Century VersaFlex Stretching Machine

I am not flexible at all. I drive to work one hour, sit at a desk or in meetings for about 8 hours, and drive home for another hour. People who sit for 10 hours a day generally are not flexible in the hips. To get active, I decided to join a local Tae Kwon Do studio. The little amounts of stretching we did in the class did not help and I could not do many of the kicks, as high as needed. When other people, who were the same belt as me, would be kicking at high waist or head level, I would be lucky to kick at knee or lower waist level. I tried various yoga and stretching methods. They were nice but, not very effective. Using this machine, I am able to sit and watch the football game or favorite t.v. show and get my stretching in. The gains I have made are incredible. I have gone from only being able to do about 90 degrees to over 140 degrees working towards getting into full splits. THIS MACHINE ALONE WILL NOT GET YOU THE STRETCHING YOU NEED FOR FULL SPLITS! YOU NEED TO COMBINE OTHER STRETCHING WITH THIS MACHINE!!! For people as inflexible as myself, stretching alone or this machine alone will not get you to where you need to be. You need to do both. However, WITHOUT THIS MACHINE, I WOULD NOT BE ANYWHERE NEAR MY GOAL, which is full splits. The machine is a pain in the butt to put together, because, the instructions are worse than IKEA instructions. You pretty much get an exploded view and have to figure things out with little guidance. It took me about an hour to put it together. Once I did, I would honestly say, that my machine is solid and I use it very frequently. I do a basic warm up, some basic psoas muscle stretches, (THESE ARE KEY) and then a short stretching routine and then hop in the machine. I do not go for full 100% right away. I go for about 70% then gradually move up. This takes about 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes, I take a short break and do a secondary warm up, that is when I start to push myself. When I feel I am at 100% I will sit in the machine for about 3 minutes and do only one or two clicks at a time. WARNING!!! Once you get to 100% of your stretching capacity, your body will tend to push back. ONE OF THE MAJOR ISSUES I HAD WITH THIS MACHINE IS...once you are at 100% stretching capacity, you can really feel it and when it is time to release the to get out of the machine, there is a SNAP and it cane be extremely painful, because there is no slow cushion way to gently bring you out of it. This really sucks, because it does hurt. Not excruciating pain, but enough that you think twice about how far you go each time and know when you do come out of it, the most painful part is not the stretching, it is the sudden SNAP at the end that truly hurts!!! Overall, the machine is great for people whoa re not flexible and don't have time or money to go to a yoga studio. However, remember that all your muscles, tendons, etc. are connected in some way or another. Therefore, they all have to be stretched. I HIGHLY SUGGEST looking for PSOAS muscle stretches, hamstring stretches, lower back stretches and whole back stretches. Doing warm up and some pre-stretching before using this machine will help greatly to make your gains permanent!!!

The setup was moderately difficult. 1 to 10, I would give it a 8. I was able to put it together in an hour. If you've put together alot of IKEA or Walmart furniture together, then it should be no problem. Basically it's 6 main pieces for the frame. The hardest of these is the pulley piece, but it was not that bad as long as you have a good build concept & already good at putting things together. After the frame, the rest are just the padding on the frame. 2 screws each, easy. Everything fit perfectly, no issues. The setup instruction is basically a diagram with parts and numbers for the hardware. They do go thru the steps, but at a very high level. They don't hold your hands thru the process like IKEA instructions do. But if you are good at diagrams, all you need are the 2 included hex keys, and note the Screw # to use for each piece and it will be easy. Even easier if you have an electric driver with hex key. Using the strecher is great. The crank system is excellent. You DO NOT have to crank it more to release it. All you need to do is pull it towards you, and it releases immediately. My 14, 10, and 5 year old are all now using it with no problems. The leg attachment can be adjusted with 3 holes at different placements. My 5 year old is well supported, as well as me at 5'10''. There are handles in front, and on both sides for deep streching. The quality feels excellent. I would highly recommend this leg strecher.

This is a solid, well built machine. Assembly took 45 minutes. Make sure you have a good workspace and are able to lay everything out more or less where they are going to end up. If you visualize how it's going to go together the instructions and diagrams make more sense. Once it's together it is a gym quality piece of equipment. I used it a few times already and am able to strecth much further, much easier than trying to stretch on my own. Definately worth the money. Update: 7 days after writing this review my versaflex broke. The cables that move the legs fit into a gear mechanism in the front of the machine and the end of the left cable came loose. There is nothing mechanical holding the ends in, they appear to be held in only by pressure. Now that this end has come loose there is no way (at least none that I can find) to reattach it. I sent Century an email and am waiting for a reply. Got the replacement. Put the thing together and its been working well. I guess I just got a bad one before.