TKO Weight Benches
Weight benches are a staple feature for any gym whether it’s at home or in a commercial club, they lay down the foundations for your weight training allowing you to train every angle of almost any muscle you want. Before weight benches came onto the scene most lifts like the chest press were performed on the floor which was highly impractical and dangerous as well, the modern designs of today allow you to lift weights in a safer manner increasing the longevity of your muscles and reducing any risk of injury.
Different Styles
You can sub-categorise weight benches into utility and benches with racks, the utility version is just a stand-alone design without a rack, most models are adjustable but you can find flat fixed styles too. They are perfect for combining with a pair of dumbbells and are generally less expensive than those with racks because they are more basic, with this set up you still have a great range of exercise options at your disposal. The only downside is they aren’t designed for as heavy lifting, it isn’t as safe because you have nowhere to return the weights too (except the floor) when you’re finished.
A weight bench with a rack does give you better scope for heavier lifts as they enable you to combine them with a barbell. Barbells give you more stability through compound movements like chest press and the easy weight return back onto the rack is much safer. Some designs come with the rack fixed to the bench to provide better stability and others come with them separated, this way you can choose to train with the bench alone using dumbbells and use the frame as a squat rack or combine them both together. Choosing between these two designs depends on your personal preferences and requirements; the separated option does guarantee more versatile training but the fixed rack versions are better if you intend to train heavy.
Key Features
Adjustability
To get the most out of your workouts it’s highly recommend going for a weight bench that has a range of back pad angle adjustments, ideally it should have the option to adjust to decline, flat, several inclines and also a full 90 degree military press. It’s quite important to have these adjustments because they give you such a wide choice of exercises, you can work the different angles of your chest, do ab crunches in a decline position and shoulder press with the military angle. These are just few ways in which back pad adjustments can benefit and improve your weight training.
Workout Stations
Weight benches already provide a natural plethora of exercises but some do come with useful additions to enhance them a bit further. A lot of machines now come with a leg developer attachment at the front, you can use this for leg curls and leg extensions to train your hamstrings and quadriceps, these are great movements for really isolating your legs muscles so it’s worth looking out for.
The preacher pad is another useful component, you can normally find them towards the front and are ideal for focusing your biceps and forearms, you can use either free weights or straight bars for preacher curls but either will give you that satisfying deep burn.
Lat towers or high pulley stations have started to feature more frequently in recent years; they also fit at the front and can be used not just for lat pulldowns but also for tricep pushdowns, high ab crunches, single arm cable crossovers, woodchoppers and a ton of other movements. They let you use your imagination; you can also use different universal gym attachments to further expand your workout diversity.
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