We received a complimentary Total Gym XLS for the purposes of this series; this post also contains affiliate links. This article is an account of our personal experience only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any medical condition. Always consult with physician before embarking on any fitness program.

It’s our 9th week using the Total Gym XLS:

I spent last week wrapping up a lot of monster projects, and it feels good. My schedule has been a lot more manageable over the last few days which makes it possible to take much better care of myself – not just in terms of exercise, but also in terms of overall rest and morale. As a business owner, it’s hard to set those boundaries because there is always “More to do” – it’s easy on paper to say that you should just draw an arbitrary line in the sand and always quit work at X o’clock, but this is a huge challenge in social media because the very nature of this work is that it is time-sensitive and often you have to quickly jump on opportunities. One important point I’ve taken home over the last few years is that the business approach this field is different in many ways from my traditional journalism background, so it’s important not to weigh myself down with business practices that are no longer practical – I think it’s important to know when to quickly toss aside “The old model” because everything is changing so rapidly. I think we’re all doing our best to figure out the best ways to achieve work-life balance during this transition phase – and that goes for everyone in the modern world, not just those working in social media! – so it’s important to just do our best and go with it as we forge our path and feel out the best way forward.

So for someone like me, the Total Gym is such a lifesaver because of its flexibility. It’s there as much or as little as I need it – the other night, I started a pot of water boiling on the stove, loaded up the washing machine, and then hopped on the XLS – which is located in the room between the kitchen and laundry room – to do a set of squats and crunches. When the water boiled, I was done with my mini-workout! It’s great being able to work on this machine spontaneously, since my big challenge working in this field is how erratic my schedule can be. It’s constantly changing, so the flexibility of being able to workout whenever it’s convenient that day really helps immensely. Jai loves to get on this all through the day – he’ll walk by it and decide to hop on for a few minutes to work on a muscle group. I was cracking up on Halloween when I looked over and saw this:

I don’t think there’s any better testament to the ease of using this at anytime than seeing someone decide to work out in their Halloween costume! I had to take a picture because it was entertaining me so much. (He said, “I’m practicing rowing the boat!”)

In terms of physical gains this week, I’m pleased that I’m feeling comfortable doing leg/lower body workouts now. I think back to when I was sitting in a wheelchair after dislocating my knees and feel so grateful that it’s beginning to seem like a more distant memory. I’m definitely ready to put that awful time far, far behind me! For Jai, he mentioned that lifting heavy items is feeling easier. Onwards to week 10!

We received a complimentary Total Gym XLS for the purposes of this series; this post also contains affiliate links. This article is an account of our personal experience only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any medical condition. Always consult with physician before embarking on any fitness program.

We’ve been using our Total Gym XLS for two months now – wow! Here are our measurements from today, compared with our measurements from day one:

Jai has been building muscle in his chest and arms, which is his goal, while losing inches in the waist and thighs – he’s doing great! I’ve been losing on my arms and chest and pretty much holding steady on the lower measurements, which makes sense to me, since I have been primarily been doing arm-based exercises with the XLS. In the last few weeks, I’ve started doing more lower body workouts as I feel more comfortable with it and can do quite a bit of leg exercises now without hearing my knees pop and crunch constantly, so as always, slow and steady wins the race with gently getting my healed knees used to their full athletic capability again.

Given what a stressful, hectic month this has been and that we’ve been on the go constantly, I’m pretty impressed with what we’re continuing to get out of the Total Gym. I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t be happy to be getting these kinds of results from such a small time investment. We’ve had the unit for two months, and in October I’ve been using the XLS for an average of maybe 30-40 minutes 3-4 days a week. (I used it 5 days a week in September, when I wasn’t going out of town every weekend…) It’s nice to know that you can still hold steady and make progress when months are as overwhelming as this one!