Shogun FLEX Review – Power Packed & Portable – 2024

The Shogun FLEX arrived in our gym in February of 2024, and after 8 months of off and on use in different environments with myself, my wife, and my daughter, we are sharing our thoughts. Today I’ll share everything I know to help you decide if these are the right additions for you, or not.

The Shogun FLEX is like if you took a full cable machine, and squished it down into a tiny box the size of one of those travel cereal boxes. They have 44lb of resistance each, connect to your phone via Bluetooth so you can run the Shogun FLEX app, have a number of accessories and attachments, and can pack up and store away in their travel case.

Without further ado, lets dig in!

Transparency Note

Shogun was nice enough to send me TWO of their Shogun FLEX units for sake of review. They then sent over the full line of accessories including the platform and two swivel attachments, two rack swivel attachments, and a wall rail kit.

On top of that we have a Discount Code and an affiliate link. Using either will give me a small kick-back, at not cost to yourself. This helps fund the website and various things I do in the home gym community.

As always, there is no commitment here other than for me to share my honest thoughts. But I like to be transparent up front so you know what we are working with.

Shogun FLEX Video Review

Shogun FLEX Specs

I’ve shared before that I have myself, my wife, and my daughter using our gym equipment fairly regularly. One of the downsides of a garage gym, is the weather. I’m lucky that the cold isn’t often TOO cold in Northern California, but the heat can be pretty unbearable. 110 degree days mean 120+ in the garage with no way to escape the heat. Even early morning workouts can be in the 100s. Add in conflicts with soccer and other weekend activities and there is a real chance my wife skips a workout instead of choosing to pass out in the garage.

So the ability to have a cable machine to bring into the house, hook up in a doorway, and get in some curls, triceps, rows, you name it… sounds pretty appealing! You can attach two together and get a total of 88lbs of resistance, which SHOULD be enough for my wife on basically everything.

Pair this with the Booty Sprout and a few of our favorite Cable Attachments and we’ve got a pretty well stocked gym that is portable and easy to use without many sacrifices. Or at least, that is the idea.

Specs List

• Brand: Shogun
• Made In USA: No
• Dimensions: 29 x 17 inches
• Height: 8.3 inches
• Resistance: 4 to 44lbs
• Weight: 1.5lbs
• Suitable Athletes: All ranges
• Finish: all black
• Assembly: none
• Additional Items: Attachments and carrying case

Whats In The Box!?!?!

Each FLEX comes in a travel case. This is likely firm enough to be packed into a suitcase, manhandled by Airport security, and come out the other end perfectly find. Inside it includes just about everything you would need to get in a basic workout.

You have the FLEX itself and an assortment of cable attachments including a D-Handle, an ankle strap, and a triceps strap.

The cable attachments are well thought through in terms of what they include, because you can basically do every major cable exercise with these. Rows, curls, triceps extensions, face pulls, leg lift variations, leg curls, and more, including doing single arm and two arm variations. If you already have an extensive cable attachment collection, these aren’t going to be your first choice. But for what to include in a package, they nailed it.

It also has multiple straps used for fixing the FLEX to something, one is a simple foot strap. You stand inside it and can perform curls and row movements. This is a pretty basic concept, isn’t the smoothest execution ever, but it works.

The other is a door strap, which can be affixed under the door, side of the door, or even above the door. There is a lot of slack in the system with this one. This slack translates into the FLEX commonly bouncing around, hitting the walls and your door. It does allow for a lot of angles and options in a lot of places, but this one is the least refined option here.

Shogun FLEX Accessories

When we start to venture outside of the carrying case, Shogun offers a few other accessories to affix the FLEX to various places.

First up is the Rack Mount. These should fit any rack hole size, and mine can fit on the front and in most positions on the side. For those of you with full rack holes up and down, you’ll have a lot of options here. The tension knobs work very well, simply press the button to pull them tight, then screw tight for the final adjustment.

I like that these swivel, which means you have a lot of options and free movement. As you can see, I have mine way up top here, you can drop them down to various positions for crossovers, curls, whatever and essentially make a functional trainer.

