“I want my baby back, baby back, baby back V6″
If you’ve been looking for a home gym that will do it all then look no further.
The Hoist V6 functional trainer brings the local fitness centre to your home, in what could be the most functional gym on the market.
In theory the V6 is very basic. 2 sets of cables, each with it’s own 150lb weight stack that works independently. If needed, the stacks can be upgraded to 200lbs each. What you may not know is those 2 basic sets of cables let you do more exercises than any other home gym on the market. From Tricep kickbacks, Squats, Assisted pull-ups to basically anything you or your trainer can think up, the V6 can do it.
The whole idea of a functional trainer was to mimic specific movements we make during our every day lives, be if it’s walking up stairs to work to mimicking your golf swing or tennis backhand.
Don’t be fooled tho, this baby will still do all your “core” exercises like bench press, shoulder press, tricep pull-downs, bicep curls, leg curls, lat pull-downs, bent over rows and more.
The V6 operates very very well. It is very smooth and is a heavy duty machine designed to go into the home. It has 35 different height adjustments so the whole family can use it. It also has a great pull up bar, so for those of you who can do free weight pull ups you have this option. For those of you who can’t do a set of free weight pull ups, the V6 comes with a bunch of attachments that allow you to do an assisted pull-up, just like those machines you kneel on in the gym!
The small footprint of the V6 allows the person who only has a small amount of space in his house or garage to get everything he wants and will ever need in a home gym. So you can understand how little space you will need for the V6 I have created a plan of a V6 in a small room 10′ x12′ much like what you will find in your home. As you can see below, the V6 fits neatly in a corner of a room, optimizing space for you to use for other things if needed. I’m pretty sure all of you can find that much space for a gym right?
On another note, for the user who wants to bulk up, great! you can do this on the V6. Just sit on the bench and away you go. For the user who wants to tone and work their core more, take the bench out and replace it with an exercise ball. This will work your core and stabilizing muscles at the same time.
So no matter what your looking for, if it’s putting some muscle on or just toning, the Hoist V6 Functional trainer can do it.
Below is a link to a video of the Hoist V6 in action on youtube. Check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOxea-F9oT4
Come into Fitness Town Langley and see the V6 for yourself. I use the V6 daily, so let me show you what you can do on this revolutionary breakthrough in home gyms.
This machine is the best I have ever used, hand’s down. The one thing that really got me more than anything were the ULTRA smooth pulleys.
My brother has a ProSpot HG6 and the cable-cross over is not nearly as smooth. I am a big fan of free weights myself, but this machine IS FREE WEIGHTS. In truth, I would take this machine over a ProSpot, and it costs about 1,000 less.
With the way it is designed combined with the ultra smooth motion, you get full 3D training with none of the safety concerns you have with traditional free weights. Think about it… you can do the same exercises you can with free weights with the same range of motion and stability training with zero chance of dropping a 200 lbs barbell on your neck.
Move over smith machine, the V6 has surpassed you in safety and has also done something you never could, i.e., provide a true freeweight experience…and more!
Notwithstanding the safety issue, I even would go so far as to say it is better than free weights even from a pure training standpoint since I can adjust the resistance to come from 35 different angles without having to reposition my entire body using an adjustable bench. Combined with an adjustable bench, I can acheive greater range of resistance that remains at the height of peak contraction. In other words, the direction of my resistance is not limited by mere gravity.
Also, as far as stability and 3D exercises are concerned, I have no problem doing heavy lifting using a bosu board or a stability ball instead of a bench. With freeweigts, you’d be an idiot to try sets of 90lbs DB presses on a stability ball for fear you would lose balance drop them on your face.
That said, I beleive this is hands down the best home gym on teh market. Add in its small size and realatively affordable price and you can’t beat this.
The only, ONLY, negative comments are as follows:
1. Weight Stack Max for Bar Exercises.
The weight stacks max out at 200lbs each. With the 50% resistance pulleys that means you are limited to 100lbs for each arm on DBs exercises and 200lbs on bar exercises. The 100lbs for DB exercises is almost surely more weight than you could ever need unless you are Mr. Universe or are a frequent competitor of strongman, benching cars competitions. However, the 200 lbs limit for bar squats could be a little limiting depending on your strength.
2. Freeweight Leg Curls?
The adjustable bench is the best I have ever used. It is so stable and, yet so versitle! The preacher curl attachment to the bench is perfect for cable preachers. However, the leg curl attachment is…freeweights? Really, could they not have put a dual low pulley (close pulley) on this maching and given us a leg curl with dual low pully cable attachments?
3. No dips and no leg press.
The new Hoist V Select has an optional attachment for a leg press to come out to the side………………………hello? How did you miss that one?! Would it have been that hard to allow a way for the Hoist V6 to use the EXACT SAME ATTACHMENT. Also, I will never be able to understand how any gym fails to find a place to stick two small pieces of metal for traditional dips. (You had assisted pull-ups and you had the opportunity to create a spot for assisted dips…but you missed it?)
