RS Tether and Maintenance – GymAware

The RS tether is new and improved!

It boasts the following features to ensure that your GymAware is even more durable:

Withstands up to 113kg (250lbs) of strain before breaking (compared to 65kg of our previous tether)
12ft in length (compared to 10ft of our previous tether)
Comes with a magnetic strap for ease of attachment
Much easier to change yourself than our previous tethers

In the unlikely event that you do have issues with the tether, please watch the following videos or get in contact with us.

Prevention: 

The GymAware RS is designed to handle the weights room environment, however, there are a couple of considerations which will help prevent tether issues. Be controlled when dumping the bar - from the shoulders, from the catch, instructing the athletes to be mindful of violent releases. It is the sudden shock of the reversing tether direction which can cause the ether to become tangled or damage the spring inside the spool mechanism. 

Causes of a slack tether can be: 

Over extension - the tether tries to extend beyond the 12ft (3.6m) of its total length. This can be due to a bar bouncing and rolling away from an athlete.  Violent retraction - sounds nasty, well it is!

By letting go of the tether when it is in an extended position causes the spring to snap it back into place. This increase in shock can cause the tether to loop over itself and thus seizing the spool. This is easy to mitigate by not letting the tether go at extension.  

Forced rotation of spool:

Should the tether become tangled for whatever reason and the unit opened to correct the tether position, care needs to be taken to not force the rotation of the spool - this can bend the spring - more information, including videos and images can be found here.

Is your tether not retracting all the way in, or does it feel stuck?

I wonder if the tether is not threaded correctly?

If you remove the endcap and then check the path that the tether follows through the angle sensor.

Make it like the pic below. As it leaves the spool in needs to go around the base guide of the angle sensor and then up in between the two brass guide pins. Does your tether look like the picture below?