Next up is the Platform, which is similar to the Beyond Power platform. Beyond Power has only one spot for a VOLTRA, where as we have 6 total spots on the FLEX platform.

You will need to purchase the Swivel Cages to work with the Platform. These are very similar to the rack mounts, but instead of the holes for the rack, it slides onto the rails on the platform itself. The Beyond Power platform is definitely more robust though. Depending on the orientation and how you stand, the FLEX platform can start to bend and lift up. Not typically a sign of long term durability. That said, you likely also have quite a bit less resistance pulling compared to the VOLTRA, so it might work out.

And last is their wall rails. This takes the same system as the platform, but allows you to connect them into a wall (i.e. you would use the Swivel Cages with the Wall Rails). Let’s say you wanted to use these in your bedroom, office, or anywhere that you don’t have a rack, this would allow you to essentially have a functional trainer.

There are 8 connection points for the swivel cage on each rail, and the rail runs about 40 inches in length, and you get TWO rails per package. Giving you a pretty good amount of options to vary how you use these. You could connect them together for a long run, or use one on top and one on the side. Or even create a full square or rectangle shape with a couple of kits.

Keep in mind that the carrying case and items inside it, are all included. Everything else I mentioned are additional accessories.

Overall Thoughts On The Carrying Case, Attachments, and Accessories

Shogun did a good job of keeping the various accessories fairly light and easy to move and store. My entire set of everything sits in one small section on my Mass Storage Rack, and if you wanted to travel with all of it, it would be fairly easy to make work for a road trip, and it also TSA compliant for plane travel.

I mentioned that most of these were additional accessories. So if you wanted to set up an indoor station, you might need two rails on the side, one on top, and one on bottom to give you a full cable system experience, along with two FLEXs, and two swivel mounts, plus the platform for good measure.

As of publishing this, that would cost you a little over $1000. So certainly not a low budget option here. But compared to say, my VOLTRA Is, there are more options for portability, and even at that cost, we are still under HALF of the cost of just one VOLTRA.

Overall, the design, the selection of attachments and accessories, everything has been pretty well thought out regardless if you want to use this in your decked out gym, inside your living space, or take it on the go.

Shogun FLEX App

You have a simple pairing process to connect your Shogun FLEX units to the Shogun FLEX app, and then it will remember them every time after that.

If you are interested in it, there are a bunch of training resources including an exercise library and more. This is not something I personally want, but it is free and available. There are no subscription fees and the site says it comes with Lifetime access to the app and workout library.

We are going to focus on the control of the units themselves through the app, and the performance here, and skip the workout stuff.

Resistance & Profiles

The app will let us adjust from 4lbs up to 44lbs. If you have two FLEX units, you can sync the weights making adjustments easier, or keep them separate if you are super setting or sharing with a training partner.

One struggle with the app, is that if you have two FLEX units, you can’t tell them apart in the app. Let’s say me and my daughter are both doing triceps extensions, I’m using 44lb and she is using 15lbs. There is no way to look at the FLEXs themselves and determine which one you set to 15 and which one you set to 44.

It might be helpful if the LED power button could be switched to a different color and synced in the app or it had some kind of clear distinction between the two that connected in the App and on the device itself.

The weight adjustments have a 1lb incremental plus or minus, as well as a swipe feature. I find the swipe to be a little inconsistent in terms of jumps with each swipe, but overall this works well. It only becomes a pain if you are super setting back and forth between something with low resistance and high resistance.

Eccentric & Concentric

We also have adjustment options to manipulate the eccentric or concentric portion of the lift by up to 50%. Let’s say you can curl 15lbs, you would set the concentric to 15lbs which is the lifting portion of the rep, and overload the eccentric, the lowering portion, as we are stronger in the eccentric than the concentric. This has the potential for more gains.

But let me clarify… We can ONLY have a maximum of 44lbs of resistance in either direction. So, in that same curl scenario, if you can curl 44lbs instead of 15, you can’t load MORE than 44lbs in the eccentric. So, you have a limitation in that percentage depending on how close you get to that 44lbs for the portion of the lift you want to overload.

