RuggedReviews.com Review of The Doorway Gym

Pull-ups and chin-ups are hard, really hard for most people. But they're a great, mechanically natural way to use your own body weight to develop upper body strength and muscle. Not only that, when you develop some ability to perform the exercises free-form, you'll find hanging between reps delivers a magnificent stretch. AND you'll have incentive not to gain non-muscle weight because every pound of fat you gain is a pound of chunk you have to lift.

The P90X Extreme Home Fitness program reviewed on RuggedReviews.com relies heavily on several versions of pull-ups and chin-ups to quickly build strength. Using The Doorway Gym, I was able to gradually increase the number of reps I could do, and it felt great.

If you're not in shape, you can perform pull-ups and chin-ups with The Doorway Gym by standing on a chair and using your legs to support some of your weight. When you develop enough upper body strength, you can take the chair away and start adding free-form pull-up and chin-ups.

The tubular steel Doorway Gym can be quickly mounted without hardware in a 24" to 30" door frame. The gym itself can handle just about any amount of weight. The real limit is how much weight your door frame can handle. Be warned: The Doorway Gym will mark your wall and door frame. Any door mounted equipment will. Also, in instances where the door frame is not well constructed or maintained, there is the risk that the gym will crack the wood. I haven't had this happen, but you have to consider the possibility.

I chose The Doorway Gym because, unlike many other models, the handles exend out beyond the door frame, so there's no chance I'll hit my head on the frame when I'm going up. You can also remove the bar and perform pull-ups holding the parallel handles, which also extend away from the door frame.

The Doorway Gym. Hurts so bad, it's gotta be good.