Avoiding the Fitness Equipment Graveyard

Without a doubt, the fitness equipment manufacturers are going to hate me even more now for dropping this open secret.  But in fairness, I hate to admit, but I’ve got about 15k-20k worth of fitness equipment in storage–collecting dust.

If you’ve been involved in fitness for any length of time, or ever purchased a piece of fitness equipment, it’s safe to say that you’ve paid a visit to the Fitness Equipment Graveyard.  In fact, if you’re an OCD fitness equipment hoarder like myself, you probably have one at your house.

In my storage, you’ll find:

1.       2 x Olympic Bar
2.       Indoor Cycles (Now resting in peace outdoors)
3.       Precore Elliptical EFX
4.       NordicTrack Recumbent Bike
5.       NordicTrack Treadmill
6.       Adjustable Dumbbells
7.      Hoist Squat Rack with Cable Flys
8.       Heavy Bag
9.       Versa Climber
10.     Hyper Extension
11.    A back stretcher something

So what’s a fitness equipment graveyard, well, it’s the place where all of the fitness equipment ends up when we’re tired of using the same equipment; it gets unattractive or when a newer model (of the same equipment) has been released.  (All things being equal, I use to enjoy purchasing and refurbishing equipment but I no longer have time for that). And if you don’t know by now, if your garage is considered a fitness graveyard, then Craigslist and the Goodwill should be considered the fitness equipment Afterlife.  Seriously, having opened two fitness studios in the past and invested a ton of money into equipment, I eventually learned that if I need [want] a new [different] piece of equipment, the first place to look is on Craigslist.  Or at best start with companies that sell refurbished equipment.   Because after 25+ years buying fitness STUFF, here’s the sad reality. 

One, people end up moving and don’t want to deal with the hassle and expense of moving heavy equipment with them, so they either sell it for fire-sale prices on Craigslist or two, they just drop it off at the Goodwill. 

Two, people go through fitness phases like underwear.  As a result, after about 8-10 months a 3k dollar treadmill usually becomes a $20 clothes rack in the basement. 

Lastly, just from straight statistics, most businesses fail within 2 years—and anyone that’s ever owned a gym knows, when you have to close your doors and have all the equipment out of the building—you will sell the equipment at cents on the dollar, even if you’re still paying off the loans taken out to purchase the equipment.  So let’s be honest, the real money being made in the fitness equipment business is on the high margin sale of new equipment, and the middle man hustle that has the cash and storage to buy used equipment then resell it.  #Truth.

To me, this was just insane and I wanted a better solution.  Especially as someone that loves to purchase fitness equipment, but also moved around about every 6 months, and didn’t want to take my old equipment with me, but at the same time got tired of throwing my equipment out.  So with a serious desire to solve this problem, I developed the ALLN-1 Functional Fitness Bench.

Granted, the ALLN-1 product line doesn’t, nor is it intended to replace commercial gym equipment (as of today).  It can’t, because it wasn’t designed for that.  It was designed to be lightweight and semi-commercial grade.  Easy to assemble and disassemble.  That way, if you had to pack up and move, packing it up and relocating it with you would be simple and cost effective.  Hell, even if you just wanted to paint a room in your house we all know how daunting it is to move a 300 lb. piece of equipment from one corner to another. Not to mention the amount of space that’s required for a good home gym, then they either make everything as one big clunky piece, or into 10 different machines could essentially be consolidated into one or two pieces.  That was my initial, goal, consolidate the 20k worth of fitness the equipment in my garage, into one piece I could easily keep and maintain in the house/studio.  Second, since fitness boredom will inevitably kick in at some point, why not make the equipment SCALABLE so that you can continuously add new variations to it, instead of dumping it into the grave yard.  Finally, all that said, I wanted it to be more than just traditional home equipment limited to either only doing suspension band training, body weight training or free-weight training.  A good piece of equipment should be able to accommodate all of the progressive resistance modalities.  So I took all of those requirements, while continually looking at the dead pieces of equipment stacked up in my garage, the ALLN-1 Functional Fitness Bench and recently the RackTraX were born.  Truly, out of a desire to solve a consumer problem…but more importantly, a passion for fitness, and NECESSITY!