The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that to maintain good health, adults under 65 should strength train twice weekly. Strength training also contributes to weight loss by burning calories and increasing muscle mass, which in turn burns even more calories. The Lifestyler 300, a multi-station home gym once sold through Sears, allows you to perform the same sort of strength training exercises you'd do at the gym in the comfort of your own home.
Design
The Lifestyler 300 has many of the same attachments you'd find on any home gym, including a chest press arm, a lat tower, butterfly arms, a low pulley station and a leg developer. The third station, sometimes known as a Roman chair or captain's chair, is an unusual find in a home gym. So is the squat arm, which doubles as an overhead press arm.
Exercises
The ACSM recommends doing 8 to 10 strength-training exercises in each session. If you want a less formal approach, aim to do one or two exercises for each major muscle group. In either case, the Lifestyler 300 provides plenty of exercise options. You can use it for leg curls to work the hamstrings, leg extensions to work your quads, and squats to work your hamstrings, quads and glutes. You can also perform chest presses and pec flys for your chest, shoulder presses for your shoulders and triceps, lat pull-downs for your back, and you can use the Roman chair for hanging knee raises to work your abs, or modified pull-ups. If you're creative, you can also put the high and low pulleys to work for other exercises, including rows, triceps push-downs, wood chops and a variety of curls.
Sets and Reps
The ACSM recommends doing 8 to 12 repetitions of each exercise. As you get stronger, your muscles need new challenges to continue developing. Once you can perform more than 12 repetitions of any given exercise, increase the amount of weight you're lifting by 5 percent to 10 percent.
Adjusting Resistance
You adjust resistance for each Lifestyler 300 exercise by sliding a selector pin into the appropriate weight plate on the weight stack. But how much weight you're actually lifting depends on which attachment you're using. The butterfly arms have a maximum weight plate setting of 170 lbs.; you end up actually lifting 185 lbs. of resistance. The maximum weight plate setting for all other attachments is 200 lbs., and the actual weight you end up lifting is: high pulley, 224 lbs.; low pulley, 227 lbs.; squat arm, 210 lbs. and press arm, 245 lbs.
Specs
The Lifestyler 300 measures 64 inches long by 77 inches wide by 80 inches high. It doesn't fold for storage, so place it where it can become a permanent fixture in your exercise area.
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