BodyBoss Home Gym 2.0 with Extra Bands (Open Box)

I also have a Gorilla Bow, an all-in-one home gym solution and have the review here in my review history. Why have both? There's more than one person in my house that uses these products. It's kind of like only having one bathroom with 5 people needing to take a shower. A direct comparison between the two would lead me to choose the Body Boss 2.0 over the Gorilla Bow if I had to just pick one. My very brief background: Started working out seriously when I was 13 years old. That was nearly 30 years ago. Played both collegiate baseball and football. I also am of Italian and Samoan ancestry. I have a naturally large frame. My doctor says I could go on the strictest diet possible and wouldn't be able to weigh under 210-215 pounds without risking my health. At 13, I was 5'11" 220, so some of my strength is very natural or as some say, "was born with it thanks to genetics". My biggest concern with any band system is if it will have enough resistance to challenge me. And, for me, the Body Boss 2.0 excels at resistance levels. I really don't need the bands to tell me how much weight they are. I can feel it and have enough gym time with free weights to know how say 350 pounds feels. Here's what you get with the Body Boss 2.0 and I'll list my one disappointment with it. By the way, I ordered the one that has the extra set of bands. It comes with 4 bands, extremely good quality bands. The tension from this bands is perfect. You can feel the quality of them in each rep. It has a bar that you can unscrew in half for easy portability. When the bar is connected it is roughly 40" and has nice grips to hold it with. When split in half, the bars are a little over 20" each (the excess screws into the other bar to make the full bar). A side note here: I first found the Body Boss 2.0 while considering buying the X3 Bar system. It's around five hundred dollars. The bar with Body Boss 2.0 feels as good as the X3 bar. Also in the package are two handles. These are used to do single-arm dumbbell-type movements. There are also two straps that you can connect around your wrists or ankles to do leg raises with resistance, punching movements with resistance and so on. Apologies if I don't know many of the strap exercises. I'm more of a push and pull lifter and only know about the leg raises and punches because I've seen my wife and son doing those. You also get a door anchor, it's a basic strap that goes over any interior door. You close the door and a little bobbin-type anchor keeps you from pulling the door open so it gives you stability. At this point, I love everything about it. But, no longer a baseball/football player and now just a roughly 40 year old engineer, designs, ingenuity, draw me too. I replaced a Bowflex Xtreme, it was around two-thousand dollars, with the Body Boss and Gorilla Bow so you can see the big price difference. And space difference. As mentioned earlier, I was originally intrigued by the X3 Bar, besides have a nice, very sturdy bar, it also had a very unique base. So, when I got the Body Boss 2.0, my biggest interest was in the base. One of the perks of having an engineer's brain is that you can look at something and see things other people don't see. One of the downsides of the engineer's brain is you're way too thorough about everything! It takes me like 10 minutes to tie a new shoe because I'm convinced I've laced it wrong. The base gets own paragraph. Like some others, the one thing I worried with the Body Boss is that it's aimed at females. No offense is meant to women. I'm roughly 6'3" 235 and it won't be a surprise if I'm 275 by the end of the winter. A base worried me because I was afraid my big feet (11 2E shoe) and my wide shoulders 29" across 1 way. Would cause a small base to be unbalanced when I stood on it. Not the case with the Body Boss 2.0. When folded up for storage or travel, it's 17" wide, when opened for use, it's 34" wide. I know this isn't Physics class but with my 29" 1 way shoulders, it had to be wider than my shoulders or I would have felt unsteady. The base has 10 hooks on it, five on each side. These hooks are where you attach the bands too. You then attach the other end of the band to either the bar, the handles or the ankle/wrist straps. I was concerned also about the sturdiness of the base and actual weight since I didn't want it start moving while exercising. It's very solid. I don't move it at all while pulling the bands. There's also the option of connecting the bands to the door anchor and connecting the other end of the bands to the bar, handles, straps. That means I had no red flags at this point. The disappointment? I honestly thought the base could be used for storage of the collapsed bar, handles, door anchor, bands, etc... I thought it then folded up like a suitcase. But there's no way to store the parts in the base. And that's okay, it would have just got some wow points from me! The good part they include a nice carrying bag, similar to a duffel and everything except the base fits in the bag. For me, this makes it more portable than the Gorilla Bow. The Gorilla Bow's bar doesn't collapse and it's near 50" long. I have a SUV and it would fit fine it but I like the smaller collapsed bar in a bag better. Something you're going to see me talk about is the advantage