Dusan Dudas - Vegan Bodybuilder & author

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REVIEW: Gym boss interval timer

This is a nifty little device I got a couple of weeks ago now. It isn't perfect, but as a decent, basic interval timer it does the job.

Ok, let's get the bad stuff out of the way. First off it is not that intuitive to use, I've had it several weeks & I still need to read the instructions to set it up (hee hee that might just be me though!), second point is you can only set one work time & one rest time - so you can have up to 99 intervals, but each of those must have the same work times & rest times, for example you could do 2 minutes work & 1 minute rest, but every set will have the same 2 minutes work & one minute rest, so you can't have, say different times for each work or rest set, if you wanted to do for example a 90 second front plank, then a 45 second side plank with one minute rest each time you'd be out of luck.

Those are the bad points, but the good points are that you can set it up to beep & if necessary vibrate (useful for louder gyms or headphone wearers), most often you won't even need different timings, so one rest & one work time is usually ok, you can get handy arm or wrist straps (you can also attach it directly to your clothes if you prefer), once you've set it up it is easy to actually start & stop, you can do up to 99 work sets, for stuff like planks, kettlebells etc it is really great for keeping you honest about time & allows incremental increases in duration, or you can do various forms of density training as you feel the need. In use I found it to be a pretty useful tool when doing timed stuff, the beep is loud enough to hear over music (or if you have ear buds in adding the vibration can help). I've tended to use it mainly for planking work & for timed kettlebell stuff, but I'm sure as time goes on I'll find other uses for it. If you are into any sort of density training it would certainly help with that. It could also just add a little variety into your training if you've not worked in timed intervals before, whether using bodyweight, barbell, or other training tool.

So far I've found it a very useful tool that I'd recommend. It may not be useful to a powerlifter so much, or probably a few other selected sports, but for the average gym goer, or someone looking for a change, or someone presently doing stuff under time, but using a clock on the wall, this is a vastly superior way of doing it in my view as you don't have to compromise your position to check your timing.

Final points are that I have only had this a couple of weeks, it seems to be working fine, but it's obviously not 100% proven durability yet (I need to to knock it about a bit more), oh yea it does have a stopwatch, but I've not used that yet so I'm not sure how well that works (I suspect it will do the job, but I rarely time things like that so I may not be using that for long while, if at all). Oh yea & be warned it comes in several colours including pink for all you guys who don't to be seen with a pink timer, so check what colour you are getting before you buy (mine is black just like in the picture).

Amazon is probably the easiest place to get hold of it, just go to their site & do a search for 'gymboss' & loads will come up, I found buying the wrist band & arm band added a couple of pounds sterling to the cost, but it was a free shipping item, so it was worth buying them all at once for me (although I've found I've not really needed either of the bands it is nice to know I've got them if I do need them.