The Ab Solo is a piece of garbage
Most of my training falls under the category of “will this make me a better athlete?” kind of stuff. I do a strength movements (bench, squat, etc…) in the beginning of my routine, some metabolic conditioning (sprints, bodyweight circuts, kettlebells, etc…), another strength movement (usually an auxiliary movement to the first one I did), some more metabolic conditioning, some cardio, and finish with a third round of metcon.
For awhile, every Sunday I worked out with a friend doing a bunch of partner drills; plate shifting, medicine ball throws, etc…naturally I was thrilled to try out the Ab Solo, which theoretically lets you do medicine ball throws without a partner. Unfortunately, the machine is poorly designed, and a real piece of garbage. It’s sturdy and will probably take a ton of abuse, but unfortunately it takes a simple partner-assisted movement (the medicine ball throw), and replaces it with a machine that just doesn’t give you as good of a workout.
First of all, the thing doesn’t throw the medicine ball back at you. Call me crazy, but catching a 20 lb leather ball thrown at full force from ten feet away is much harder than picking up a ball out of a ball return in a machine. Right there you’re losing half the functionality of the exercise. The ball return mechanism on the Ab Solo kind of looks like one of those carnival basketball games…only it doesn’t work as well. You might get a couple of reps in before the mechanism jams up and you’re reaching into the ball return area trying to wiggle the ball free, but you won’t get many (I got about seven uninterrupted reps at most, and usually about three or four).
That’s the main gripe I have with this machine…half the exercise is taken away by not having a partner, and it’s impossible to get any kind of rhythm going, or get your heart rate anywhere near where it would be with a partner. The tragedy of this machine is that the real problem is the ball-return mechanism, which could have easily been designed to be smooth by adding some kind of funneling mechanism to the chamber the balls end up in.
A medicine ball will cost you less than $75 bucks, and a partner is usually free (*unless you’re a friendless d-bag), while this machine will cost you about $1500, and not give you anywhere near as good of a workout. If you’re keen to include some kind of medicine ball throws in a typical gym workout, this will get it done, but the machine itself seems to have been designed by people who have never worked out, and somehow didn’t notice that you need to fight with the thing to get the balls out every few reps. As I said, the tragedy of it all is that this could have been avoided with a few dollars worth of metal tubing and canvas added to the ball return mechanism.
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