Flybird Fitness Power Tower Assisted Pull-Up/Dip Station Review

Learn More About Flybird Fitness Power Tower Here

Use code FITPOWER30 for 30% off until Dec 31st

 

First off, is the Power Tower good for assisted pull-ups and dips?

The answer to that is yes...which is good, since that's the primary function of the equipment!

The machine is very effective at providing assistance for both pull-ups/chin-ups AND dips.

The way the assistance system works (via bands), you get more help at the bottom, then less help as you come to the top.

The pad is well situated for kneeling on so that you can easily perform the exercises.

The height of the pull-up handles is fully adjustble, allowing you to set it to the best position for your height. I found that for me, the best place was where I could touch my wrists to the pull-up bar when standing under it without the pad.

This gave me the perfect height for getting assistance over the full range of motion of the pull-up.

When it came to dips, I actually found it to be much more effective to set your feet on the pad instead of kneeling on the pad. When I knelt on the pad, it shifted my lower body too far forward in relation to where the dip handles are set, which could lead to increased stress on the shoulders.

By setting your FEET on the pad, this completely solves the body position issue, allowing you to perform assisted dips very effectively, with total control of your body position.

You can also easily remove the assistance pad/seat and do fully unassisted pull-ups and dips, once you're strong enough to be able to do so.

 

How does the assistance feature work?

The Power Tower has an innovated "band carriage" that gives you four resistance/assistance bands to work with.

The bands are designed to sit in the carriage and easily by removed and put in (use two hands). It's a very easy system once you get the idea of how to do it. I like it a lot. It mimics the effect of band assistance but without needing to mess around with loose bands.

You can work with 1-4 bands worth of assistance, giving a lot of options for progression.

 

 

What other exercises can you do on the Power Tower?

This is the second big question for home gym equipment after "is it effective for it's primary function?"

And there is a LOT you can do with this equipment beyond assisted pull-ups and dips.

It also functions as a hanging ab chair for doing knee raises and leg raises.

An innovative design feature of the Power Tower is that the pad that you kneel on for assistance can be removed and hooked on the back of the machine to provide you with a back paid for leg and knee raises.

This is VERY smart use of the equipment and it's very well designed.

On the bottom two feet of the machine, you'll also find a pair of adjustable push-up handles. These swing around from neutral grip to 45 degrees to fully pronated grip. It's a really nice add-on to the machine.

I even found by taking the anchoring pins out of the handles, I could do push-ups while rotating the handles, allowing for a really cool push-up variation that increased the stretch then allows you to rotate your hands as you push up to maximize contraction. I cover this in more detail in the video.

 

You can also use the band assistance as RESISTANCE...

This is a chest push-down and it's a GREAT finisher for hitting the peak contraction of the chest by pushing the seated straight down against the band resistance.

If you don't have a cable cross-over machine or pec deck at home, you're going to love this.

I also found it useful for pushdowns.

And glute training, similar to a step-up...like a step-down, basically.

I even came up with a very effective adductor exercise.

 

Are there any downsides to the machine?

Honestly, this machine has not many downsides and nothing that would stop me from recommending it.

It IS well constructed but it's not "commercial" level of construction, meaning I wouldn't recommend this for heavy duty use in a commercial gym. And that's totally fine because this is MEANT for home gym use.

I would love it if the dip handles were more adjustable...I found them to be a set a little bit wider than I'd like. There adjustable in terms of distance closer in towards the machine or further out, but width would be nice (maybe angling the handles in more of a V shape for example, so that you could choose your own grip width).

That's not something any ab chair dip combos really have, though, so not a big deal (more of a wish list item).

A little foot plate for stepping up on while you kneel on the knee pad would also be nice, but also not remotely a dealbreaker and nothing you can't work with.

The carriage rollers were a bit "slow" and you will hear a little noise from them as you do the assisted exercises, but again, they're very functional. I didn't try WD-40 to smooth that out, but that might do the trick to eliminate that issue.

 

Conclusion:

Overall, this is a really well designed piece of home gym equipment. It will allow to you to perform assisted pull-ups and dips very effectively while also give you a ton of other exercise options for your workouts.

It's well constructed and, I found, easy to assemble and adjust to your own requirements.

It did have a few things that I thought could be improved but nothing that would make me hesistate to recommend it.

If you're interested in building up your pull-ups and dips at home, you're going to get a lot of great use out of this machine!

Learn more about the Flybird Fitness Power Tower Assisted Pull-Up and Dip Machine Here

Use code FITPOWER30 for 30% off until Dec 31st