Speediance 2S vs Original: Real User Review, Tips & Upgrades After 600,000+ lbs Lifted!

Hello and welcome to Toby on Fitness Tech. I figured I would give you guys an update on the Speedance uh and where I stand with it right now. So, I've been doing a lot of lifting on this one, which is the 2S and the one downstairs, which is the original. So, so far I've lifted. By the way, if you go in, you turn the screen on, you click up here on the little achievement number, right? Mine says 23 achievements. And then you go to the first one. It says volume and 627, uh, 283 lbs is what I've lifted according to the device. Um, now do realize that it did actually lose a workout the other day. So, uh, they had just started this new challenge, the lunar flow challenge, which is like the worst time for it to lose a workout. So, if I go here, really get it to scroll. Go back. There we go. So, scroll to lunar. So, I've lifted eight of the 18 days. Uh, so every day you get the opportunity to score a point towards this lunar challenge. And you can see since that challenge has started, if I go up to this calendar, I have worked out. So, there's today and there's a workout on today. And I've worked out every day since I knew the challenge started. The challenge actually started Go here. Here. Go here. Come on. Do I have to be in front of the machine? There we go. So, go back to October. Uh, and I started on the 30th. The challenge actually started on the 29th, but I didn't know about it till the 30th. And ever since then, I've worked out every day. You can see the last challenge. It ended for me. It ended on the 17th. I think the 18th was the last day you could do the challenge. And you could see I worked out pretty consistently throughout the challenge. And these were heavy heavy lifts. So you can see I'll miss a day. I'll do a couple days and then I'll miss a day. A couple days and then I'll miss a day because those are like 30,000 lb lifts. Now my new lifts are 5 to 10,000 pounds and I'm doing them every day. I'm doing uh one body part at a time. So I really changed the way I'm lifting because of this lunar flow. uh this Lunar Flow challenge and I actually enjoy it. Uh it's it's been it's been pretty exciting to change things up a little bit. I'm only doing that so that I can do the lifts every day because if I do the 30,000 lb lifts, I'm definitely going to miss days. Uh and and those had a combination of arms, back, uh arms, back, and pretty much all upper body movements with a couple calf raises and a few small things uh to work on joint mobility uh for lower body, but no real lower body workouts. I just don't do them. And so yeah, that that these these challenges are meaningful and impactful. And that's available on both the 2S and the original. The the real reason to shoot this video though is I reached out to the tonal or the speedance team and because someone online had said specifically that they had bought the original speeds and then they uh found it to be too laggy, too slow and they replaced it with the two and that was their experience. That experience just had me question because the website doesn't show a difference in processor between the original and the speeds 2S. But ROM would not explain in full detail. Like it would explain maybe they were offloading some of the videos and the videos were laggy because they were streaming in, but that just doesn't seem practical for the way they were describing their experience. So I reached out to the Speedance team directly and instead of just asking a generic like is there a processor difference, I ask what the exact processors are in the devices. And so the original Speedance like when you go to tier one, they they confirmed that yes, the processors are not listed on the website and maybe they're the same, right? But they figured they would escalate it to the actual uh Spedian development team to to respond because the processor in the Android version which uh both were people's claims that they were on the website and they were different. Neither of those things are on the website. In the Android version I would highly doubt is different just because these things are skinned exactly the same. They look exactly and even the settings look the same. Everything looks the same. Uh, I would be shocked if they're different Android versions under the hood. Uh, but if they are, you could do this, right? Where they're different versions of Android, but they're custom skinned to look exactly the same. It just seems like it'd be very impractical uh to do that to be honest with you. But I reached out to the team, asked the question, and I got back the specific processors, and yes, they are different. So, the two the 2 and the 2s have the same processor and the original has a different processor. Uh, and this is a meaningful upgrade. So, the 2 or the 2s have a meaningfully upgraded processor from the original. That I can say from what they've returned to me. They did tell me not to say the specific processors. Um, and they they don't release the reason why it's not on the website is because they don't release that