FAQs & Two Reviews

What Is Going On This Week

• Reviews And Stuff

  • I Answer 25 Home Gym FAQs

  • Chirp HALO Review

  • Bob and Brad Massage Gun Review (again)

  • What Is Next?

• r/HomeGym AMA

• Behind The Scenes Of A Content Creator

  • Brand Ads

  • Major Fitness Spamming r/HomeGym Again

  • Paid Ads

The beginning of December has been a wild ride. Time to dump it all into a newsletter for ya.

Reviews And Stuff

I Answer 25 Home Gym FAQs

I’ve had this one on the list to tackle for a bit. It probably isn’t 100% valid for YOU, as I assume if you are reading this right now you already set up your home gym. But something that allows me to dig into my pocket and help out some of our new friends to the home gym space.

Chirp HALO Review

I snagged a CHIRP Halo awhile back, and me and the wife have been using it consistently. We own a Compex as well, so I was able to compare these in a few different ways.

If you have been eyeing something like an eletro magnetic stim device, check this out.

Bob and Brad Massage Gun Review (again)

I got another Bob and Brad massage gun awhile back, this time it has hot and cold therapy. I rarely do this, but honestly, don’t waste your time reading this one. The hot and cold stuff in my opinion is pretty bogus, and the massage gun is pretty underpowered for me. If you are looking at a new massage gun, the Bob and Brad D6 Pro is my current favorite.

If you really want to…

What Is Next?

I’m going to finish a review on my Fit King Leg Compression pants, which I’ve been using most days in the office (using as we speak). Then put together a video on the BEST Recovery Tools for Home Gym Lifters. After that, I’ve got a write up on the TrueNutrition T-Sterone supplement I ran for 90 days. And then hopefully at some point between now and end of the year, I’ll have the MAIAK-GO to do a first look video.

They told me that they had some production hiccups, apparently the company they were using got bought out and their quality suffered. So they have 3 of their first 4 units without finished pieces. They have 1 that is ready to go, and are debating what to do with it. Hopefully it comes my way!

r/HomeGym AMA

Kurt is on day 2 of his AMA right now. Make sure to hop on over and ask him some questions.

Behind The Scenes Of A Content Creator

A few big things have happened, or are happening, and I want to share and get some advice from all of you.

Brand Ads

I just showed up in a new VOLTRA I ad. Pretty cool. I’ve seen some mis-information about these over the past few months so wanted to clarify for the group. Companies will do this in a manner of ways.

You can see that THEY are pushing it on IG and Facebook, but under their own account. There is no mention of me, who I am, and no real way for this to come back to me. Oh well. Shogun has pushed my FLEX videos in a similar manner, same with UClips, and a few others.

You have definitely seen the ads from Freak Athlete that include Gluck and others. Freak Athlete runs “white label” ads, where they use your content, but pay for the ad on your account, so they are essentially pushing your content for you, to promote their product. From a content creator side, that is the best approach because you get all the visibility back to you.

Major Fitness Spamming r/HomeGym Again

I mentioned in my FAQ video and article, that I have received a lot of opportunities to work with companies in the past year or so, that I have turned down. Major Fitness is one of them. The main reason is that they continue to try and spam r/HomeGym with fake posts and comments. They have new accounts that they are posting things like “Anyone have any experience with the Major Fitness XYZ?” and then they use additional new accounts to answer those questions in a hopes to promote the brand.

I called them out on it, they denied it, but it is very obvious. I’m about 98% positive they are doing it on the Facebook Home Gym group as well. They recently asked me to do a video, with a free product from their lineup, AND they were going to pay me for the video and wanted to discuss an ongoing contract for future and consistent content.

No shame for anyone who takes this offer, but just an inside scoop that if anyone is pushing Major Fitness regularly, that is probably why.

Paid Ads

Ok, this is the one I’m hoping to hear back from you on. Beehiiv is the platform I use for my newsletter that you are currently reading. They have a paid ad service baked into the newsletter platform, where companies can pitch you an ad opportunity and you get paid for it.

I apparently showed up on Nike’s radar, which is pretty freaking cool. They want to pay for an ad in the next newsletter. But I’m very mixed on this idea. On one hand, it feels like a cool stamp of approval to say “The newsletter was sponsored by Nike”… but at the same time, I don’t even own anything Nike related. This is obviously more than just this offer from Nike, but a bigger thought process around who do I let “sponsor” the newsletter, and who do I not?

So my plan, right now, after talking this through with some friends and my wife, is to accept this one time offer from Nike. So you’ll likely see the ad in the NEXT newsletter. And I’ll figure out what you all think by means of what you do with it. If the ad receives a ton of clicks, which turn into revenue for the newsletter, I’ll know it was all good. If it does nothing, I’ll likely skip them in the future. And if the entire newsletter falls apart, well I guess I’ll know I screwed up lol.

One More Big Update

I am looking to make a fairly large change with the newsletter for 2025. I’ve found that a lot of my work is duplicated by having two newsletters, one for Gray Matter Lifting and one for the Garage Gym Competition.

The basic concept would be to merge this newsletter for Gray Matter Lifting, and the Garage Gym Competition newsletter, into one (I’d keep the Gray Matter one so you won’t need to do anything). Keep the same cadence of every other week (so reduce the total amount of newsletters in half), but up the content inside the newsletter itself.

I’m drafting a plan for this, and it is looking like I’ll include more behind the scenes details, Speed Run reviews, and bring in the good GGC stuff around lifting, training tips, etc. I also have plans to include other content creators and get their stuff involved here, and have a section around new releases, sales, and more.

So you’ll get one newsletter that will help you be a better home gym athlete… equipment, lifting, community… all in one place.

We’ll have one more Newsletter for the GML side and for the GGC side before the end of the year, and then I’ll likely merge everything to kick off 2025.

• Joe