Multi Gym

Barbells and dumbbells had been used for strength training for many years, especially by weightlifters and bodybuilders. However, inexperienced users could injure themselves with these “free weights”. So was born the requirement for the Multi Gym.

multigym

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Harold Zinkin operated several gyms in the Los Angeles area. Zinkin wanted to make strength training safer and more accessible to novices, and thus broaden the appeal of the sport. To that end, he developed the “weight machine”. Instead of lifting a bar with weight plates on it, the user pulls or pushes a handle connected by levers or cables to a stack of weight plates riding on steel guideposts. This allows a user to perform weightlifting exercises with no risk of dropping the weight on himself.

It also allows weight resistance to be in any direction (i.e. down as well as up, or rotary), and for the user’s range of motion to be constrained, thereby concentrating effort in a specific muscle group.

Another key feature was much easier change of weight. With barbells and dumbbells, lifting at different weights required either a set of bells with different fixed weights, or else adding and removing weight plates at both ends, a process which could take up to a minute. On Zinkin’s machines, the weight lifted was selected by inserting a pin into the weight stack; moving the pin took only a few seconds.

Our Multi Gym Equipment