An abdominal bench having an extendable and retractable assist and resist assembly that will, depending upon how it is connected, provide variable levels of assistance forces to help pivot a torso section of the bench into an upright position and/or variable levels of forces that will resist the pivoting of the torso section. The extendable and retractable assist and resist assembly can include one or more elastic members that can work solely or in tandem to provide the assistance and resistance forces.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO CO-PENDING APPLICATIONS
The present invention is related to the following co-pending U.S. Patent applications: (1) U.S. Pat. No. 6,544,154 entitled "Variable Resistance Abdominal Bench", which issued on Apr. 8, 2003, (2) U.S. Pat. No. 6,844,203 entitled "Abdominal Bench with Constant Gap Torso Cushion", which issued on Apr. 26, 2005; (3) U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/111,994 entitled "Abdominal Bench with Constant Gap Torso Cushion", filed on Apr. 22, 2005; and (4) U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/730,856 entitled "Abdominal Bench", filed on Oct. 28, 2005, which are commonly owned at the time of filing and the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