of having a base. Remember me saying I worried about not enough resistance? With those 10 hooks in the base, I can double the bands, angle them a little sideways and make the tension so strong that I can't even move it! I can do every main movement with 4 bands attached. What I do when I need more resistance, I double one on each side. It's very simple to do too. You just hook the band to one, pull some of the excess of the band through another hook on that side and you've added quite a bit of extra resistance. When or if you first try the doubling method, it will feel a little different. Besides the obvious more resistance but it's adding something I haven't seen many people talk about. The base and the bands offer a combination of stability and resistance that you cannot get anywhere ... while being safe. Go put 660 on a squat rack without a spotter and you might have moments of wishing you had a spotter! And there's really nothing you can do when squatting free weights except hope someone sees you and helps you out or the weights could cause your knees to blowout or even worse. With the bands, what are they going to do? They're not actual plates of iron so they're not going to squish you beneath them. The base acts as a spotter. It lines your form up. It lets you increase the resistance without added pressure to your body. I think that's a selling point that Body Boss should advertise. For the first 20 years of my working out 3-5 times a week, I always had a spotter. And that's another difference between the Body Boss and Gorilla Bow. The Gorilla Bow doesn't have a base and relies more on your balance and coordination. Though both are much safer thanks to the bands. I wouldn't normally be going this deeply into safety but the closest I have to a workout partner is my wife and she's strong but I wouldn't trust her to spot me with free weights! And we have two teenagers who are both playing high school sports. They want to use the Body Boss and Gorilla Bow too. One of the things I highlighted in the Gorilla Bow review was how good it was for bench press movements. Depending on how serious you take me about how serious of a weightlifter, powerlifter I have been, this advice might not mean much to you. I never relied on bench press movements. I preferred chest flyes, dumbbell presses and anything that allowed me to change my angle in the bench press. It's not a natural movement. And in my experience it's "THAT" lift. The one everyone has heard of. Just like the old jokes, "How much you bench, bro?" That is the one movement you will have trouble with the Body Boss. You can easily do perfect form chest flyes by using the door anchor and handles. I also don't want to take away from the Gorilla Bow because it really excels at the standing bench press. It's just not a required movement for me. I was more interested in the squats. And the Body Boss with doubled bands really will push your quads on the squat movement, it's also one of the biggest advantages of the bar that comes with the Body Boss. Overall, I can't find anything wrong with it. Those that want bench press, maybe can but there are movements you can do that achieve the same result as bench press. The design is excellent. And again, the bands are way higher quality than I even knew existed. I don't even feel like I could pop these. I'm honestly sitting here trying to think about something I could complain about. Here's one that isn't a big deal to me but might be to others. The bands say they're up to 30 lbs. I can tell you when doubled, they're way more than 30 pounds. I have visited gyms over the last year and there is a big psychological part of working out that starts with "how much you bench, how much you squat?" I double them and angle them until I can't do more than 4 reps. And then I know, it will be my goal to do 5 reps with the same configuration of bands the next time. That's something I forgot, the hooks on the base, are metal and they flip down for storage and are numbered. So, you can find a configuration you like and just remember which number hook your looped through. That's the ingenuity of this base. Because I don't want to short either Body Boss or Gorilla Bow, for me, the Body Boss is a better choice because I do have to travel a little (couple days a month). My teenage son prefers the Gorilla Bow because he loves to bench press. I also prefer having the base. My wife seems to like the Body Boss better but that's because of those straps and doing leg lift exercises, kind of reminds me of pilates. Our daughter is a fairly high-level high school softball player. She likes them both equally. Here's the real kicker, no one but me used the Bowflex. The kids used their school's gym equipment. My wife went to exercise classes at one of the fitness centers. Now, they work out with the Gorilla Bow and Body Boss. I also like the Body Boss for the near unlimited resistance you can get from doubling and looping the bands. Cost wise, the Gorilla Bow is cheaper to start out but I did have to spend fifty dollars on heavier bands which made the Body Boss with the extra bands a little cheaper. I try to be as helpful as possible with exercise equipment reviews because I do have near 30 years experience in it. This Body Boss 2.0 is an excellent all-in-one gym and the price is very good too.