X3 Bar

10/11/19

I was recently in the market for some strength training equipment, but decided I didn't need any more heavy weight plates, bars, or dumbbells. I decided to purchase a X3 Bar. This page shows an unboxing of the X3 Bar. Also, be sure to check out Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There's a Better Way to Have the Body You Want by John Jaquish.

Here is the box it was shipped in, with a quarter for scale:

When I open the box, I get a paper with testimonials on one side, and a picture of the X3 Bar and accessories and workouts on the other:

When I remove that piece of paper, there is a smaller inner box. When I open that inner box, there are paper inserts with safety information and workouts, the foot plate, the various latex bands, and another box which contains the actual bar.

My first impression is that the foot plate, bar, and the bands are extremely well made and durable. I did a mini workout using the white band with a subset of exercises, and I can obviously tell that this will be a challenging and effective piece of strength training equipment.

I also purchased the "Elite" band, and it lives up to its name. Here are some unboxing pictures of the Elite band, as well as a size/thickness comparison with the smallest band for the X3, the extra light weight band:

I also purchased the X3 carrying case, and here are some unboxing pictures of it. As you can see, it has a large foot-plate-shaped space for the foot plate and X3 bar, as well as three pouches for the bands. It also has a very nicely padded shoulder strap.

FYI, you can also effectively shorten a band to increase tension by using metal spools. This is probably not needed for 99% of people, but it can work well if you are in between bands.

Spreadsheet

I also created the following spreadsheet to help keep track of your workouts. The user inputs the day they started working out with the X3 in cell AI2, the bands used for each exercise (in column AA), and how many reps (or time until failure) for that exercise from the last session (in column AB). The spreadsheet will tell you the day of the week, what week you're in (from 1 to 12, but you can extend this for more weeks if you like), what day you're in, and colors things for easy viewing using conditional formatting. As the user meets their goals and gets stronger, they can change what bands and reps in columns AA and AB. The spreadsheet will display the exercises and what bands you need, if you need to double the band, and if you need the foot plate, for each exercise in your workout.

There is also a "randomly selected exercise" area that does just that, randomly select from the 8 exercises if you are just looking for some variety.

Note, for each day I originally ordered the exercises as follows: exercises using the foot plate are done first, ordered by largest muscle groups first (i.e. squat and deadlift). Next come the exercises that don't use the plate, again ordered by largest muscle groups first. I also kept the Week 1 upright row and later weeks split squat out of this, but feel free to add them back if you'd like.

Because exercise order is of major interest, I also added a section on dynamic exercise order. This does a calculation so exercise order can change for each workout, according to some performance criteria from a previous workout. A specific example shown below, is, whatever exercise you performed the worst on in your current workout (time = T), where worst is judged here by fewest repetitions, you do that exercise first in your next workout (time = T+1), to emphasize addressing your weaknesses first.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to check out the X3 Bar. Also, check out Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There's a Better Way to Have the Body You Want by John Jaquish.