Look monkey ain’t too bad really . Snake because his nickname is Rattler.( a rattlesnake).
Plus the comments were aimed at the people who had posted comments in the thread and summarily dismissed the bullworker. With hindsight I wouldn’t have included that.
Believe I actually have the girls’ bullworkers to which my mother and sister also used. Funnily enough the bow
new one seems to resemble the girl’s bullworker but is obviously much harder. I bought a mini trampoline for 10 dollars at a thrift store ( a charity here in the uk). It’s excellent for warming and throwing medicine balls and throwing tires and sandbags and catching them. You can also jump on it with dumbells in each hand or jump on it with sandbags. I can’t recommend jumping with a heavy sandbag onto a high platform more for developing a bit leg strength. Take 110lb and jump onto a 20 -25 plus platform.How many of you can do it?
I guarantee the sandbag variations will add some size to your calves, if you do enough it. Another great exercise I used to do was explosive calf raise with around 300-450kg on old calf raise. (Until I examined the rackety old machine and shat myslef when I saw what a state disrepair it was in)
Use some knee bend even quarter squats (and explode for perhaps sets of 6 with weight.) That one is from Mel’s Siff Supertraing. It worked too my calves went form 15inch to nearly 16 inches. They have since lost roughly an inch (that’s one muscle group that does seem lose size when you don’t train.)
I can have squatted 180kg x 10 to parallel btw , not quarter squat either. I can clean pull 200kg and cheat row a 90kg dumbbell. I can also cheatrow.140kg barbell. I do use weights that Oprah would proud of.
The tools like chest expanders (where talking stuff Sandow would have used and bullworker are supplemental pieces of equipment . Perhaps for extra use at home.
Also if you put several bullworkers together over two chin up bars or something high.
You can mimick a double pull down to be used with each arm. You can get a great of resistance this way, which challenge even strongest people. Hatfield claims it is the best lat exercise there is. Of course he sells them for thousands of dollars.
Also since selling my barbell set, I want to save up for bumper plates and a good bar. I have started using isometric pulls from the floor with cut offs from turned trousers to develop off the floor. These can also be used to practice handcuffs and chain breaks for strongman shows.
Also for grip strength which I am told is sorely lacking amongst bodybuilders chinese meditation balls are excellent for grip strength and general hand health. Their use has allowed pick my homemade dumbbell with no knurling 90kg with my 61 kg in the other hand. I have closed my gripper ironmind 1.5 for 11 reps . I am sure I could close the no.2 now again. My hands were pretty badly beat up from trying to get more reps on the no.2.
I am trying to open up the minds here to some different forms additional training which are beneficial.
I also used boules ball/petanque to train my grip. They are great eventually I will move on to shot puts, as you can purchase lighter shots from 1kg 2.2.lb. to 7kg 15lb I think . The ball work works your hands but doesn’t injure them like grippers and then great carryover to the general grip.Trust me the shotputs will put on forearm size with the heavier ones without cutting into your recovery much. Plus you can use the lighter balls watching tv. As the dexterity as your hand improves your grip will get better/
I like gadgets a lot the ab wheel is nice one. For grip powerballs are nice , obvious graded grippers, putty , elastic bands doubled over. Those power twister would be excellent if you could build very hard one.
I was fortunate to pick up one for a pound . If you do it very slowly and deliberately you can isolate the chest well. The TRX is decent too if you can pick one up for nothing get it. It is very demanding on the core muscles if you add a weighted vest and use some pushup and evelate it steeply. If you could build one with a very difficult spring it would be great.
Pushup handles are useful sometimes. Ankle weights are great too to build a cheap weighted vest from an old coat without getting injured if you fall.
Try using a pulldown with a pillow for some glute ham raises.
Hopefully some of you will get something out of my trolling. You can take horses to water but can’t make them drink . So ditch the straps at least until your heaviest sets and use these meditation balls in your rest periods. Use sandbag to train the slamming muscles onto a rebounder and catch for some nice ballistic training. Obviously you have fairly strong to do so. Obviously some of you will be.
