An Evergreen Review of Technogym Equipment
Technogym equipment is found in high-priced commercial gyms and fancy condo buildings around the world. The brand is often highlighted by sales people as selling points for the gym. This stands in contrast with my experience of the brand’s equipment as subpar. Here an ongoing review of their gear.
"Fitness" Adjustable Flat Weight Bench
That thing is a $3,600 piece of garbage. The most egregious “feature” is a hard plastic cordon circling the padding. Any movement that has you orthogonal with the bench like a Bulgarian split squats or a couch stretch thrusts this projection into your flesh and bones. A workaround has been to wrap a yoga map around the bench with an elastic band, but what a hack!
I'm 6’ tall and at 19”, the bench is very high, especially compared to a normal 17” competition bench. Also, the backrest is very long and thick, which makes prone rowing movements awkward at best.
Finally, and I might be nitpicking at this point, but I feel it slides too easily on the floor for how heavy it is. The bench weighs 80 lbs, so it's a hefty piece of equipment to lug around the gym. For example, let's say you're an ordinarily strong individual and are using the bench for a cable or band exercise, you probably will have to clamp it down; otherwise, you will merely be dragging yourself and the bench. On this point, I have to admit I'm not sure what's the median coefficient of friction for benches. It's a problem I never encountered before using Technogym benches, but it could very well be a sampling issue.
Edit on the sliding issue: A more nuanced look at the sliding problem is that the bench slides too easily "backward," for example if you push on the backrest, while being quite grippy "forward," i.e., if you were to try to drag the bench pulling on the handle.
This means that if you do chest-supported cable pulling movements, the bench tends to slide towards the cable machine, but if you need to move it a few inches forward, you might have to lift it all the way up so it's rolling on its wheels. This is the worst of both words.