I’m not one to write reviews, but I had to review this product. I have been using it for about a month now, with no intention to stop soon.
I’ve bought resistance bands several times before, but this combination of the base and the resistance bands are phenomenal. I’ve been wanting to purchase a power rack for a long time now, but I just don’t have an area where I can leave it and it not be in the way in some shape way or form (besides my garage which is either way too hot or way too cold). Enter the Evo Gym.
As a background, I’ve been lifting for about 13 years in a variety of styles, weights, body weight, resistance bands, gymnastics (just ring work). My preference is actual weights. Or it was.
First of all, the Evo gym is portable. You can bring it with you. The base folds up nicely, and it comes with a bag to throw all the accessories (bands, door anchor, etc) into. I throw it under my bed or in a closet until I’m ready to work out again. I travel a fair amount, so whenever I am driving you can bet this is coming with me. This is one of the reasons I gravitate towards these kinds of products, as I try to keep a regular routine. The more obstacles I face in working out (example being driving to the gym, packing for the gym, it’s snowy out, it’s rainy out, etc), the harder it is for me to get after it. Having it at home eliminates excuses.
Second of all, I love the way it has scalable measures of progress. We all know that progressive overload is the best way to get more muscle, but I adore the way this works. You just count the notches and the weight in resistance in your training notes, and try to beat your reps from last time as you progress. I also love that you can micro-load, by notching up one more on whatever movement it would normally be on (that way you are getting a little bit more resistance at the end of the movement where it most difficult, which is one of the perks of resistance bands).
Third of all, I love the sheer amount of exercises I can do with this. You can do a ton of exercises with traditional loop bands but you have to step on them, and then you have to guess where you were last time with hand placement. Some people can intuitively find that sweet spot of getting the proper amount of resistance, but I like to track closely, and guessing where I was last time always bothered me (which I think explains my preference for traditional weights). With this, I know that I was on notch 3, with 60 pounds of resistance. I can put the 10 on there and make it heavier. If 10 is too much, slide up to the next notch and then micro-load it in that way like I mentioned above.
To be fully transparent, I have not used the door anchor or ankle attachments so I cannot vouch for those. Like my earlier comment about traditional loop bands, it feels subjective to what resistance might be that day (anything that involves taking a couple steps away to get it to where you needs to be I have trouble tracking). I exclusively have been training always using the base as I primarily prefer compound movements for most of my exercises and all my additional isolation movements can be met with the base somehow. Evo Gym’s videos are extremely helpful for figuring out the correct way to hit whatever you are trying to target. Their overall presentation has been phenomenal and I love the manual that came with it. Everything has been functioning well, and it seems like the creator
My only complaint is that I wish the base had a way to somehow latch close. I’m sure I can think of something to fix that, but it would be nice if there was a magnetic seal on it somehow.
If you have low space at your house or apartment and enjoy working out at home or travel on the road, I can’t recommend this enough. It has truly been game changing for me. I’m not looking at Rogue’s Power Racks weekly anymore, and that is saying something. I would buy this again in a heartbeat. You can tell this was developed by somebody that loves working. As a fellow lifter, busy dad, and frequent traveller, thank you!
