My Tower 200 Review
To be honest I never thought I'd be doing a review of the Tower 200 door gym, particularly because I never thought I'd own a Tower 200.
After hunting around locally as well as online trying to find a decent resistance band set to no avail I ended up finding a used Body by Jake Tower 200 about 10~ minutes after the for sale advetisement went up.
I picked it up 15 minutes later.
Seperating The Advertising From The Product...
When it comes to discussing how useful the Tower 200 is we need to seperate the product from the god awful advertising/marketing campaign associated with it.
Claiming to get you ripped in 11 minutes a day with over 700 exercises is utter rubbish, much of the slandering of the Tower 200 I saw online prior to picking mine up is due to the unrealistic expectations of this door gym... a newcomer following a good diet and a solid split workout regime while using the Tower 200 will burn fat and stack on some muscle mass without a diet, after all we're able to apply progressive overload via these resistance bands just like we would in a gym.
But the average man that doesn't take care of his diet and follows the 11 minute workout regimes provided by Body by Jake will not get particularly far...
Here's What's Included With The Tower 200
Inside the box you'll find the Tower 200 door gym itself, fully assembled and ready to slide the top section over the top of your doorway along with the bottom of the Tower 200 under your door (it won't clip directly under your door unless you have a large amount of clearance... you'll need to open your door and slide it on from the side).
The pre-assembled Tower 200 has 3 different levels of resistance indicated by the red, green and black pulley systems at the top and bottom of the door.
In terms of attachments you'll get:
2 sets (4 total) of cable handle attachments.
2 set (2 total) of ankle strap attachments.
1 straight bar.
As you've got 2 sets of cable handle attachments this means we can have the top and bottom pulleys set up at the same time with our attachments, making supersetting biceps and triceps exercises etc. nice and efficient.
Using The Tower 200 To Continue My Regime...
As mentioned my goal with the Tower 200 door gym isn't to 'get ripped with 700 exercises in 11 minutes' its to try and replicate as many exercises as I perform in the gym as possible until this COVID-19 isolation blows over.
To my surprise it's doing a great job thus far, my biggest concern was that I'd be performing 50+ reps on every set to get myself to get close to failure, that has been far from the case... particularly training shoulders and biceps the Tower 200 has given me a number of brutal workouts.
Here's my current body part split regime utilizing the Tower 200:
My Tower 200 Workout Split
Chest:
Cable chest press
Cable chest fly (high pulley)
Cable chest fly (lower pulley)
Push-ups
Back:
Standing cable row (high pulley)
Seated lat pulldown (straight bar)
One arm cable row (low pulley)
Straight arm pulldown (straight bar)
Shoulders:
Cable shoulder press (low pulley)
Cable lat raise (low pulleys)
Leaning one arm cable lat raise (low pulley)
Staight bar front raise (low pulley)
Handstand push-ups against wall 'till failure
Biceps:
Straight bar biceps curl (low pulley)
Alternating biceps curls facing towards door (low pulley)
Alternating biceps curls facing away from door (low pulley)
Concentration curl (low pulley, resting elbow against inner knee)
Triceps:
Straight bar pushdown (high pulley, straight bar attachment)
Straight bar reverse pushdown (high pulley, straight bar attachment)
Close grip push-ups
Triceps kickback (high pulley)
Overhead one arm triceps extension (low pulley)
Legs:
I'm still perfecting my leg workout utilizing this door gym however alternating lunges while holding onto the cable extension combined with air squats is my go-to at the moment.
Should YOU Use A Door Gym?
If you have limited space available and want to maintain your gains (don't we all) during this tough time I recommend picking up a generic door gym on Amazon, it appears the Tower 200 is all sold out, however when buying brand new I'd say they are a little overpriced...
The best option would be to go for a generic door gym that'll offer you the ability to perform the regime I've listed above.
Here's the door gym I recommend...
Bandbuddy Multi-Position Door Gym Anchor
For $30~ you can't go wrong.