Marcy Strength Bench - Fail

The Marcy Strength bench from Academy Sports is a work of art, more for being a useless inanimate object than it is a triumph of product design.

Firstly there is the width of the support structure itself. They claim it is a "Space saving design". I say its a bench that's far too narrow to make it useful for what it was designed to do.

The barbell sits on top of the two "support pillars" (for lack of a better term). These pillars are far too close together, so when you try to do a bench press you are forced to grab the bar with you hands really close together. Why is this a problem? Well, if you do a close grip bench press you end up working out your triceps, not your chest. Just so it's clear, I have a very average build so my puny chest is not the problem in this equation.

So naturally when you get the weight off the bench you try to shift your hands apart slightly to make it comfortable and to straighten your form a bit. Problem solved! Not quite. Try doing 15 reps and then putting the bar back gently without pinching your shaking (now tired) hands between the 100-pound barbell and the sharp jagged angles of the support pillar.

The other seriously stupid design flaw is the preacher curl arm pad. If the arm pad is in place you can't do leg exercises because when lifting your legs up the mechanism catches on the arm pad. Now you need to yank the arm pad out of the structure itself every time you want to use the "multi function" features.

Now many of you would say: "What did you expect from a $99 bench and weight set!". Well my answer is simple, something that is cheap and flimsy, but that can do what it is says on the box, regardless of a low budget design.

In hindsight, I should have spent the extra $50 to get the next model up, but now that I built the whole damn thing I'm far too lazy to pack it back up. Besides, my wife is starting to love my freakishly large tricep muscles.