Category: gym news

Formosa Fitness 4.0 is ready for business. Soft opening on Monday morning. The monkey rig and dumbbells aren’t here but 95% of the equipment is so we’re moving forward. This new gym represents everything I know about training and equipment, and service. I’ve incorporated all the lessons I’ve learned just hope I’ve learned enough. I want to think my trainers for working hard to help me get it ready for Monday. I’m personally ready to rock and roll.

We’re serious about strength training! How serious? Take a look at our new bench press.
This will be the most stable bench you’ve ever used. It’s designed for powerlifting and bench press competitions. Band pegs at the bottom allow the use of bands to add some stability training to your bench press. Spotter footpads allow your spotter to get closer, allowing a safer spot.
Here’s a similar bench:

This thing is a tank and is far beyond the basic bench offered in most gyms. This will be going into our new HsinDian location. Come check it out when we open soon!

Here’s a first look at the new location. It’s still under construction.

We came from very humble beginnings in the park. Then I moved to my first space. We saved the money and moved into larger spaces only as we grew. I figured I needed to earn each new, larger space by growing the business first. I’ve never believed in “build it and they will come” but earning it resonates with me. Check out our progression:

Our new power racks are almost done! Coming soon to the new location we’re opening in HsinDian. Come lift with us!

I’m going to start announcing some of the new stuff you’ll see at our new location in Hsin Dian. We’re pleased to have this opportunity to bring stuff in that is quite rare in Taiwan and we’ll have many examples to show you. The first is the Air Assualt bike on the right. It’s a fan bike specifically designed for metabolic conditioning workouts and was field tested at Crossfit gyms in the States. It’s got hot buttons for Tabata, reverse Tabata, and other intervals preset on the display. All you have to do it hit the button and go.

Intervals on this thing are extremely hard and I’m not sure why. You can feel the resistance but at first it doesn’t seem too bad. But when you go all out as you should when doing a true, REAL Tabata, then this thing gets scary hard very quickly.

In the picture above on the left, you’ll see a local fan bike that we bought years ago. I’ve been looking for a good fan bike in Asia since we opened. It was one of the main things I wanted in the gym. We bought three of those models on the left and all three broke in a matter of months. I was really disappointed but we were trying new things out to bring them to you guys. There were no reviews so we took a chance and got burned. This is what we do to bring good stuff to our gymgoers.

The workout that really inspired me to want to get a fan bike was the Gym Jones workout 300FY. Mark Twight runs Gym Jones and he was the guy that trained the cast and crew of the movie 300 and it’s sequel. I was a member of the Gym Jones insider website for a while because I wanted to better understand their programming and inside the pay site, he was very clear that he wasn’t happy with all the “300 workouts” that came out after the movie that looked nothing like what he put the real cast and crew through. So he wanted a workout that people couldn’t duplicate easily that still used 300 in the name. He came up with a brutal workout called the 300 FY cause you need to burn 300 calories in 10:00 on the fan bike or “f_ck you.” That last part was a message to the wannabe’s that he wasn’t happy with. Burning 300 calories in 10:00 on a fan bike is no joke. Check it out:

It’s a serious test, for sure. The fan bikes we had earlier would never had stood up to a workout like that. But the Assault Air Bike is made specifically for that kind of stuff. It’s the most solid stable air bike I’ve ever been on. Even going all out, the bike is very stable, which allows all of your force to go into the equipment instead of getting leaked out.

Basically, the air bike is the kind of equipment made specifically for HIIT (high intensity interval training) and it’s the first piece of gym “cardio” equipment I’ve ever seen made specifically for that. The calories you can burn on this thing are tremendous and I felt an upperbody pump just from doing the intervals. My guess is you can get simultaneous musclebuilding, fat burning, and power results all at the same time by doing intervals on the air bike. That’s nothing to sneeze at, especially in 4:00!

Anyway, we have four of these going into the HsinDian location and one going in at our XiaMen/HePing location. If you want to experience this awesome workout, give us a visit. More equipment details coming soon!