HG5000 Home Gym

I've been looking at various home gyms, as you do, and was split between this and the Marcy HG7000. When the price went down to £321 for this one, it was a no-brainer. Delivery was a bit hit-and-miss with ArrowXL. A garbled message with unintelligable phone number to ring to change a date they chose wasn't the best experience with them, but the delivery guys were great and brought it into my house. This comes in four boxes. A 79kg 2m long box with the chassis and most of the gym, a 1m square flat box with the seat pads and lighter stuff, and two 49kg boxes with the weights in them. I found it much easier to open them up in the house, check the items and take them to the brick shed at the end of my garden a bit at a time. That's a workout without even building anything. Assembly requires a fair bit of space and would be easier with two people, although I managed it by myself in two 2-hour sessions. Once you get to know which bolt/washer combination goes with pulleys, chassis, brackets, etc., it gets much easier. They provide two sizes of allen keys, and you just need an adjustable spanner. A 16mm ratchet socket makes things much quicker for easy-to-reach nuts, although you may still need the adjustable spanner for some harder to reach bits. There are a few places I had to stop and think because the instructions weren't too clear, such as removing the ball from the end of one cable before assembly, or having to feed the cable through a pulley BEFORE you put the bolt through (once in place, the cable is captive). Once built all worked well, with no squeaks or rattles. A bit of silicone spray on moving parts and the weight guides helped I think. Welds look good and it's certainly a solid piece of kit. Without abuse it should last forever. All exercises as shown in the video or the small chart on the web page are easily performed with minimal setup. Until I get used to them all, a chart would have been nice. Watch the video though and you'll get an idea of how to use the equipment, especially the adjustable backrest. I quite like the fact that the cushions on the seat and backrest are very soft as it takes pressure off my spine and backs of my legs. All hand grips (be it metal or foam) are comfortable too. The main Y-shaped bar gives you a chest press or when locked forwards a shoulder press. Lock it back, face the seat back (with it angled towards you) and you can do seated rowing. I find the number of positions to lock it quite coarse though, and bench presses start either just a bit too far back, or too far in front. I can't get it to start right from my chest, as a bar would. The fly attachment is really good, allowing you to choose the exact arc your arms go through. Every bit as good as free weights, although you may need to put the seat a bit lower than normal to get them the correct height to your chest. The lat bar is excellent, and so is the tricep bar. Two chains are supplied to extend the range of the movement, which I otherwise found a bit short, making the weight hit the end-stop at the top before I'd completed my extension. It's easy to perform all types of pull-down with this setup. A cable appearing just above the seat back allows you to do crunches, overhead tricep curls, and a host of arm/abdominal exercises 9watch the video for ideas). The lower pully provides resistance for thigh extensions, as well as seated and upright rowing, two-arm curls, shoulder shrugs, etc. Ankle clips allow more hip and leg exercises too. Apart from the less-than-perfect position for bench presses the only other fault I can think of is the weight increments. The roughly 6.8kg weights provide quite high jumps for most exercises, such as 11, 20, 28, 37, 45, etc. for bench presses. Butterfly's go up in 5kg (for each arm). This is true for all this type of machine though. I like to go up by 0.5kg every week on each exercise but keep the same reps/set. To do this I put smaller weights on the top plate, held on by brackets I glued on. seems to work (so far). To sum up, it's a well constructed gym, of good quality and should provide you with plenty of exercises. If you're new to weights it will be perfect. Hardened body-builders should already know the drawbacks of such a design and will probably need some free weights to better perform rotating arm curls with dumbbells.

Just bought this great piece of kit for our home gym Great value for money Solidly made and very well put together Step by step instructions with references for each stud, nuts, and washers Deffo a two handed job for building it but this outlines the quality of the product and the product parts. Built without a hitch, well chuffed One of the four boxes were damaged on delivery but this wasn’t a problem Two brilliant lads off loaded the boxes for us and they were pretty heavy So chuffed with this and glad we went for the HG5000 rather than the cheaper models or it’s alternatives Deffo recommend this if you have the space Cheers Kevin, Poynton

This gym is brilliant and exactly what I wanted and it hurts me not to give it 5 stars to be honest but having spent weeks trying to pick the best gym for my needs, if it helps others have the confidence to choose this gym, then being 100% honest is the way forward... some of the pieces arrived scuffed, this is purely aesthetic and has no bearing on how the machine functions and may have been rectified if I had spoken to the supplier but I wanted to build and use it straight away... also, although comprehensive building instructions were provided, there is no details on what exercises can be done with the machine and the manufacturers can't provide one either, but again this isn't a massive issue, if you can't figure that out yourself, maybe you shouldn't own the machine in the first place... lastly the shroud either side of the weights stack is a terrible fit and I'm very seriously considering taking it off, it wobbles and looks awful when in use... but again, this does not effect the performance of the equipment... everything else is 100% positive - it was easy to assemble, I did I on my own and it took about 3 1/2, it's a very attractive piece of kit, is very sturdy and comfortable to use... it's easy to work and very functional... the weight is more than I need and the Pulleys are very smooth... I am very pleased I picked this item and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a serious multi gym for a good price...

