I have been looking for this All-in-one workout machine for a while. I have probably been to every store which had it and I have tried most of them, different models and finally I have made up my mind about which one I was going to buy. I read all the reviews and heard a lot of positive things about this one and I felt quiet confident in buying it. Well, I decided to wait for the Thanks Giving Sale for a bargain. What the heck I have waited this long, and Thanks Giving is just a couple of weeks away. Finally the day came, I knew it wouldn’t fit in my Civic, I decided to borrow my friends mini-van, in which you can practically fit in a mini tent and camp for the night, once you have folded the seats in, seriously that is true, I am not exaggerating, it is huge, especially compared to my Civic. I finally managed to get into the shop, oh my god! What is wrong with theses people, pushing, squeezing, and I ended up sweating, and I think I might have already lost a couple of pounds getting to the section where all the exercise machines were laid out. The price was not too good, but I know that is the lowest it would get, considering Brook Burns was marketing that product. I didn’t waste any time chit-chatting and the attendant was very glad to help me out. These stores are very business minded and smart, they always employ women with flat stomach and men with muscles to sell the sports and exercise equipment!

The drive back home was not as bad as it was to the store and I was quiet satisfied with me on the purchase and the mini-van had saved me on shipping and handling. With my neighbors help I finally brought it over into my third floor apartment, thinking that I should rented one on the first (ground) floor. Dropped the van off at my friends and had set aside the whole of Saturday to fix it and start my workout the beginning of the week, Sunday. I opened up the package, sorry the packages, 5 of them, all packed inside one huge package, if I had known this earlier, I would have carried one at a time !huh!

The instruction manual seemed quiet simple in the beginning. Assemble Part A and Part B. Turn it to a 90 degree angle and locate the screws marked R1and G1; Insert the valve, 412 onto the screw 516 and these instructions continued for twelve pages and in the end my head started spinning and felt suffocated just by reading this. So I skipped to the last page which explained which screw is what and what number or name was associated with it with some pictures. Finally, something I can understand and that took me about three hours to figure out all the parts and pictures and separate them and set apart. It was almost midnight and I felt exhausted and went to bed hoping the next day shall be much easier since I had read and supposedly understood everything. I had a heavy breakfast and started working on assembling the All-In-One exercise machine. I located part A and located the screws and everything fit in perfectly. I felt enthusiastic and proceeded with Part B and that was a piece of cake. I proceeded to step 3 and tried to fit Part A with Part B and it wouldn’t fit right. I spent an hour trying to assemble it and in then end I gave up and proceed to step 6 which talked about Part C and D. That seemed like a much easier task but the screws wouldn’t tighten correctly. I rechecked the instructions once more and made sure I had the right ones and I did. After an hour of frustration, I decided to take a break, since my stomach was grumbling and I realized I had completely forgotten to prepare lunch. Well drove to the nearest fast food, didn’t care what it was and it seemed like an eternity to find one and walked in and ordered a value meal and ran into a couple of friends of mine and joined them.

You know, three people were working on the assembly, even if I weren’t smart, I would have guessed at least one of us might be, well that didn’t help either. We ended up taking turns reading the instruction manual or documentation whatever, and tried interpreting in different ways but nothing helped. Somehow with different interpretations, we had somehow managed to assemble the seven parts that came with the package and were left with three parts that wouldn’t fit together. We finally gave up and ended up watching Eyes Wide Shut and of course, there was no reason for three bachelors to shut their eyes up when watching Nichole Kidman. All of a sudden, from the couch when I looked at the instructions from a 270 degree angle, it actually made sense. I got my guys to help me with it, which they did reluctantly, I insisted that Nichole be put on hold for now and by turning and twisting the manual and after a couple of hours of struggle we finally did it and it was all ready to be used. Well I was too tired to exercise now and the guys chose to watch the movie and my All-In-One exercise machine stood in my living room proudly marking my accomplishment. It was an All-In-One exercise machine all right; just assembling it gave me a full workout!

Movie and the Chinese delivery seemed to be heavenly after a sour day of assembly! When we all kicked back to relax, I realized something, the instructions were horrible, they mismatched the pictures of the screws and referred the parts with the wrong names etc, you know but still, if not for the instructions we wouldn’t have gotten as for as we did and ended up with four assembled parts. So my conclusion, “Documentation (Instruction manual) is like Sex, either it is extremely good, or something is better than nothing”.

Well! All-In-One is just sitting as a show piece. After I started using it, I ended up feeling hungrier and ended up eating more and gained more weight. So I have stopped using it for now!