stevia before and believe it to be a very good sweetener, much healthier than any artificial sweeteners and better than refined sugar. Because of this I’m probably going to switch to ‘Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Gold Standard’ protein mix instead of Nitro-Tech as it has the same type of benefits of protein but it’s sweetened with Stevia. I am not absolutely sure, but I believe Nitro-Tech is sweetened with Aspartame which I don’t like to be taking. I’ll check out the Optimum Nutrition product probably tomorrow and if it is actually sweetened with Stevia I’ll probably switch to that.

The Anator product I can’t report on because I haven’t been taking it yet.

So, that’s about it for now. I’m very happy with the Bowflex machine and would recommend it to anyone who has been considering purchasing a machine for working out at home. As for supplements, my research continues but so far I found a better form of Creatine (Kre-Alkalyn) and most probably a better protein powder than Nitro-Tech, at least when it comes to sweeteners used.

I would recommend getting into supplements as they can help you with your gains and energy levels, and most importantly produce fast results which will keep you motivated, but I would definitely recommend doing your research. Study the products out there, read the labels, take the time to understand what you’re buying and how things work. Ask questions, and keep trying new things and listening to your body to tell you what’s working for you. Remember that everyone is different and what works for one person might not necessarily work as well for another so you will need to experiment a little and find something that works for you.

Good luck and have fun!

- Paul