How Does the Gravity Edge Exercise Machine Work?

The Gravity Edge home gym is an older exercise machine that uses your body weight for resistance. You cannot purchase the Gravity Edge machine new, but you may find used machines available online. When you do strength exercises on the Gravity Edge machine, the platform you sit on moves up and down and serves as the exercise resistance.


The Gravity Edge machine has an upright seat that attaches to a moving platform. Arm levers attach to the seat and platform through a series of cables and pulleys. When you sit on the seat and press, pull or push the arm levers, you move the seat and platform. Your body weight plus the weight of the seat serves as the resistance for the exercise. Remove the seat back and kneel or stand on the seat pad to do lower body exercises.

Resistance Adjustments

Although the Gravity Edge uses your body weight for the resistance, you can still change the resistance level of an exercise. Adjust the amount of resistance for an exercise using the adjustment levers on the frame of the arm lever. The resistance adjustments change the percentage of the platform you lift. You also can change the distance you lift the platform; it requires less exertion to press the platform if you set the height to a shorter distance.

Upper Body Exercises

Work your entire upper body on the Gravity Edge machine. Sit on the seat to do chest and shoulder presses, including incline chest presses, close-grip chest presses and military shoulder presses. Kneel on the seat and do exercises for your back and biceps, such as a lat pull-down and biceps curl. For your shoulders, stand on the seat to do bent-over rows, lateral raises, front raises, upright rows, rear shoulder raises and shoulder shrugs. For your triceps, stand on the seat and do dips and triceps pushdowns.

Lower Body and Core Exercises

For lower body exercises, you will mostly stand on the seat. Hold the handles stationary and use your legs to move the weight. For your thighs, do a front squat, dead lift, rear squat or straight-leg dead lift. Work your calves with a standing calf raise. You can do some abdominal exercises on the Gravity Edge machine, but not all the exercises use resistance. Do a standard crunch or reverse crunch with no extra resistance. You can press against the arm levers to add weight to the side bend exercise for your obliques.