information. And in seeing what they are, I I'm not shocked that they don't release that information because I think if you don't have an engineering background, you wouldn't expect those to be the processors in the machines. Uh but I was doing electronics engineering before I switched over to computer programming in college. Now it's been many many years of course, but I still have a fundamental base in that kind of sphere of things. And I'm not shocked at what's in the machines. I'll put it that way. Uh but I think if you're used to cell phones and that's your only knowledge of electronics in general, you wouldn't you wouldn't understand it. So it's it's not I can see why they don't put it on the website. Now, they probably should put that the two and 2s have have an upgraded processor, but I also don't think it's relevant other than that user saying that because once they told me it and once I found out what's in the machines, I did notice that when I click custom and I go to scroll, the scrolling is a lot smoother on this machine. Now, realize I didn't even notice that until I knew what's inside them and it doesn't impact me. The other big thing is whenever I click on this and click start, no, there's still a loading screen. So that loading screen is about half a second longer. Yes, you're right. Half a second longer. Like as in I can see it. I didn't even realize it comes up on this version of the machine because it's so fast, but you can see it on the other version, right? Which is like not impactful or not meaningful in the workout. So, I've been using the one downstairs uh quite a bit and for complete workouts sometimes and I can tell you it's a great machine. So, I don't think someone would be unhappy with the original if if money's tight. you know, if if money is a concern, I still stand by my by the original uh perspective and especially because other people online have been at least here in the United States, Walmart is the big distributor. I don't know in other countries, but look for the distributor of Speedyenses locally and because if you can find an open box version of it, they still hold the full warranty and they are way cheaper. Uh, I've seen everywhere from 1,500 to $1,000 and less for these machines open box, which is just an absolute steal to get the full warranty and just have someone have tried it out and not wanted it. Uh, because I'm sure that's what happens with these open boxes. I would in a heartbeat take one of those deals. I mean, that is for the original machine. I mean, it's absolutely phenomenal. So, if you can find a deal like that, that's a no-brainer. Even Even if if I found one for one of the prices that was quoted online that someone found them at Walmart, if I went into Walmart today and found that, I would have a third machine in this house because it's just that's crazy cheap for what these machines are capable of. You know, there'd be one downstairs in my basement where my heavy heavy lifting equipment is. um that's just or or somewhere else, right? Because there's, you know, because it's [snorts] an old Victorian and there's a ton of different levels of this house, hence having two machines now. It's you can't move these machines up and down levels. So, you kind of have to and that's what made the tonal so difficult. I had to pick a wall and decide where I'm going to work out for the rest of time. And then I decided I didn't want to work out there. I wanted to work out downstairs where my kids were. And then, you know, I bought adjustable dumbbells and a bench and everything like that for down there. And you can see how the spiral's out of control to where I have workout equipment everywhere. Uh, and I will say actually I have a use for these power blocks. So, you can see my my bench is in this configuration where it's like right here in front of it. And this is actually to do uh you know cable flies on the bench. And this is very very important because it is the first time where I had cable where um I can't remember if it was this machine up here or the one downstairs but both of them get a similar setup where there's something behind this bench. So right now behind this bench I have these power blocks right. So, these power blocks are sitting actually behind the edge of the bench. And the reason for that is so that this bench won't slide and run into these cables because what happens is when I'm whenever I'm doing the flies, it's heavy enough to actually pull me back into the machine. And what'll happen is this bench will rub on these cables because these cables are exposed, right? So, just realize that there are times where you're going to have to think about where this machine is in relative to space and where your bench is and uh and I have these power blocks to hold the bench forward, but that has to be something you're cognizant of. So, a lot of people are talking about cable wear from not having these these uh angle adapters. So, these are called the the Speedians angle adapters. And a lot of people are having problems with cable wear and these go on either end of it. And what happens is the cable actually