As someone who genuinely loves a good workout, I’m always excited when I get to try a new or different routine or piece of fitness equipment. When I had the opportunity to review the ActivMotion Bar, a weighted bar with internal rolling weights, I happily accepted. The ActivMotion Bar might look like a regular, standard weighted bar, but is a bit trickier to maneuver. It uses shifting internal rolling weights that are inside of the bar to create an instability which requires the user to engage their core muscles and helps to build balance and strength. As typical day-to-day activities don’t happen in a vacuum but require a variety of muscles and joints to work together, exercises that help with a person’s ability to safely execute daily functions are becoming increasingly popular. This method of training is called “functional fitness” and the ability to incorporate multiple muscles and joints simultaneously can help not only save time when you’re working out, but by recruiting additional, and often neglected muscles, can make you stronger and more able to handle tasks in your everyday life.
I love weight training and have a home gym area with a variety of weights. I particularly like exercising in the morning, in what I call my, “insurance workout” so that I get some fitness in before the world tries to steal my day. Since I have standard weighted Body Bars in 15, 20 and 30 lbs., I selected the ActivMotion Bar in 18 lbs. To be honest, this weight selection was a lot more challenging than I had expected! The bars come in a range of three to eighteen pounds.
The inventor of the ActivMotion Bar lost 80 lbs. himself and found his passion for fitness. He states that he believes the ActivMotion Bar fills a void in workouts by creating a mind/muscle connection. The ActivMotion Bar is designed to force you to constantly think about keeping the bar balanced, as the internal steel ball weights inside of the bar are shifting you need to concentrate on what your body is doing. I’ve heard many personal trainers and workout instructors tell us to stay focused on the muscle group that you’re working, but it really is easy to zone out a bit and mindlessly go through your workout. This is especially true if you’re doing a high repetition workout of the same move. When you’re not focused on the muscle you’re trying to work, you not only risk injury, but your form can suffer or you end up using momentum instead of actually exercising the muscle you’re trying to strengthen. The ActivMotion Bar doesn’t really allow you to shift into autopilot, as the internal weights need to be kept centered and controlled and they also make noise, which helps create mindfulness of your goal in balancing the bar.
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I really was happy to see how many free YouTube videos there were on how to use the ActivMotion Bar, from a full workout to individual exercises on how to best use the bar to challenge your muscles. I started with the full workout and as someone who does core and ab work daily, couldn’t believe how much I felt my core muscles during (and after!) the full workout. The movement and sound of the internal weights really did force you to pay attention to what you were doing! I could also feel that I was using different muscle groups than I typically used during some of my other workouts.
The ActivMotion Bar is more expensive than a typical weighted Body Bar, but I liked that the bar is versatile as the videos really showed countless ways to incorporate it into a variety of workouts. The ActivMotion Bar purchase also includes four digital workouts with your order. The fact that the bar is very compact is a big plus as there’s nothing worse than trying to squeeze in bulky exercise equipment into a small home gym area. I found myself wishing I had gone a bit lighter on the weight as some of the moves were very challenging with the 18 lb. bar and this was especially true the further the bar was away from my body. But overall, I enjoyed the workouts and felt that they were effective enough, that having two different weight bars, a lighter and a heavier one, would be a worthwhile investment.
The ActivMotion Bar was gifted to me to review, however the content of my posts and review are my own true opinions and are not influenced by any partnerships or collaborations.
