The Flywheel Box - The Best Piece of Training Equipment You've Never Heard Of
Takeaway Points:
Recently, I discovered the flywheel box, a lesser-known piece of equipment that relies on the rotation of a flywheel to generate resistance.
This piece of equipment is uniquely useful for some exercises due to its small footprint, making it incredibly useful at home.
I cover some of the adaptations, tips, and tricks needed to get the most use out of this unique device.
Given that I live in London these days, it’s been very hard to assemble a home gym. While I’ve written before about how assembling a home gym can be a lot easier, cheaper, and better value than you might think, I’ve still found that it’s hard to assemble the kind of home gym I’d need to train effectively, where I live.
Since space is at a premium in a big city like London, we’ve had to make do with living in a lot less space than we were previously used to. Even when we moved to a bigger house (with a proper back garden) early this year, we don’t really have a ton of free space.
When lockdown started, I had to make the hard decision not to go into my local gym anymore. While I had plenty of home workout equipment to facilitate bodyweight and lightly-weighted workouts (including a pair of 50lb quick change dumbbells), my big problem was my lack of ability to get a good squat rack. Without a good rack, bar, and plates, I was going to have a hard time getting in the heavy workouts I was used to. As a result, I had to pivot mostly to relying on a very different kind of training. I leaned out in order to learn new calisthenics and gymnastics movements I had never had the training time to focus on before.
However, I still missed the barbell quite a lot, especially when it came to certain movements. While bodyweight training methods are generally great at training the upper body and core, and they can be exciting when training the lower body for a while, the naturally greater strength of your lower body means that soon you end up either wanting to add more weight, or having to focus on doing very endurance-heavy lower body workouts that get long and boring. I got as creative as I could to keep workouts interesting, but even then it started to get boring after a while.
Unfortunately, my options for acquiring a rack are limited. Without a car, picking up used equipment is more difficult. Of the options which deliver, most suppliers have been entirely sold out of many common items since the beginning of the pandemic, and the options which remain are all either prohibitively expensive or of inferior quality for my needs.
This is all on top of the fact that here at home the only place a rack would fit is our back garden, where it would quickly rust in the winter rain. It would also take up a significant amount of our back garden, leaving little space for everything else. We’re renting, so it seemed silly to buy an expensive piece of equipment at artificially inflated prices, only to have to sell it or tear it down in the case that we need to move. So ultimately, we decided that it’s probably not worth it, as much as it pained me to admit.
Recently, I discovered an entirely different option - flywheel training - thanks to my buddies at the Stronger By Science Podcast.
Flywheel training works on a principle similar to the way that a rowing machine works. The device resembles a typical step box, but with an attached wheel somewhere on the device, and a cable attached to the wheel. By pulling on the cable, the wheel spins, and this spinning generates significant resistance - and similar to the way that a rowing machine works, it generates more resistance the harder and faster the pull. This means that even a relatively light amount of weight on the flywheel itself can generate a lot of resistance if the exerciser pulls on it with enough force.
Flywheel boxes are typically most useful for lower body exercises, which can be performed by means of harnesses or handles attached to the cable. Exercises which can be performed on the flywheel box are similar to those which can be performed on a cable machine with the cable set very low to the ground - the only difference is that the flywheel box is held to the floor only by your own bodyweight, so at least some amount of your weight has to be centered on the box to prevent it from moving around during the lift. I’ve also found that using my 50lb dumbbells to hold the box down works decently well in some situations and enables me to do a few other exercises I wouldn’t be able to do normally.
Flywheel boxes aren’t cheap - most of them are about as costly as a full squat rack setup, though I managed to find a budget brand which makes them a bit more affordable, and I already had the money saved for a squat rack anyway. Due to the wide range of exercises the box enables, I find that it was well worth the cost.
Another huge benefit of flywheel training is that it can pack a pretty hard workout into a rather budget-sized amount of space. My flywheel box has the footprint of a standard step aerobics step, meaning that it fits very nicely into my office alongside my other home gym workout equipment. Aside from the resistance plates, it doesn’t weigh very much and is easily portable in the case of a move.
I find that there are a lot of exercises that it does very well - belt squats, deadlifts, and romanian deadlifts are the most exciting, but I can also do strongly weighted split squats, lunges, bicep curls, rows, and upright rows - all movements which I’m excited to do more of, and have been missing during quarantine.
I also find that the box makes it very easy and tempting to get in very challenging workouts around my daily schedule - if I’ve got a bit of downtime during work while waiting for a program on my computer to load, or I need to step back and muddle over something without staring at the computer for a bit, or I need to move a bit to keep myself from getting too stiff, it’s super easy to step onto the box and get in a set or two.
As a very strong lifter, I’m used to a lot of resistance. One of the biggest worries with a piece of equipment like this would naturally be whether or not it’s capable of putting up enough resistance to satisfy even the stronger lifters out there. Luckily, I find that my unit is capable of putting up more than enough to really knock me out quickly. My box comes with the option to add up to three weight plates of varying sizes, and just 2 of the largest plates is enough to really destroy me on squats and deadlifts, where I used to regularly squat 300+lbs and deadlift 400+.
