800.999.0824

TOP TEN REASONS YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT THE ISOKINETIC CIRCUIT BENCH

       From Tropical Penguin

1    RESULTS

For over 39 years our benches have been used to build stroke and power in swimmers in ways swimming alone cannot do.  Isokinetics were adapted to the swimming world by Doc Counsilman, a swim coach who then helped design the first of our benches. Swimmers at every level including Olympians in Ten straight Olympic Games have since used our bench to build strokes and power. We’d be willing to bet, even though we stopped producing isokinetics for ten years, our first benches and isokinetics were used by swimmers in every NCAA final. This new generation builds on a tradition no great coach or swimmer should ignore.

2    NEW ROTATION

Real swimmers know freestyle and backstroke must be done with a 45-50 degree rotation. Now you can push a button and rotate and push it again and stay flat. Every coach and swimmer who has seen the new bench has said the same thing about our patented rotation: “about time!”

3    FULL SWIMMING SPEED

You never set the resistance. The resistance adapts to you on each stroke or repetition on over 1,000 exercises. The harder you pull the more the resistance and the more the improvement. What you DO set is the speed. To swim fast you have to lift fast and this is the ONLY way to do it safely, since we eliminate eccentric contraction. The first time you see full speed whip kick or leg extensions or Early Vertical Forearm Drills you are convinced gravity-based pulleys are a thing of the past! This is true specialized specific functional exercise and swim coaches and swimmers feel the difference the first time and every time from then on.

4    MAXIMUM RESISTANCE ON EVERY STROKE OR EXERCISE

Whether you are tired or feeling like superman, the resistance you give is the resistance you get. That means every part of every stroke can be perfect and perfectly improved. This also saves training time. Tubing is inexpensive but you are at optimal resistance in only about five centimeters of any motion. If it’s a challenge at the beginning of the movement, it’s too challenging at the end. Imagine perfect resistance adapting as you go through your stroke or core twists or joint balancing exercises. Imagine each repetition maximally improving your power and endurance without changing the weight or pin. One other benefit? Little to no soreness even though you are improving faster than with any other method of power development.

5    DIGITAL READOUT FOR EACH ARM LEG OR MOTION ON THE BENCH, THE FLOOR, OR OFF THE WALL

Each arm or each leg movement gives you digital feedback for power, work, reps, time whether you’ve slipped the iso off the bench and are doing triceps or squats or early vertical forearm power drills. This is really motivating.

6    METRONOME AND CIRCUIT TRAINING -- PERSONALIZED!

Beep, beep, beep – yes it sounds like your Finis Tempo Trainer on land. Why? Because you want to stay at your personal rhythm if you want to train the power and endurance you will nee in the water. And both the circuit trainer and the metronome are wearable and can travel with you from station to station. The Circuit Trainer can even be set to vibrate so each swimmer’s workout can be customized!

7    AFFORDABLE

You can buy a single iso with a wall plate for only $295. You can buy a basic bench with two isos for $1290. And then you can upgrade at any time to more isos, add a front tower on the front of the bench, add rotation for 150, get extensions for whip kick, etc. Extra wall plates are just $22. Being coaches, we understand budgets just as we know how to build a dryland circuit you can’t live without that will make swimmers and other stakeholders certain you’ve used their money well. In fact, we are now receiving more orders from individuals than teams, which points to the affordability as well as the value of a full speed specific circuit.

8    IRREPLACEABLE

When you try to build power in the pool, your body is never stable. So you slip and wiggle and your angle of attack changes, fingers open and close – and you never really know if you gained power even if your time drops a little. The pool is certainly the best place to learn to reduce drag and build rhythm, etc. But if you don’t measurably improve specific core strength or specific arm and leg power your total improvement is very limited. Add our instant specific kinesthetic feedback, visual feedback with a mirror, digital power metering every centimeter of movement, being able to hear a coach or have the stroke manipulated by hand and being able to watch the ideal on our stroke films or others on your phone or ipod and you have an irreplaceable method of teaching and building continually improving stroke power and mechanics. We even provide software for tracking as an add-on to Cool Coach or free as a stand-alone program working on Microsoft Excel.

9    HEAD TO HEAD WITH Vasa

We sell four competing brands of swim bench and even include the Halo add-on to our own. The Vasa isn’t one we sell and yet we agree it has a couple of the characteristics of ours and other benches. It meters the work on their “ergometer” and the coach can be heard. But, ours is designed by competitive swim coaches and the differences make that obvious. The Vasa bench is flat, unlike freestyle and backstroke, so the strokes of people using it are also flat and the elbows even in their own videos drop to gain inappropriate “pull-up” work meter values. The pulleys are narrow and cannot be adjusted as is needed for insweep in breaststroke and butterfly pull and breaststroke kick. Ours are adjustable for each size of swimmer and stroke allowing the coach and swimmer to reproduce the correct motions of swimming. With Vasa you are bound to the bench so most essential core and other functional movements for swimmers are impossible. Our iso pulleys spring off for circuits. Simply stated, the Vasa is a treadmill with a work meter and the Isokinetic Circuit Bench is a true four-stroke and kicking swim bench and swim circuit.

10    YOU WILL OWN THE BEST TEACHING TOOL ON THE PLANET

Accommodating resistance; specific speed; over 1000 exercises, rotation for free and back; wide pulley adjustment for the reach of any age swimmer and for insweep of  breast and fly; the front kicking station; the tall front station add-on, high, medium (for external rotation to balance the shoulder joint, for example), and low wall stations, personal circuit beeper and personal metronome, specialized toe straps for whip and flutter kick and dozens of other bars and straps; stroke by stroke and movement by movement DVD (By us, the company that designed Cool Coach and Cool Digital Videos), a five-year warranty; the ability to instantly release the isos off the bench and do squats, pull downs; flutter and dolphin kick with measured MOTIVATING results. The reasons you cannot live without this machine go on and on.

            WHO SAYS SO?

Thousands of people across many generations say so. One example is Bob Steele, former coach education director for USA Swimming, an NCAA Div II champion coach, and the author of Games Gimmicks and Challenges is on our website and Youtube describing how he used ten of our benches in the past and why this one is even better. He even helped us with ideas for rotating the bench. All divisions of NCAA teams are ordering now and Cal Baptist used the prototypes last season in setting five new NAIA records in spite of losing access to their weight room! The list of “who’s” who use the isokinetic swim bench is endless from Mark Spitz to Janet Evans to Alexander Popov (his Olympic teammate, Vladimir Pyshnenko, is on Youtube saying our bench and isokinetics saved his career and that the whole Russian and Australian teams had them lining the walls.) Bob Bowman and Eddie Reese both use the old ones. Oh, and I say so. I’m Steve Friederang, a biomechanist and coach with thirty years experience.  I spend all my time designing and testing products that help coaches and supporting others like Finis’ John Mix, Lanegainer’s Craig Askins, Total Performance’s Sam VanCura and many many others. I guarantee this is the best swim bench ever designed. I promise I will provide technical support to you from a technical swim coach’s perspective. This is the most motivating piece of equipment ever because it really works. And I’m sure you will find even more ways to make creative and competitive use of all our isokinetics and other tools. I can help you design and, over time, to build the most exciting and effective training circuit in and out of the water. Call me directly at 800.999.0824 or e-mail me at Steve@tropicalpenguin.com. The Isokinetic Swim Circuit is presently being featured on our website: Tropicalpenguin.com. If you need to get support from a board or school, I can send you the instructional DVD or even speak to them in person or on the phone.

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