Who writes this

Jean-Benoit Buisson

Every page on StrengthVerdict is written and signed by one named person. This page explains where the judgements come from, lists what the author is not, and gives an address for corrections.

Where this came from

It started with a load rating. Three digits and a unit, printed on a box, treated by nearly every listing as though it were a guarantee. It is not a guarantee. On most of this shelf it is the maker’s own figure, tied to no named test, and it does not say whether it covers a body, a body plus a bar, or a mass landing on the frame. Two benches rated at 300 kg are not equivalent, and a bench carrying that number is not thereby safe. Once that gap is visible, the same shape turns up across the whole shelf. Resistance bands sold on a kilogram range that nobody measured and that depends entirely on how far the band is pulled. Cable stations sold on a plate capacity when a 2:1 pulley halves it at the handle. Plyo boxes sold on a static rating for a product that is jumped onto. And most pages answering these questions look alike: a ranked list, a score, a button, and not one figure a reader could check against the maker's own sheet.

The second problem arrives after the parcel is open. This equipment is bought on a headline and kept or returned on details. Plates with the right mass and the wrong bore. A bar whose sleeves run out of room at 60 kg because the plates are cement. A doorway pull-up bar that needs a lip the architrave does not have. A leg press with a Ø 50 mm post and a Ø 30 mm collection. A rack whose hole spacing puts the J-cups either side of where the bench press needs them. A treadmill in exactly the right motor rating whose belt is 100 cm long, which is a walking pad with a handrail whatever the speed dial says. None of that is on the front of the box, and each one decides whether the purchase was worth making.

So the site does the dull part. It reads what manufacturers and standards bodies publish, confirms each product reference market by market, and writes down the line that settles the question — the load rating next to what it actually covers rather than a claim about strength, a resistance range next to whether it is a setting or a curve, a pulley ratio next to the plate capacity it halves, a bore diameter next to the plates it will and will not take — and it says plainly when a figure has not been published at all. That last habit matters more than it sounds: a great deal of the disappointment on this shelf comes from a number nobody printed, or from one printed without the condition that gives it meaning.

What sits behind the published pages is a working file per family: the one dimension that settles a purchase, every place a manual contradicts a sales page, which fittings lock an owner into one brand for everything bought afterwards, what a maker means by a kilogram figure with no condition attached, and the specific mistake each shelf invites. This site is that file, put in order and written out, in five languages — because the same questions get asked in French, German, Spanish and Italian and are answered worse in most of them.

The full catalogue, generated rather than kept

No one edits the list below. It is rebuilt from the catalogue every time the site is compiled, one line for each published page, and it lengthens or shortens by itself as a shelf opens or a reference is withdrawn. It is a record of what has been written up, which — stated plainly — is not a record of what is standing in anyone's garage.

Three things learned the expensive way

The number set in the largest type is hardly ever the one the purchase turns on. A bench is sold on a load rating when the pad width at the shoulders decides whether anyone presses on it twice. A rack is sold on a capacity when the base width decides whether it stands still under a dip. A bar is sold on a brand when the bore and the sleeve length decide whether it takes the plates already in the room. A treadmill is sold on horsepower when the belt length decides whether it is a running machine or a walking pad with a handrail.

What a machine costs to keep outlasts what it cost to buy. A rebounder whose bungees leave the catalogue after two seasons has a service life set by its spare parts. A bench whose pad cannot be unbolted is a bench that gets replaced when the vinyl splits at the seam. A set of plates in cement rather than iron sets the sleeve length available for every future purchase.

And whatever you end up judging it on is rarely on the specification sheet at all: how much of a dropped plate the neighbours hear, whether a selector pin still seats cleanly after a winter in a cold garage, whether a collar opens under an unbalanced bar, and whether the part that fails first will still be listed when it does.

What I am not

I am not a coach, a physiotherapist, a materials engineer or a certification body. I hold no qualification in those fields, I have never worked for a manufacturer, an importer or a dealer, and nothing on this site rests on a professional title. A page here describes a product — its dimensions, its declared figures, any standard it cites — and stops there. In particular, every mass, load rating, bore diameter, sleeve length, stride length, flywheel mass, belt size, hole spacing, pulley ratio, foam density, hardness figure, thickness and quoted noise level on this site is reported from the manufacturer, with its unit as published and its source named, and never derived by me. Where a maker gives a figure under a stated condition, the page attributes both to the maker and keeps them together, and nothing here is called stronger, quieter or safer than something else on the strength of a specification sheet.

This site is not an assembly manual and not safety advice. For a rack’s fixings and the substrate they go into, for a treadmill's lubrication interval, for a torque figure on a bolt that holds a loaded bar, and for the run-in a new belt needs, it points to the maker's instructions, the markings on the product and the standard the listing cites, rather than paraphrasing them. Two statements are repeated rather than assumed. A published load and a guarantee are different things and stay apart, and each page says which figure, in which unit, its maker actually published. And no rack, no safety catch, no belt and no strap is described here as making anything safe. What a page carries is the figure a maker published and the condition attached to it; everything past that point is settled by the instructions in the box and by the room the thing stands in.

A signature proves nothing, and nothing here asks to be taken on one. Every judgement carries its grounds inside the page that makes it; the full account of how a family gets put in order has a page to itself.

How each page is put together

No figure goes in without its source alongside — a datasheet, a manual, a marking on the product, a named standard, or what owners report consistently after a year of use.
Nothing is ever filled in. Not a price, not a reference, not a dimension. Where a maker has published nothing, the row stays empty and the page says in words that it is empty.
Each reference is confirmed store by store before publication. Where a model is not sold in that store, the button runs a search in your own store instead of dropping you on a listing that no longer exists.
Where the cheaper option is the right one, the page says so — and where the right answer is a tape measure, a piece of plywood or a wipe with a cloth rather than any purchase at all, it says that.
Nothing is arranged around a headline number, and where a new model is barely distinguishable from the one it replaced, the page says that too.

What a misread figure costs on this particular shelf

This equipment is sold on numbers that state one thing and are read as another, and the gap tends to surface only once something is already loaded. A declared capacity stands where a guarantee is assumed. A stack mass stands where a load at the handle is assumed. A bore stands where a fit is assumed. Meanwhile the items everyone treats as afterthoughts — a pair of collars, a scrap of plywood under a rack leg, an anchor sleeve, thread locker, a tape measure — repeatedly decide whether any of it works.

A great deal of what matters here costs nothing to know, and reduces to one line: a declared load records what a maker was willing to print, and commits to nothing about a particular repetition. The same goes for most of the rest. Measuring the ceiling before ordering a rack. Putting plywood under the base plates. Wiping upholstery down so a seam lasts. Keeping latex out of sunlight. Checking a doorway before trusting a bar to it. Sites that exist to move equipment skip past all of that. It is not skipped here.

Sending a correction

Send a mistake and it gets corrected, with the date of the correction left on the page where anyone can see it. The address is [email protected].

Jean-Benoit Buisson · StrengthVerdict · Montrollet, France