This body was built with strength training equipment!

As I stated on the home page, my name is Blake Kassel. Here is a little about me and why I put this site together.

Believe it or not I have been using strength training equipment since I was about 10 years old. When I was that age, I attended my first professional bodybuilding show, The Night of Champions. I went with my father and my two cousins who were famous bodybuilders, The Barbarian Brothers. Well, let me tell you that after I saw those guys on stage posing to music - I was permanently hooked! I wanted to look strong too.

It's funny, from that point on you can find pictures of me posing and flexing my muscles. When I was 13 I was given my first set of weights - a bench press, some free weights and some dumbbells. Although I used them, I really had no idea what I was doing.

My next step was a Soloflex when I was about 15. Again, I was use it from time to time but did not have a set workout routine or any guidance.

Here was the life changer! When I was 16, my father joined a gym in Manhattan called Madison Avenue Muscle. Now this is where I wanted to be! It was a hard-core bodybuilding gym that had heavy weight equipment. My father was kind enough to get me a membership and pay for a couple of training sessions so that I could learn how to use the equipment and how to create a workout program.

Before long I was making tremendous changes in my body. At 16 and full of testosterone my body would respond immediately to every workout. I was accused quite often of taking steroids because the results were so quick and noticeable.

At that time I mainly used strength training for football until I quit playing in college and decided to compete in bodybuilding.

When I was 24 I got certified in personal training by The National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). The teachers who taught the certification classes repeatedly talked about a great tool which you could use with your clients - you guessed it, exercise tubing. Unfortunately, I could not find any designs that I liked so I set out to design the best set on the market. After a year and a half and several prototypes, I launched the official Bodylastics Super System.

E-mail me here: