Boy there are a lot of poorly designed fitness tools on the market ! So often it seems poor thought is put into equipment design by businesses who spend more time thinking about money than making things right !
Anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m not a hater. I’m a doer, a creator, a problem solver.
Five years ago I decided to do something about creating better tools for smarter training. The quest to design tools to improve the quality of training has been a great journey. Creating better designed training equipment became my project of a lifetime, my passion !
There were two good ideas that got me started. In 2010 I developed a versatile anchor system (The ARC) and long resistance bands. These tools accelerated my exploration of Anchor Point Training. Over time it became clear that best use of anchored resistance meant the connection to the anchored resistance was critical to designing versatile useful work.
After five years of proving to myself that my last good idea wasn’t the best I am now delighted to show you the evolution of the handle design being used for all my Anchor Point Training designs. This “handle” is state of the art and provides more useful ways to connect with resistance than another design I know of. It simply does more, way more !
The 2010 design often rubbed your knuckles raw, it was so ridiculously annoying I had to have something different. In 2011 I created a design with a longer loop. This longer loop lead me to sometimes using the “handle” as a strap. In 2012 I realized a slightly longer loop could be more useful and soon realized the webbing I was using, while cheap and strong, was too harsh to be a good strap and so in 2012 the webbing evolved into a more expensive and much softer material. This changed everything, now the “handle” had become a connection device, a whole new perspective on connecting to the resistance was created. In 2013 the idea of a double wide handle came into being, once again this added all kinds of new useful possibilities. In 2014 the double wide handle got a little wider and the concept of having the connection to the anchored resistance be a ring that could move around the webbing loop was developed. This evolution added even more versatility and the ability to create more use specific work. Working with the versatility of a moving connection around the loop in 2014 provided another insight, an even longer loop that could be used for “serape” work.
It’s a proud moment to say to the world, “ OK folks here it is, there is not a better design on the market. This “FIELDhandle” does more, way more than anything else out there.”
You will discover this connection device can be used as a handle for one or two hands, as well as a foot strap, as a harness or a belt. It can be attached firmly to wrist, ankle or leg. It can be used to train with grip or train without grip. When used as a loose strap it is useful for assisted stretching and all manner of rehab work. The double handle on a long loop design can be used to create asymmetric resistance at the connection point to train specific ranges of motion with specific grips and resistance angles for sports like golf, baseball, tennis and martial arts. The 2015 design evolved with a much longer loop that uses a short section of highly friction resistant webbing to withstand the wear of the webbing moving around the connection ring while under resistance. The main section of the loop webbing has remained the softer, more comfortable webbing and is now long enough to be wrapped around the body to train the “serape” effect.
There has been some market validation of the earlier designs. Several large fitness companies have incorporated these early handle design ideas, which, while clearly useful designs, were not in and of themselves patentable. You can see the thinking behind the most recent design has taken five years to evolve. This evolved design is original “art” and this most recent design, thankfully, should be patentable.
You can buy the most recent connection design on our website AnchorPointTraining.com . You can buy simply a pair of “FIELDhandles” or you can buy this design as part of either a suspension strap (The VECTORstrap) or an elastic resistance tool (The FORCEband).
There is no other handle on the market that comes close to this design for versatility and there is no design that does some of these things at all. There are demo videos of all these designs being used in for Anchor Point Training in different ways over the years, over 150 published on our Facebook page since March 2010. There will be more coming soon demonstrating the most recent development of the long loop to train the “serape” effect. Everything is process, this is no different, the sooner you start to train this way the sooner you will learn how the advantages of working with resistance in all dimensions.
I am passionate about creating better tools and learning better ways to use them. It’s very exciting to know there will be many useful new training ideas that will be developed with these tools !
Better is always possible !!!
