Who am I and why should you
listen to me?
Okay a little about me. My name is Blake Kassel and I have been exercising since I was 13 years old ( I am 37 now). Why did I start exercising?
Well, when I was 11 years old I attended my first bodybuilding show, The Night Of Champions in New York City. I thought it was amazing! These guys had created huge muscular bodies. I wanted to do the same.
So, I had my first set of weights and a bench press when I was in eighth grade and since then I never stopped.
I once tried to calculate all of the collective time that I had spent in the gym and it worked out to be about 6 years!
After about 10 years of serious training with weights I took a certification course for personal training with the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). Whoa, was that an eye opener!
I realized that I had been training incorrectly for years, performing exercises for a certain muscle that really had nothing to do with that muscle. In addition I was exercising in ways that could actually be harmful to my body.
At the end of the certification program, the instructors continued to refer to this great tool that you could use with your clients. Yep, you guessed it, the tool was exercise bands. After using the bands for a while it became very clear that they had great potential.
So, I began to play around with some designs that would take the positive properties of exercise bands to the next level. In 1998 after 1.5 years of development, the Bodylastics Exercise Bands System was born.
I have tried everything and made all of
the mistakes so that you don't have to!
Since I was 13 I have tried many different forms of resistance training; free weights, weight machines, Soloflex, Bowflex, isometrics - geez, you name it! I can tell you with extreme confidence that there is not an exercise machine or tool that I have used which gives me the workout that I get with exercise bands - not one!
When I first launched the Bodylastics exercise bands system 9 years ago I had a lot of skeptics, especially friends and family. One of my favorite activities was confronting these naysayers by getting them to try a biceps curl with four elastics attached. Not only was everyone immediately shocked by the amount of resistance that the system created but they each asked how they could purchase a set.
Now it was time to test the waters with the harshest critics of all...the Bodybuilding crowd. So, in 2002 we paid for a booth at the Arnold Classic fitness expo in Ohio. At this expo they let the exhibitors sell their products right from the booth. Just in case we brought 450 exercise bands systems
Even though we had a nice banner we needed a way to bring in the traffic and get people to try the product. So, at the last minute I had an idea...I created signs that said if anyone could curl all 4 bands 30 times, I would give them a set for free. People love a challenge - so we got a TON of traffic.
In three days we had about 1000 people take the challenge. Huge crowds would form around our booth because people were grunting and screaming trying to win a free set - it was hilarious! The response was truly amazing. We sold out within 1.5 days and let me tell you guys were holding their arms and were in shock at how well the product worked.
Out of about 1000 only about 30 could do it and let me tell you something, everyone was raving about the product. People were so blown away by the product that we sold out in 1.5 days!! These guys could not believe how well Bodylastics worked their muscles. You won't believe it either! |