slides in here instead of sliding into the side of the device. Now my angle adapters are not on my machine all the time. And the reason why they're not on the machine is at 6 foot tall. If I go to do a bicep curl and these angle adapters are on the machine, I can't get the full stretch. So, I'm I end up not being able to bring my hand down the full way. It'll actually like lose tension uh threequarters of the way down if this angle adapter is on there. And people are saying they leave their angle adapters on on all the time. Either they're like 5 foot five, right, with way shorter arms than I am, or they're not getting the full stretch in in some of these movements. And I also had another user who said they they do their latap pull downs and they actually don't get on their knees and they don't try to squat back into their hips. So when I'm doing lat pull downs, I'm on my knees and I'm trying to squat my hips backward as far as I can. So like I'm pointing to my hips. That's because I'm pushing my hips back as far as I can and pulling down with as deep of a stretch as I can. And they actually do them pretty much from up here standing and only get this range of motion. Like this is not an acceptable range of motion for a lat pull down. I mean it's it's a quarter of the motion. And if you're someone who's like like me where they're doing grappling where the worst case scenario for me is definitely not here, right? I'm very strong right here. Like I'm incredibly strong right here. The worst case scenario for me is my arm is locked out in this completely locked position and I have to try to pull it back, you know, and actually typically in jiu-jitsu I'm not pulling down this way. I'm pulling down this way, right? Um, which is why those ancillary movements like lateral raises and side raises and all of those movements are are so essential for someone like me for shoulder health. Uh, even more than like arm development or anything like that. It's really just shoulder health that those those movements and having one of these cable machines gets me to do those movements and gets me to progressively overload them. Uh I'm still using that setup that I I talked about before where when I go in here, it's one one set of warm-up and one set of working set. And I have everything set to uh 13 reps, 20 RM as the warm-up sets. And then whenever I get into the working sets, we go into 15 RM at the same 13 reps. So I'm doing the same exact amount of reps for all of my sets, but the difference is the one the RM away from failure. So my warm-up sets are 20 RM, my working sets are 15 RM. And what I'm actually trying to do is hit 15 reps for 15. So I'm not trying to hit 13. I'm trying to hit 15. And the thing that allows me to do that is that setting. If I go in here, go in here. Let's find the settings. It's not there. It's here. Training preferences. There it is. So, training preferences. It's this uh it's this unlimited set on. So, it's that one in particular, unlimited set on that's allowing me to continue. So, what happens is I hit 13, unlimited set is on, and I get the ability to try more reps. Uh, so I try to go to 15 obviously because it's that's that's hitting failure according to the machine. Uh, one other setting that I I said before I wouldn't be changing that I changed my mind on and I changed my mind because I broke a finger. So, in jiu-jitsu, I broke my middle finger, uh, which is a huge problem, which meant that for two days straight on the last challenge, I had to do all of the lifts with just my left arm. So, I broke my right arm, middle finger. So, everything was done for two days straight with just my left arm. So, I set up a workout that's one arm motions, and I did just my left arm. When I brought my right arm back, knowing that it would be much, much weaker than it was normally, I set this left right arm record one arm separately and dialed back the weights on the right side. So, I was lifting only with the left side for two days. Then, for a couple more days, I was lifting the right side lighter. And slowly, I'm bringing them back to to being equal. There's still a couple movements that I'm not quite there with my right side, which also has me ask the question of um I'm a big proponent of this of this uh clip that they put on on like that you have to buy separately on the Speedians. Um well, actually the 2S comes with the clip, but the original of course you have to buy it separately. Um, but this clip is the way I think this should be used. [clears throat] So, and in fact, it's always clipped to my barbell. So, unless I'm using uh the rope. So, it'll be clipped to the rope whenever I'm using the rope, but otherwise it's clipped to my barbell. And in fact, I take it off the rope, put it back on the barbell when I'm done with with rope motions. I'll get to the rope in a second. Uh, but this clip, I think, is essential, especially after breaking my finger. When people are lifting, they don't realize how much strength they're losing if they have that ring on their finger. There's no way that you can lift full power with this ring on your finger. I really