I managed to get this for £321 on an offer which was an absolute bargain. The build quality is ok. Good and solid. The welds aren't the neatest and the paint is easily scratched but its not a car its a gym and there to be used not looked at. It takes several hours to build and initially is easier with two people while you get the frame up. The fittings are clearly marked and vac sealed on card board. The instructions are clear enough to follow along with the diagrams. It takes some thinking about at times. For example the second cable that is for the leg extension comes in tact with the ball stopper. You have to pull this apart in order to feed it through the machine. It doesn't tell you in the instructions but is obvious when you are building it. There are two occasions where it tells you to use a particular numbered bolt and at the time you have none left. But again you can work out which one you need. On completing the build I had a pulley left over which was a tad concerning as there are no pulley slots left? I triple checked and it works as it should. I used copper slip grease on all the pulleys when building. You can adjust the tension of the cables so that there is little slack in them. I have used it and its a great machine. Is it the same quality as the £5000 ones you use at the local gym, no its not, but its a quality piece of kit for the home and I highly recommend if you can get it for the price I did. *** word of warning regarding delivery***. Arrow XL delivered this for me. They were an absolute nightmare to deal with. I made the massive mistake of changing the delivery day. DON'T DO IT. They failed to deliver it on the day I requested. They promised delivery the next day and failed AGAIN. I finally got it two days later. They had it in the depot for over 10 days. THAT SAID. The two men that delivered it were fantastic and even brought it into the house. I couldn't praise them enough. I have to say I complained to Amazon and they were very good and supportive.

This is an absolutely amazing piece if kit. The instructions are complete, easy to follow, if you follow each step one by one a doddle to build. It is time consuming, took 6 hours in all. You do need 2 people for literally 30 seconds in the very first instance just to balance while you apply 2 bolts and a clamp. Other than that you just take your time. As soon as you see and feel the parts you know it's high quality. I travel with work lots and use the gyms in the hotels, this is as good as some of the kits there IMO. Everything works well, the machine is whisper quiet. So adaptable. Very few parts are labelled, but, its not required as the instructions show you what is what. All the bolts, washers etc are pre packed and identified so sitting counting is not a requirement. It's a beast of a machine. Some reviews say if you are over 6ft, avoid. I'm 6ft 1 and I fit perfectly. If you are taller, buy some smaller chain for the bars, costs nothing I'm sure. Cannot recommend highly enough. Glad I did not buy cheaper. Get a medium socket set, this will shave an hour off at least... go for it, I'm fussy but this is a stellar purchase. More expensive than some rivals, but you get more than what is offered by some more expensive ones.

Very impressed. Read a lot of reviews about vague instructions but I found the packaging excellent and if your the type that is used to putting things together then this was well instructed and not difficult. It does take time to make sure you do it right but it was worth it. The build is solid. I installed it in my garage and thought it would need securing to the floor but this was not the case, it's sturdy on a carpet. I was also conscious about the amount of weight on offer as I've gone on equipment on holidays and you need all the weights in use and I'm only small but this has a lot of weight to suit most builds. It just about covers everything and the ab crunch is a good feature.too.A very good complete gym workout. If I have one negative, the seat has a little movement back and fore which can be a bit annoying but the rest of the package makes up for this. I would really recommend this, great value.

I arranged for this to be ‘professionally’ put together by a separate company, but wish I hadn’t. They made a complete mess of it and I had to rectify all their mistakes. As with anything like this, the instructions aren’t the best, but if you can put DIY furniture together then you can manage this. With hindsight, I would've easily been able to put this together by myself in a few hours. (You will, by the way, need a couple of adjustable spanners). For the number of different exercises you can perform on this unit, it gets two thumbs up – you can’t really fault it. I particularly like the independent pec dec arms for doing ‘flies’ and the low pulley for doing your front deltoids. The chest press is obviouly useful as you don't need anyone to spot you as you would if you were using an olympic bar and free weights. However, the unit does have its faults. As someone else has pointed out, the seat and back rest have a little too much ‘give’. There is also an annoying squeak when using the chest press and I can’t for the life of me figure out exactly where it’s coming from (and ‘yes’ I have used a spot of WD40 on all the moving parts and joints). Also, I’m not sure why the weight stack numbering label is at the front of the unit, when it should really be at the rear – after all, the selector pin goes in at the rear. Speaking of which, the weight stack system has an overall cheap feel to it – it’s certainly not as smooth or sturdy as I was expecting. Finally, the manufacturers really should’ve included a wall chart or at the very least a colour pamphlet showing the various different exercises. I was in two minds whether to go for this or a ‘leverage gym’ and chose this because of the amount of features it has. Did I make the right choice? I’m not too sure…

arrived in good time. good contact with carriers. one box is heavy 80kg long and awkard with lots bits in. so you need a lift from the kerb to wherever its going. two more boxes have the weights 50 kg in each and one light box with the seats. I put this together on my own in under three hours and stopped a few times. its very straightforward and I found it pretty easy. have used for three weeks now and it is good. strong and sturdy, smooth and comfortable. simplicity itself to configure all the set ups. glad I bought this I had a choice in my mind after much looking and seems I made the right one. one minor issue. the plastic end caps on the ends of the leg developer pop off more often than not. as they are only cosmetic don't matter much.

La utilizo bastante y me está dando muy buen resultado. Es versátil y resistente. Estoy totalmente satisfecho de esta compra. La recomiendo sin dudarlo.

Danke alles super

Montage fait seul, mais je ne peux que vous conseiller de le faire à deux. Ne serait-ce que pour maintenir certaines partie de la structure au début. Reçu sous 4 colis. En suivant méthodiquement le plan (fournis en Français) vous allez avancer à bon rythme. Mais prévoir l’après midi. Pratiquant depuis plusieurs années, un fois montée entièrement, le résultat correspond à mes attentes. La quantité de poids fourni est top, et les poulies et câbles ont l’air durables. Une fois tous les boulons resserré, tout est stable. Et une fois les roulements huilé davantage (mon conseil perso) c’est juste parfait. J’ai ajouté une corde pour triceps en complément , mais Excellent rapport qualité / prix dans les gammes supérieures de stations pour particuliers.

Ottima

Maquina super completa . Muy buenas calidades