It’s also challenging in a very different way than typical weight.
All exercises are sorted into three types of movement phases - concentric (lifting the weight), eccentric (lowering the weight) and isometric (any time the weight is not moving, whether this is because it’s reached the top or bottom of the motion, or because the lifter is pushing as hard as they can but this isn’t sufficient to move the bar). Most of the time what we think of as “lifting”, is primarily the concentric (raising) phase of the movement, though in most cases, lifters know that it’s a good idea to slow down the eccentric (lowering) phase of the movement in order to be able to properly control the bar. Most lifts are naturally comprised of all three types of movement to varying degrees, so we don’t normally think about these different phases of the lift too much.
Eccentric training is known to generate a disproportionate amount of soreness and muscle damage compared to concentric training. Some lifts contain little to no eccentric phase, and thus generate a smaller than normal amount of soreness as a result. Many lifts can be purposefully made to emphasize the eccentric phase, causing it to generate additional soreness and muscle damage.
In the past, it was believed that soreness is a direct measure of the quality of a workout, and thus that eccentric-focused training might be superior in terms of producing additional gains. However, this has largely been proven false - eccentric training is inferior when it comes to improving concentric strength (which most people care about a lot more), and is not necessarily any better than traditional concentric training when it comes to building muscle mass. However, eccentric training does potentially have some other unique benefits, including protection against certain kinds of injuries.
With my flywheel device, the wheel spins in one direction as a result of the concentric phase of the lift, and then you must forcibly resist the momentum (and reverse it) on the way down. As a result, the training is much more eccentric-focused than traditional training, and is another reason why it packs such a punch.
I find that flywheel training pairs very well with a more autoregulated kind of training. Because the resistance of the wheel depends on the speed of the lift, you find that you spend a couple reps getting into the groove of the lift, then there’s a few fast, hard reps which are wonderfully tailored to your current energy levels, and then you start to get tired out and pull slower, and as a result the wheel produces less resistance, until your reps get pitifully slow as you’re just exhausted. And this all happens relatively quickly - a set of 10 is often enough to knock you out with more strength-focused lower body lifts, and 15 is often enough with slightly more endurance-focused upper body lifts.
This means that training can be really simple and quick. 3x10-15 per lift, with the intent to move the wheel as quickly as possible, is more than enough. Over time, the lift will automatically get harder as you get faster and stronger, so you don’t even have to worry about changing the weight very often. Eventually if you get strong enough, you may find that you’re hitting the limits of speed and you can’t meaningfully move any faster, so you would have to add additional resistance on the flywheel, but this would occur a lot less frequently than with typical barbell/dumbbell loading.
I do have some issues with the system I’m using, and it’s not perfect.
Because I bought a more budget option, my flywheel box uses woven belts for the pull system, and these belts rub on the metal sides of the device, causing them to fray and need to be replaced over time. There’s a rubber guard on the metal sides, but it’s not actually anchored to anything, so I found that in practice it was constantly popping off the instant the belt rubbed on it. I purchased some super glue to properly anchor the rubber guard to the device, and that’s helped minimize excess wear on the belt. Of course, the belts are replaceable as well, but it still feels mildly irritating - I’d guess I’ll have to replace the belt periodically with regular use.
The device is also initially very low to the ground - using it on the carpet in my office caused the wheel to rub fiercely on the carpet while rotating, damaging the carpet and causing a ton of noise. The company sells additional feet which raise the device by a couple more inches, which solved the problem but probably should have come standard rather than being sold separately for an extra $125. While I ordered the feet and waited for them to arrive, I placed a sheet of cardboard between the box and the ground so that the cardboard got torn up instead of my carpet. I could also imagine that it wouldn’t be too hard to craft some wooden blocks or other homemade feet and save the cash, though my options on that front were limited.
I also find that the device takes a bit of time to get used to. Because the resistance starts rather abruptly during the eccentric phase, you can sort of “stutter” a bit awkwardly during the top of the lift as you adjust to the sudden pull of the resistance. You also need to constantly adjust the length of the pull belt so that it’s just long enough for the lift you’re currently doing - too short, and it will abruptly jerk you down before you hit full range of motion - too long, and it will awkwardly go slack at the top of the lift before abruptly jerking you down right when you aren’t expecting it. However, if you get a good feel for the right belt lengths for each lift, this becomes more natural and less of an issue. I initially found some of the movement very awkward, but have since gotten much more used to them and am able to push hard without losing control over the movements.
Flywheel training is something that I’d never heard of until just recently, so I’m really pleasantly surprised by how useful it’s been and how well it’s complimented my existing equipment set. Since I’ve been following a gymnastics program for the last couple months, the flywheel box has perfectly complemented that training with more difficult lower body work. It fits perfectly in with my training needs, and has made training crushing again in a fun way that I’ve missed out on since going to the gym.
This was the one thing my training routine was missing - now, I don’t mind at all that I’m working out from home.
If you’re interested in picking up your own, I can recommend the strexbox brand that I have - they’re on the cheaper end for flywheel boxes, they work well for home use, and they’ve got a sale on their basic model at the time of writing.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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