want to see someone actually truly lift their max lifts with this ring on their finger because I can tell you I broke a finger, which means that that finger was completely unusable and I lost a significant amount of my top end lifting ability. And I found out cuz my nephews were here and I was trying to lift the max on the machine to show them how truly strong I am. But this was two days after the finger break. So this is before I was even lifting with that side of my body yet. But I was arrogant enough to try it and confident enough that I could just move my middle finger out and grab with uh these four fingers outside of the middle finger and be able to pull 260 lbs and I was not able to pull it. And then of course I wrapped my middle finger and then I was still not able to pull it because my middle finger didn't have enough strength. I actually need all of my fingers to pull 260 pounds off the floor. And by the way, I just dialed the weight down to like 200 pounds and then pulled that off the floor and then had them try to pull it. And of course, none of them could even budge. The goal was to show them how truly strong I am. And it it it utterly failed in that in my perspective, it failed, but I'm sure to them it's still like a ridiculous amount of weight that none of them could move. But it would have been way cooler if it was the maximum of the machine, right? Like that's where my mind goes. That that's kind of the type of person I am, though. There was the the last birthday party. Uh the youngest one wanted me to throw him up and throw him up on my shoulder. And the way I do that is I kind of just launch them into the air and catch them. Right. And uh their old my my my sister's oldest wanted the same thing done. And I was about 70% confident I could [laughter] do it, but I'm like, I'm I'm pretty sure I can do this. And I was able to launch him up and put him up on my shoulder just like the other ones, but uh the margin of error goes way down the the the heavier the kid is. So when when they're, you know, much older than her youn Well, yeah. her her second her youngest actually wanted it first. Then I went up all all three of them ended up getting lifted up on my shoulder. But to to do the airplane that I do with my my oldest, right? But my oldest is like a quarter the weight of any of her boys. They're just much heavier, much bigger kids. And so to do it with with my girl who's like 45 pounds is, you know, trivial, but it requires real effort when you're lifting someone who's, you know, 100 pounds plus, which I can do, but to do that airplane maneuver is I kind of have to launch up on my shoulder. It's just one of those things that it's really fun that I'm capable of doing that now and and having the confidence to be able to do it with all of the lifting. So, you know, to be able to to lift like 600,000 lbs on this on these machines since I got them, realize that that lifting does have a goal, right? It's it's not just for jiu-jitsu. It's also to be able to lift my nephews. I mean, that's just that that to me is one of the most exciting things that I can, you know, that I can do things like that now cuz it's not something I could have done 10 years ago and it's not something I would have had the confidence to do even two years ago, but I do now with the additional lifting. But yeah, on on these angle angle adjustments, some people say, "Oh, yeah, I just leave them on the machine all the time." But unless you're 5 foot five, I don't see how you can get the full stretch if you're leaving these on the machine all the time. I can't on any kind of bicep curl, anything like that. So, these go on and off the machine. And also, if the machine was design if if this angle bracket was so important that it should be used for all movements, they would have designed the machine to have it slot in on the top. They wouldn't have designed it to slot in on the side. it slots in on the side because that's the only way you can get full range of motion with some of the the lifts. But when you're lifting where the the ropes are coming inward towards the center with it on the side, the rope actually catches. And you can see that these ropes have the ability to catch if you're tilting that way inward and this is locked, which is what was happening. If these have the ability to rotate, it's not going it's going to rotate this and, you know, not catch. But that's the idea of it. What I'm getting at is with any of these machines, you have to be cognizant of these ropes. And you're thinking, "Oh, this is a speediance exclusive problem." But when I had the tonal, the tonal would flip out at you if when you're doing a movement, you bring it out and then you bring it back and you hit the machine. this machine doesn't care, right? If you do that, it doesn't penalize you and start throwing warnings up on your screen. Uh, the tonal did. And you're thinking, well, why was it doing that? It's doing that because on the tonal, this piece is plastic. This piece is plastic. So, when these things hit each other, you're hitting plastic on plastic, and you're you're running a real risk