Other Modes

There is a Constant setting, which is meant to act like a flywheel. With Constant, the faster you pull the cable, the more resistance it has. Adjusting the resistance up and down again acts like a smaller and larger flywheel disc. After using my kBox for almost a year and then using this setting, I would say that it really isn’t the same thing. It is nearly impossible to really nail that flywheel experience without a flywheel. Truly unique.

The Chains setting works like accommodating resistance, as you pull the resistance gets gradually heavier. Again, it has to work within the constraints of the 44lb maximum load so you are going to start fairly light and move up to whatever you plan to use. But this works very well. I loaded 44lbs with the full 50% adjustment, and it was easy at the bottom and TOUGH at the top, and reversed that curve on the way back.

The Generation setting actually lowers the eccentric resistance in an effort to charge the battery of the unit, turning kinetic energy into stored battery power. Cool idea, but not something you would use outside of a “waking up on the go, needing to do a workout, realizing your battery is low, and going for it anyway”. This gives you the ability to not skip a workout, but again, not something I would use in my situation ever.

Overall Thoughts On The Shogun FLEX App

The basic useage of the Shogun FLEX app is fairly straightforward. In all of my time using it, I haven’t been logged out. I only had to log back in after having my phone reset, and only once did I have to remove my FLEX units and reconnect them to the app, and that was after a Firmware Update.

The main settings are easy to adjust, they kick in fairly quickly, and it all seems to do what it needs to do. The extra modes in my opinion aren’t very useful with such a low maximum weight, except for some much smaller exercises like lateral raises and single arm curls.

These custom resistance curves, overloaded eccentrics, and fancy stuff starts to make more sense in something like a VOLTRA I with 200lb of resistance. I can set a 150lb row with 50lbs of eccentric overload and really get some nasty work in.

The app, while it functions well and they claim lifetime access, we know that companies very rarely support something FOREVER. If your phone outpaces their development, or they move on to a FLEX 2, this no longer works.

Along with that, is the NEED to use the App. My VOLTRA Is have an app, but you don’t have to use it. They have a built in screen that lets you tinker with the majority of settings. Let’s say these were my main cable set-up in my garage… My wife goes to do a workout, and I happen to be on a phone call. She can’t use the FLEX unless she also has the app. And some people simply don’t want to be tinkering with their phone during a workout, or have to use multiple apps between tracking your workout and also using your equipment.

So there are multiple things to consider for your own space and needs around purchasing a device that requires an App to work.

Build & Performance of Shogun FLEX

The FLEX itself is a nice mostly rubber coated case. This helps with some of the potential impact when using the door strap, slight drops to the floor with the foot strap, and overall seems to keep it in one piece. In the 8 months we’ve had them, while we weren’t using these as our only cable option, we haven’t seen any degradation in the battery, dents or dings in the unit itself, or anything that tells us that we are looking at issues in the immediate future.

Cable

The Shogun FLEX has a strap for a cable. I’ve tried to get it twisted and perform a set, and it seems unphased which is a good thing. I wouldn’t exactly recommend you do that, but it doesn’t seem to get caught or cause any damage. Same as the case, I see no wear and tear on the cable itself in the past 8 months.

I have found more than once that the cable has been a little short for some exercises. The site claims it is 4.5ft long. At my 6ft height, a lateral raise exceeds that. You could in theory add your own cable length via a daisy chain, but it would be nice to not have to have an extra accessory.

Warranty

One thing that commonly comes up with these SMART type devices, is the longevity of them. Each FLEX unit costs $350 and comes with a 1-year warranty. There isn’t any mention on the site about replacement parts or service, and considering that these are all in one units, I doubt that they are serviceable. So outside of 1 year, if anything goes wrong, you are probably sunk.

Only 44lb of Resistance

The big elephant in the room, is the 44lb of resistance. Now you can connect them together, and the site claims you can pair up to 8 units together at once, meaning you COULD have 352lbs of combined resistance, though that is probably totally unreasonable. Most people are going to look at having one or two, so 44lbs in each hand, or 88lbs for a combined resistance.