These are minor gripes though. I still think that you would be better off buying this machine that ANY OTHER HOME GYM OR EVEN PIECE OF FREEWEIGHT EQUIPMENT.
And that, folks, is saying a whole heck of a lot.
Thanks 8%BF for your review.
I also love the V6 and have put one in my house. As a personal trainer, I wanted to put something in there that could do it all instead of buying 7 or 8 different pieces.
I also love dips, so heres one for you to mimic the dip. Kneel on the ground between both cables facing away from the machine. Raise the cables high enough you get full range of motion. Add desired weight and start your dipping motion in the keeling position.
Maybe in the future they may slightly change the V6 to accomodate a leg curl/leg extension option.
Jamie
I have a V6 and a V-Elite Select gym. Let me tell you, the V6 just rocks! My background is I’m 44 year old male, married, have a 5-year old daughter, and I am an aerospace engineer. I’m somewhat of a fitness nut. My stats are I’m 5’8” and weigh 165 lbs. I lift and do aerobics for general health and have done so ever since my days in the Army. I like to train functionally to help do basic things like mowing the lawn and picking up my daughter and picking up mammoth-sized packages from Costco (not exactly training for the Olympics but for everyday life). So, I’m in pretty darn good shape and need to be to keep up with my daughter. The results from the V6 are incredible in terms of functional strength. I can flip my 45 lb daughter over my head no sweat, and can handle my lawn mower and snow blower with ease – thanks to some focused functional training to help do these tasks.
I wanted a traditional gym (hence the Elite) and a functional trainer (hence the V6). These machines complement each other perfectly and there is pretty much no exercise that cannot be done. I have a 350 square foot gym complete home gym with Johnsonite wall-to-wall rubber floor, Diamondback elliptical, Diamondback recumbent bike, Bodyguard treadmill, Hoist bench, and Powerblocks.
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I tried all the personal trainers out there and needed something that was versatile for me and highly usable for my petite wife of 5′ 4″ 118 lbs. We tried Hoist, Precor, Tuff-Stuff, LifeFitness, Bodycraft, BodySolid. For us the Hoist V6 won hands-down. It was by far the most thought-out machine from top to bottom. The aluminum bars are light enough for a woman or smaller person to handle and the textured pull-up bar is awesome in terms of grip. Assisted chin-ups are great for practicing form (I used to swing all over the place, but now I do perfectly straight and controlled chin-ups up and down). The selling point was the counter-balanced pulley adjusters – this is a must have for most women that will use this machine. It truly does adjust instantly with very modest one-handed force – it is super simple (takes one second) to adjust each pulley. Think about it, when you use this machine, you literally move the cable pulleys up and down for each exercise, so they are constantly being moved. So this should be a very simple and efficient operation – not point in struggling with a machine. The machine is super smooth, quiet, and seems to be of best build quality all around. My workouts are extremely efficient in terms of number of exercises done in a specified time slot – very fast changes from one exercise to the next. Definitely recommend getting the weight stack upgrade, since for presses and squats most guys could easily top out the standard stack. The footprint is very compact. I have an older Hoist HF-165 bench and find that I rarely use the bench with the V6 because I do my exercises standing or on the floor (I have wall-wall rubber gym floor, so I get good sticky traction) – which ultimately leads to better functional training (abs, core, etc.). Highly recommend the V6, without reservation, and it kicks my butt each time I use it. I am delighted with my V6 and use it daily.
My next choice would have been the Precor. The Bodycraft is the same exact unit as the Precor with a different name on it. The BodySolid is a real good value if you are on a tighter budget, but very difficult to adjust the pulleys and just does not have the visual appeal of the V6. The Precor/Bodycraft and LifeFitness have smooth and curved chin-up bars – this is just ridiculous, since with sweaty hands you will just slide off of it – this was an instant no-go for me. The Tuff-Stuff was a good unit, but the pulleys were very sticky and difficult to adjust (i.e., needed two hands and considerable force to adjust them). The extra pulleys seemed like fluff, and we did not like handling the heavy steel bars.
FYI, we also bought a Hoist V-Select with V1 Press Arm and V-Ride Leg Press – I will post a separate review of the V-Select. The combination of these two machines allows virtually any exercise you can think of or do in the gym. However, if I had room for just one machine I would start out with the V-Select, since it can do most of the exercises of the V6, but obviously just not as much flexibility in terms of cross-over cable exercises, but it does provide a full leg workout and has plenty of cable exercises using the standard upper, mid, and lower pulley positions. But the combination of the two machines is incredible and leaves no exercise untouched.