of damaging the machine. So, they're actually throwing a warning at you, not because you're doing something wrong, but because you're you're potentially damaging the machine with the amount of weight that you're throwing against it. This is rubber on rubber. So, it's designed to take that impact a little better. And so, that's my my guesstimate as to why the machine doesn't throw a fit at you because it's actually designed to be able to handle that a little bit better. It's a little better of a design in that fact. And and in fact, that's what I was saying in one of my prior videos that I feel like this barbell is way better designed. All of this stuff is metal. Now, we'll get to the thing that I don't like as much as the tonals and and that's the hand that's this rope. So, here is the tonal rope and here's the speed rope. So, let me get them a little bit video closer to the video screen and you'll be able to see what I what I don't like about the one. So, if I'm looking at these two, this one is the speed. This one is the tonal rope. And what do I not like about the speediance rope? Well, it's plastic. So, it's the only thing. What what the kicker is all of the other things on the Speedants are all metal, but this rope, these bottom pieces are plastic. And this is, and I think this is because this is the most common one on Amazon, and it's just absolutely horrible. Uh it's it's not good. So, I I right now I'm using the the one from the tonal because I just can, right? I can put a carabiner on it, put the clip that came with the speeds and just use this one. So, that's what I did. And you'll see like there's white scuffings and that's because I used to go out for my run over lunch and do my run in 30 minutes and then I would come back and do a 30 minute lift. And so I and I would do cable pull downs. And so there's sunscreen permanently on this thing. And that that gives you an idea of like how much time I spend lifting, how much time I spend working out. Uh you know what I mean? It's all of my lunchtime typically. Uh and even in the summer I would try to get 30 and 30. Um and so and so this has like a permanent stain mark on it from that. And this but this one's rubber and these rubber grips are so much better. I have this. And before I realized I could use this, I had bought this one off Amazon. And I'm going to try this one whenever I'm trying to lift heavier weights because these grips, this is rubber and it's grippy. And so I think this rope's going to be the winner of all the ropes for when I'm trying to lift maximally because I can get a lot more grip strength on this. So, my grip's not going to be the limiting factor. With this plastic one, the pain of gripping was my limiting factor. With the tonal one, my grip is the limiting factor. With this, my raw strength is going to be the limiting factor, which is always my goal. Uh, with all of my lifts, the goal is to actually have raw strength be the limiting factor. So, that was probably the the the biggest disappointment in the Spedience, but it's quickly rectified by going on Amazon and buying something that's I I couldn't find one that was exactly like the tonal one where it's rubber on the end. Uh, but I found one that's even better with these grips on the end. So, that's that's where I'm at with that. So, I do have all of my workouts kind of moved over, including my handles workout. I've lifted, you know, over half of a million pounds on these two devices. It did lose like it did lose one of my workouts uh right after the Lunar Flow uh started up. It lost one of my workouts. So, I had 17,000 lbs lifted. This is before the latest software update. So, it just got a software update today. and that software update. I actually had another instance today where I I was working out and then I stopped my workout and it saved my workout for me. So, it just went in and saved the workout and ended it for me. So, with the latest software update, if if I ever run into that problem, it looks like it'll just save it. But for whatever reason, I had I had had to go down and take over for my wife and that and I was on bicep curls and I was 17,000 pounds into the workout and went to take over and I thought, "Oh, I'll be back upstairs in like 30 minutes to do the bicep curls." 30 minute runs into an hour and I I don't get back up here for two hours to check it and the workout's just gone. and it was in the middle of the lunar flow. So, I I ended up doing a small workout downstairs on the speed downstairs uh to to get it in to get it in like an 8,000 lb workout instead of instead of the original 17,000 lbs. But, I mean, it just got me to lift more that day. not not the biggest deal in the world to lose one workout, but it was definitely a shocker when it happened, just that it didn't save it. And today's I ran into that same situation, but it saved it for me, you know, ended it and saved it. So, might have been just a bug in that version of the software. There is one other um hilarious bug that I have seen where it is a concern for some people but it wasn't a concern on this particular lift to me and that is there