For me, this works for curls, some triceps work, lateral raises, and a few odds and ends. It doesn’t work for back exercises or the bigger triceps exercises. For my wife, or even my daughter, that 44 to 88lb range covers a lot more. We are in business for everything but some heavy seated rows and maybe some RDLs.

Battery

The battery is another potential concern. Much like the VOLTRA I, the battery usage is highly dependent on the resistance and total work you do. So, a 15 rep set of 20lb will use less battery than a 15 rep set at 40lbs. Each additional set and rep will eat up more battery. So a high rep, high resistance workout is going to kill the battery fairly quickly.

In testing, even at my strength levels, I was able to do an entire workout consisting of 8 total working sets of rows, curls, triceps extensions, and lateral raises, with some other tinkering and testing, and kill about 30% of their batteries. So you should be good for MOST workouts, though if this is your main cable set-up, you are likely going to be charging them a couple times a week.

Who Should Buy The Shogun FLEX?

Overall, the Shogun FLEX functions well, it is easy to move, fairly easy to set-up, adjust, and use for athletes of different sizes. The carrying case is well done, the attachments are well thought through for their purpose, the accessories open up a lot of options, and the app is easy to use and navigate.

But… I mentioned this during my VOLTRA I review, that anything tech has a lifespan. A standard cable machine, maybe not. And with something like this with no service available, anything outside that 1-year mark is a gamble. One day you have a cable system, the next you don’t. When I posted these on Reddit when I first got them, I already had someone say theirs showed up dead and they had to work to get it replaced.

44lbs of resistance, as I mentioned, is simply not enough for some bigger athletes, or even just consistent lifters for some bigger movements. The price is a bit of a hesitation, considering you could get a plate loaded cable tower for around $500. But obviously that isn’t traveling or going anywhere.

So, who should consider buying these?

If you are smaller in general, where 44lb or the 88lb combination would be enough for most exercises. You could set up an entire functional trainer in an apartment or bed room or even your home gym, for around $1k and no space commitment.

You could travel and use this on the go with only the travel case and get a pretty well-rounded workout. You could actually use it in your gym, and then the very next day take it with you on your trip. Something a typical cable system would never do, and even my VOLTRA Is would struggle to do.

Now, you aren’t going to find this replacing a cable machine in a gym like mine… But, you might find these in a gym like mine for two reasons.

One, is for the hot days to take inside and get a workout in. They are so easily portable, with the various accessories for different exercises, that they worked really well for my wife and my daughter. And two, is to use them WITH other gym equipment. Because they are so small, move well, and connect in a number of ways, you can get really creative.

I’ve used my Prime Shorty Bench to be able to do a number of things I’d normally do on a functional trainer, connected it to my Freak Athlete Hyper Pro for reverse hypers, and honestly the list could go on and on depending on what your space looks like. Connect to a BulletProof Isolator, or pair of Jammer Arms, or anything that is plate loaded, can now pretty easily become cable driven.

Other Options On The Market

Smart devices are picking up steam including the Beyond Power Voltra I. These are portable, take up minimal space, allow you to train movements in various ways, without dedicating space to a massive cable tower. There are even some Amazon options popping up, so keep an eye on this realm of fitness gadgets if it peaks your interest.

The MAIAK-GO is on the way, and might be a real competitor. And of course, you could always simply choose one of the BEST cable machines for your home gym.

Wrap Up

These definitely aren’t going to be my main cable solution anytime soon, and I have hesitation personally around the tech implementation in a gym.

But if you’ve got the cash, and the general concept of these jives with what you are looking for in a piece of gym equipment… portable, easy to use, decent resistance, and a lot of possibilities… then I have no hesitation saying that we have enjoyed these and I believe you will too. If any of those things is holding you back, well, I’m glad I could confirm your hesitations and I recommend you look elsewhere.

💲Want to buy a Shogun FLEX or two for your own home gym? Use this link and code Code: GML10 to save 10%

You can also snag all of the accessories right here:

• Rack Mount
• Platform
• Swivel Cages
• Wall Rails

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