You don’t find too many Hyper Extension machines in home gyms, but my posterior chain is a known weak spot for me and since my theme so far is “work your weakness”, I needed to add one. I’ve tried the DIY route using plans around the internet but it didn’t work out well, I thought maybe I was that weak I couldn’t really do a true Glute Ham Raise. After finally using a real GHD machine, I determined it was my crappy DIY job that was the issue. I needed to buy a legit piece of equipment.
At a $200 price point and a couple of Google searches later, I pulled the trigger on the Yukon Hyperextension.
Assembly: It was very straight forward to build. Instructions were clear, all parts where packaged well. Took me about 35 minutes or so without help.
Quality: It’s not commercial quality, but for home use it’s fine. The welds look clean, all the parts line up, the foam and cushions look good, all around what I expected.
Now here is where I hit an issue. It is not a GHR out of the box. If you read the description and marketing materials from the company, you’ll see it doesn’t mention glute ham raise anywhere. And why is this? They missed a big marketing opportunity by not adding this feature out of the box. My guess is, from experience, doing glute ham raises are too hard for your average person. Not just “oh, that was difficult”, I mean you’ll completely fail from the start. This is probably a bad position to put your product in for 90% of the people that buy this machine.
Making it a glute ham raise
You’ll need a step bit and a drill. I ended up drilling 2 holes approximately equals distances apart and about the same spacing as the holes that were already there. This worked for me, but your mileage may vary. I suggest you unscrew the set screw, get on it and position yourself where the pads meet your quads, get off, then mark it.
Here are some pictures of my glute ham raise position. You’ll see that I drilled two holes, but I only ever use the one closest to the pads
That’s it, the rest is history! I have no regrets buying a GHR, let alone this one. If you’re serious about building your hamstring strength and have limited access to equipment, I would seriously consider this one. I also use it for dips, sit ups, and hyper-extensions. Not a bad bang for the buck.