is a situation where it uh it it picked a weight for me to do overhead tricep extensions and it set the weight at the overhead tricep extension. So, it was actually with the bar and I'm and it's coming out from the frame and I'm going back like this and I'm lifting up. So, I'm going back and lifting up and it had set the weight to nearly what I can overhead press. So, it had set the weight to uh an absolutely massive number. And even when I looked at it, I'm like, there's no way I can tricep extension that amount of weight, especially with the weights coming from here and not from the frame. Even if it was from the frame, that's too much weight. But with it coming from uh the this the speedance frame here, which means that it's going to be in front of me to begin with, and then I'm going to let it pull back and then go up. That's going to be way too much weight. And I'm like, I don't even know if like with the amount of weight it had set, I'm like, I wonder what's going to happen if I just turn this weight on like what h like is my body even going to be able to stay in the same position, right? Because I do do a lot of motions where I'll have one foot up against the frame, but for that motion, you know, you really don't want to do that. And even with that, I don't know if I can I'm strong enough to actually hold my body in front with the way it had set. And sure enough, I turn on just to see I turn on the weight and it throws me up against the machine. I'm like, "Wow, that's what I expected." And uh my favorite is in the video for that, the girl that they have doing it, she has the weight set at eight, right? And even her lift, you can see it's uneven. Like she must have had some kind of a shoulder impingement, but she's not lifting the bar evenly on all of her reps in the video. It's like why would it think that I could do like 80 90 pounds when when at eight she's kind of strugg you know not struggling but like clearly there was something like you know wrong with either her shoulder at some point in time that that's causing the speed of the bar to not move straight. Um it was just one of those things where it's like wait she's at 8 pounds and having problems. Why would you think I could do, you know, a crazy amount of weight? Um, but it was it was more comical. That's the only one where it's gotten the weight that wrong. Every now and then, whenever I first went in and first started to do my workouts, because I did the strength assessment first, it overestimated me by like 5 10 pounds with the eentric mode cranked the whole way up. the way I like to do the lifts, it overestimated what I could do because it doesn't calculate in the eccentric the eccentric mode cranked up. So what I had to do is when I first started with all these lifts because it was overestimating, I would just look at the number on the screen, crank the eccentric the whole way up and then take the number down to to kind of mirror, you know, f like down a little bit so that that eentric number is the original number on the screen because it sets the eentric to minimum instead of to maximum and I want it at maximum. So it will if you turn on eentric when you create a custom workout, it default it defaulted them to the minimum amount. And so if you're taking it to the maximum amount, you have to take that original amount that you had there and subtract not necessarily the full eentric, but half of the eccentric, and that'll get you a more true number on what you can lift. So, if you end up going over to a custom approach like I do where it's one set of warm-ups and then one set uh one kind of failure set and you're using the stamina mode. And by the way, I've been doing this with all my workouts. This I do love this. So, it's 20 RM at 13 reps for my warm-ups and then I'm going in and doing uh 15 and 13. So everything's in stamina mode and it's in stamina mode because that gives you the widest variance of the RMS. So uh and these are 15 and 13. And what I'm actually trying to do by the way on these 1513s is I'm trying to do 1515 or or 1516 to get a new 1RM. Right? So I'm trying to do more reps than what it's actually trying to have me do. And so with that, it's allowing me to do um both warm-ups and working sets. And these warm-ups do not recalculate your 1RM. So just realize that a lot of people were worried that it would recalculate things. It will recalculate if I dial back the weight on these. So, this is 38 at 13 reps. If I dial this 38 lbs back down to like 36 pounds, that'll recalculate my 1 RM lower for that exercise. But, as long as I keep it at that 38, it'll only ever subtract. I've noticed sometimes it will subtract one from my 1 RM capability. Almost like there's a rounding error and it's subtracting one. And you just have to kind of ignore that. But yeah, every now and then it will like move things down by one uh you know by by one by one pound. Just an odd thing that does sometimes happen, but it never like drastically takes it down unless I've taken down the weight. And then in here in my working sets, I'm trying to hit, you know, 15 RM and I'm trying to hit 15 reps.