Universal Strength Apparatus Review
Our Universal Strength Apparatus has arrived. Here’s a breakdown of the product and our first impressions.
What’s in the box?
The USA comes with two ‘fitness ladders’ that can be used individually or attached to one another to create one long unit, and a duffel bag for storage and portability.
The duffel bag is of OK quality, it’s a nice addition but we’re focusing on the fitness ladders themselves.
The ladders are basically made up of thick canvas, with some heavy duty stitching holding the whole thing together. The canvas rungs are thread through a durable plastic cylinder which is what you grip onto when using the apparatus. The final piece to the equipment are the carabiner style clips attached to the top which allow you to fasten the ladders together or suspend them from your anchor point.
Setting up the Universal Strength Apparatus
The USA can essentially be setup in two ways; by suspending it from an overhead structure of some kind, or rigging it up to a door. Generally, fixing it to a door is more for your traditional suspension training exercises. You will find examples of these in our suspension training exercise directory. Attaching it to an overhead structure allows you to climb the apparatus, which is where we really value this equipment.
We setup the Universal Strength Apparatus on our garage rafters in minutes with the help of some step ladders. We also wrapped an old towel around the rafters to minimise the abrasion between the USA and the wood, and help prolong the life of the equipment.
Here are a few photos of our first attempts at training with the Universal Strength Apparatus:
The first is a pullup using the USA, and the others are of attempts to climb it!
Verdict
This is a really fun and novel piece of equipment and we definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to inject a bit of variety into their training regime. It’s much more difficult than we ever imagined and after a very brief first time training session we were aching the next day particularly in our lats and upper back muscles.
We really see the value of the Universal Strength Apparatus in the climbing and pullup exercises as opposed to the more traditional suspension training moves as it’s simply not as good a product as the TRX for suspension training.
One improvement we could suggest for the USA is to the plastic rungs which can be quite slippy and uncomfortable on the hands although this is easy to get round by wearing gloves or training with chalk.
The Universal Strength Apparatus is available now from Bodyweight Culture.
Tags: Universal Strength Apparatus, Universal Strength Apparatus Review, USA Review
