\u201c[Wood] knocked on the door of my house, in my factory, and he showed up with a couple of Bengals,\u201d Jones says. \u201cHe walks in and he looks up\u2014you gotta look up, because it\u2019s over nine feet tall\u2014and he starts laughing and giggling. He goes, \u2018You\u2019re shitting me! What the fuck were you smoking?!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
After a brief explanation on how to get in (a built-in staircase counterbalanced by the movement arm, naturally), Jones says Wood loaded up the machine\u2014and kept loading. After blasting out some sets and clambering down the stairs, Wood rendered his verdict. It\u2019s been more than 30 years, but Jones remembers it along these lines: \u201cI still don\u2019t know what you were smoking, but it was some good shit. We’ll sell that.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was more than 30 years ago, as the story goes. H-Squats were delivered to the Bengals\u2019 weight room, specialty gyms, and even people\u2019s homes; according to Jones, one customer, a contractor, cut a hole in his living room floor to make room, while another went the opposite direction\u2014by digging a trench in his basement.<\/p>\n
Even Donnie Thompson, the first person in history to achieve a 3,000-pound lifting total, bought one new in \u201996 for $3,600 plus shipping, according to an interview<\/a> on the gym YouTube channel Massenomics. Mr. 3000, as he was known, had a flair for nicknames; when he unveiled the H-Squat in his gym, he dubbed it \u201cLegasaurus,\u201d after a giant T-rex-like monster truck in The Simpsons, the \u201cTruckasaurus.\u201d<\/p>\n All in all, the sales department moved roughly 600 Legasauruses (Legasauri?) over a period of 10 or so years, to a slow but loyal group of football teams and gyms. Eventually, the machine was discontinued by the powers that be due to slow sales\u2014there are only so many workout rooms in the country that could even fit one. But the legend of the Legasaurus wouldn\u2019t end there. As long as there were people in Facebook groups<\/a>, forums, and on Reddit<\/a> discussing weightlifting machines, Legasaurus would eventually emerge. The company itself even posted a throwback pic in 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ask Alex Uslar, owner of Ghost Gym<\/a> in Miami. When he started collecting rare gym equipment in the mid-\u201920s, Uslar says that he read up on the subject online. By that point, Legasaurus was well-documented. He knew exactly where to start.<\/p>\n \u201cThe H-Squat was one of the first pieces that I was chasing,\u201d he says. \u201cNow I have eight of the rarest leg presses in the world and seven of the rarest squat-style machines in the world\u2014they just look like small variations of what a typical leg press<\/a> or hip press would look like. The H-Squat was just such a far-out-there, completely different design.\u201d<\/p>\n The lore goes that out of the 600 H-Squats sold, less than 300 of them are left, though Uslar says he\u2019s seen people claim the number should be lower: around 150. That\u2019s incredibly difficult to verify one way or another, but regardless, the going rate of an H-Squat isn\u2019t cheap. \u201cIn 2023, the market on them was already up to six or seven thousand dollars. To give some perspective, a Hammer Strength row machine is worth like a thousand or 1,500 bucks,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n