The Full Workout: Bowflex Videos, Software, Books And Oddities

You can boost your Bowflex workout with videos, software, and books from their online store.

Videos
Bowflex produces 2 fitness trainer video sets to enhance your workout, reshape your body and strengthen your core muscles. Formerly only on VHS, you can get them now on DVD.

The two-video set, the Upper and Lower Body Workout, focuses individual muscle groups. Together they feature a full-body workout that allows you to target both your upper and lower body muscle groups separately in a regime that alternates daily.

With the three-video set, Body Building Workout, you work "alongside" professional Bowflex fitness trainers. The series separately targets three main muscle groups: the chest and shoulders; back and arms; and legs and trunk.

If you don't have enough to occupy you just working out, you can mount a Bowflex Portable DVD Play to your Ultimate 2. They suggest you just pop in your favorite fitness trainer video and you're set. It can also be attached to your TV or home theatre system, or it can travel with you. Somehow, I don't see watching the same video day after day as being very beneficial. Maybe you could also stock up on the Rocky movies for inspiration or The Sound of Music for peaceful thoughts.

The Bowflex i-Trainer Interactive Software is designed by professionals to help you meet your fitness goals. The i-Trainer acts as a fitness trainer by determining your fitness level, creating routines to meet your goals, guiding you through each exercise (specifically for the Ultimate), recording your progress, and teaching you workout and fitness tips. Of course sitting at your PC (not available for Mac users) devising routines takes on a life of its own. You have to be careful not to use all your fitness time at the computer. At some point you have to move it.

Another available accessory is the Bowflex Pilates Kit, combining Bowflex with Pilates principles. June Kahn created this kit to help you achieve strength, co-ordination and core conditioning. The Pilates Kit works together with parts of your Bowflex total gym. It includes a specially designed mat, stability ball, cable extensions, a Bowflex foot harness and yet another 45-minute video.

Dr. Ellington Darden's book, The Bowflex Body Plan, wraps up all the explanations into one package. An expert fitness trainer, he guides you through 24 different routines, complete with illustrations. He has also, with many years experience behind him, developed comprehensive diet guidelines for the serious fitness buff. He explains the secrets of water as related to fitness and the need for sufficient rest. Darden's dietary information is not for young athletes only. He has devised a four meals a day plan that encourages weight loss for women and anyone else who wants to target areas of their body and lose fat.

Expect more solid products developed with Bowflex exercise equipment in mind. But don't expect an avalanche that'll bury you. A study of the products on their site reveals a select group of carefully designed, well-researched videos, books and other support materials. Ones that stress good documented information and tested systems of fitness development - much like their well-known, durable machines.