Mad Spotter Hooks 2.0 have a fairly simple concept: Allow lifters to do pressing movements with dumbbells that are too heavy for them to safely get up into position.
Rather Watch Than Read? Check Out My Mad Spotter Video Review
How Do Mad Spotter Dumbbell Hooks Work?
Mad Spotter Hooks have an S shaped design with a top and bottom hook. By hanging the top hook onto a barbell and placing a dumbbell in the bottom hook, then in the case of dumbbell bench press you wrap your fingers around the dumbbell and the bottom hook, you extend your arms to take the top hook off of the bar and simply bench press as normal. This eliminates the need to have spotters hand you the dumbbells or the need to kick the dumbbells up in the air to get them into position. To set the dumbbells back down, you simply reverse the process.
What Do People Think of This?
Like many fitness products, this extremely polarizing because people who see it generally fall into one of two camps:
- Group A, thinks this product is a waste of time and you shouldn’t try to press dumbbells that are too heavy for you to clean up into position
- Group B thinks that something like this is the greatest idea ever and that it’ll help save your shoulders and prevent injury
Where Do I Stand On This?
While I am a physical culturist and I love to emulate the methods practiced by the old-time physical culture lifters I’m also not opposed to using technology where it makes sense and I would guess that neither are the people who say that there’s no need for this product. The most dyed in the wool traditionalist is still bench pressing on a bench instead of floor pressing like George Hackenschmidt did when he pioneered the earliest version of the bench press in 1891. Furthermore, Hackenschmidt and his contemporaries didn’t even use spotters to hand them the weight because the idea was that you were judged by how much you could lift and lower by yourself. This didn’t change for several decades, and in fact, bench press uprights didn’t exist until sometime in the 1950s. No one today is suggesting that we get rid of bench press uprights so I don’t know why anyone is advocating for an outdated method of getting into position which has nothing to do with actually performing the lift.
There’s in my opinion no reason for someone who’s training by themselves to have to struggle with putting the dumbbells on their lap and then doing the negative portion of a crunch while stabilizing the dumbbells in either hand before they even start the exercise and in my opinion it’s even more important to have something like Mad Spotter Hooks for when you complete the set and you need to put the weights back down too many people either have to pull their knees to their chest and then do a ballistic sort of kipping sit up so they can put the dumbbells down or even worse they drop the dumbbells while in the least mechanically advantageous position exposing themselves to the potential for shoulder injury and damaging the integrity of the dumbbell.
How Well Do Mad Spotter Hooks Work?
Mad Spotter Hooks are rated for 250lbs per hand and there are some videos on the company’s Instagram page showing loads far in excess of that. The hooks are easy to use with no installation required. There is a slight learning curve when you first start using them but you can get the hang of them pretty quickly in my experience if you’re paying attention. There is a little uncertainty when loading extremely heavy dumbbells into the hooks and I would prefer if the company had some sort of wrap around flap to secure the dumbbells in place as was the case with the original version of this product, which I also happen to own, the Dumbbell Power Hooks, made by a company called Country Power. Those Dumbbell Power Hooks have worked well since I purchased them in 2009 and other than some minor blemishes, they’ve stood the test of time pretty well. There’s also a tendency for the dumbbell to rock upward as if it’s going to come out of the hook with the Mad Spotters when racking after a set of shoulder presses but again, that seems to be because of the lack of a strap to secure dumbbells in place.
Final Thoughts
I think that Mad Spotter Hooks are a good product especially if you train by yourself although I would love to see them implement some sort of strap to secure the dumbbells in the hooks. They are very space efficient, taking up much less room than the dumbbell spotter trays that are available from some manufacturers and they seem sturdy. You can purchase set of Mad Spotter Hooks by visiting them online at themadspotter.com.