OK, this is not really a "vs." review. I have both products and for some exercises I prefer one over the other.
SelectTech 552
I have had these for a number of years. I have read some other reviews online where
people complained that the dumbbells were cheap and broke easily. I can see how they might come away with that opinion
if they were in the habit of dropping their weights when they were done a set
or perhaps slamming them into the stand.
I have been a bit rough with mine at times and slamming them in the
stand can cause some of the plastic spacers that hold the weights in place to
shift slightly. This then makes it difficult to
adjust the weightw or perhaps to even get them back into the stand. Manual adjustment on
my part has been necessary to resolve this just a handful of times. My kids have figured it out too. Don’t slam the SelectTechs … Other than the
fact that you need to treat them nice, I like how easy they are to adjust and have
also come to appreciate that I can have more weight on one end than what I have
on the other. There is a wrist exercise
I do with the SelecTechs that could only be done with that configuration. In fact all the wrist exercises I do I would
need to do with my SelectTechs as I could not do any of them with the
PowerBlocks.
PowerBlocks
While I am generally satisfied with my SelectTech dumbells I
found with some exercises that the SelectTech dumbbells were not really well
suited due to the dimensions of the dumbells.
Specifically for some exercises a dumbbell that was not quite so wide
would allow me to have better form. The
other concern I had with the SelectTech system was that they were not
expandable. A couple of years ago I went ahead and purchased a set of PowerBlocks. There are different
sets for the PowerBlocks, with different starting weights and different
expansion options. I have the PowerBlock Sport 9.0 which starts at 50 lbs each. This year I added the expansion kit to take
me up to 70 lbs. The Sport 9.0 can be
further expanded.
PowerBlocks are great when doing combination exercises like push-ups and
rows. I would not try that with my
SelectTech dumbbells. Some other
exercises that require you to hold the dumbbells close together are much easier
with the PowerBlocks than the Selectechs.
They are not quite as fast to adjust the weight but they are not that
slow either.
No comments:
Post a Comment