i’m thinking to open a new commercial gym.
here in italy 90% of the machines are by technogym, the others are panatta (maybe you don’t even know it) and some life fitness/hammer strength.
i’d like to have some suggestions about wich are the best brands to buy.
wich company offer the best costs/quality ratio?
atlantis? nautilus? cybex? david?
the idea is to open a classic commercial gym, but where the athletes could train as well as the other clients.
Other things to look at
Warrenty - length of time - is it just the frame or cables n pullys etc
Replacement parts - cost and availabilty - time it takes to get new parts?
Load ratings
I would ask each company to send you stats on each piece of machinery you want - draw up a graph and compaire from then.
Price would be different from each company, but so too would be the quality, warrenty, after sales support etc etc.
I would definetly check out elitefts.com! They have great equippment that is high quality. Their equippment is a bit pricey, but well worth it! Their customrer service and Q&A are great resources.
Hammer/lifefitness equipment is not that bad. It looks good, which important for the general public, and seems to be functional. Maybe you should go with that and get the reverse hyper and/or glute-ham and accessories from elitefts. Their bars also seem top notch.
A set of olympic bumper plates would be nice. You don’t have to get Eleiko since their prices are through the roof. Maybe someone here can recommend a good non-expensive olympic lifting set
dove in italia…io sono udinese… rauscedo…
stay classico… for hardcore…
le macchine… per la gente fallita…lol
ciao
thanks for the advice.
anyone had some experiences about that?
the point is that i live in italy and i don’t know if there are some problems with shipment and servicing…
I can’t speak for elite fitness’s stuff, because I don’t know if they’ll ship internationally.
In fact, getting anything “made” in the USA might cost less (euro:dollar), but be outrageously expensive to ship!
that would depend on if they charge by Weight or volume?
if by volume and they Flat pack it, it might be ok, if by Weight - then price would be way too much.
the other option, is if you buy a lot, then consider looking at a Shipping Container for delivery. Might cost a couple of grand for delivery, but, if your buying 50grand worth of equipment it would possibly be the best bet? At the same time, you would have to buy from the one seller - and, if your buying from 1 seller, the cost of each individual piece would be smaller as your bulk buying.
Perhaps you could even go halfs in a shipping container with somebody in your area who only needs Half a container??? you would have to ask around
what do you mean with “Might cost a couple of grand” 
might cost around $2000
1 grand = $1000
sorry, aussie lingo i guess
If you are thinking to use some machines, you must investigate Keiser pneumatic machines. They operate at the push of a button, offer a positive and negative action (concentric and eccentric), no metal gears, so no corrigated muscles long-term. All air-powered with local generator, everything moves through a system of cams. I used them with my best athletes, mainly the hip, leg extension/hamstring curl, and leg-press machine ($5000, by far the most expensive). Many physiotherapists use these keiser machines, so did Mike Powell extensively under advice from his coach Randy Huntington before setting the world record long jump. I worked out on them a bit also. I hate machines, especially I dislike nautilus because of the double-positive action which does not mimmick nature. What I loved about keiser was that it allows you still to accelerate a load right through the range of movement to the outter extremeties, but due to the system of cams, it gives you some help when you are in a position of mechanical disadvantage but then modified the resistance throughout the range of movement and continues to provide asmall resistance to the end-point of movement of the load bar. The legs (extension/curl - same machine) can be operated in isolation, alternating or simultaneously. And when you lower the padded foot-bar back to the starting position, you are still providing resistance eccentrically in the process of lowering the load or “yielding”. We had zero injuries, and you can move the bar very explosively - just like an Olympic bar except that the Olympic bar becomes almost weightless at a certain velocity, while the keiser bar will stop moving the instant you stop working against it.
hmmm. last year I asked Randy about the value of such isokinetic devices for sprinters/jumpers and he said they are “of no value”.
i’m very intrested in it
have you got any links?
no problems man
no problems man
That’s a totally different tune to the one he was singing to me in 91 and 92. Maybe he was sponsored by Keiser at the time and was just saying that - or maybe he had a falling out since then and is dirty on the company now.
In any case, they apparently were using Keiser’s squat machine (which we did not have access to, but my best guy wasn’t “permitted” by our osteo-chiro to squat anyway, due to back malformation at lumbar).
Nevertheless I felt the leg extension-leg curl machine was excellent, as was the hip machine.
Complemented by plenty of hill sprints and all the other training being accomplished, I felt the kesier pneumatic was an important ingredient in strengthing and keeping the athletes clear of new injuries. That’s my honest take.
Yea maybe it’s the same deal as he had with the Teslar watches I always found the Keiser equipment interesting. My old gym had almost the entire set (which no one ever used).
I was brought up in an ancient gym that produced loads of old Olympic weightlifters from the 1930s through to the mid-1950s and it had heaps of the old grapplers and a few boxers - big square ring with canvas mat was in the middle of the floor. Had to put coins in a metre to get hot water for the showers… last coat of paint was in 1937. Anyway… read: No Machines! Ever!
Plus I had been taught the pros and cons of machines versus Free Weights and was totally anti Machines.
Until I tried Keiser and read up on them and tried to figure out why they were actually helping my athletes, not wrecking them which was orthodox thinking back in the 80s. Then I saw a couple of physios who I had positive dealings with installing these contraptions in their clinics and throwing out the much more expensive kin-coms and nautilus machines…
Anyway, you take things as you find them. I found the leg-extension/hammy curl machine fantastic. But I also believe that without the explosive hills to activate the glutes/hips we would not have achieved such good strength gains.
To be honest, the main reason I think we did get great useable strength gains was because we did the hills against a couple of 100m sprinters who could do more than double bodyweight to thighs parallel on back-squats and “they” said they could not hang on to my guy in their hill sprints because he was so strong.
I reckon the pneumatic system helped a lot in that department and we never had injuries doing that stuff at very high speeds with high loads, probably due to the accommodating (variable) resistance mechanism of that particular machine.
I’m not saying other machines are good. This was though.
why don’t we open another 3d about pneumatic devices and pros and cons of the various kind of machines?
could be intresting