The offer came from Lindsey Hytrek, not Michael Corleone. But like the young Mafioso in Francis Ford Coppola’s first-rate film “The Godfather,” the Public Relations Account Coordinator at ChicExecs Brand Strategy in San Marcos, California made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Since I prefer a UPS delivery on my porch to a horse head in my bed, I said yes.

Doing so has added variety, specificity, and at times tremendous intensity to my weightlifting workouts. It also eliminated any chance that one of them will end with me “swimming with the fishes” in cement shoes.

The offer? “Would you like me to send you a pair of YBells?”

So what are YBells?

While they’re a bit hard to describe - which is why an image has been supplied - their purpose isn’t to replace your need for dumbbells, kettlebells, and medicine balls. The ingenious multi-handle design allows for this by changing the YBells’ weight distribution and function.

Grip a YBell by the center handle in the middle of the triangular piece, and it feels like a dumbbell - a rather well-balanced one at that. Grip one of the outside handles, and it functions as a kettlebell.

Hold one with both hands during leg work at waist level, shoulder level, or above your head, and it does the job of a medicine ball.

And just for good measure: You can place a pair on the floor and do pushups holding the top handles.

Since you’re able to go deeper than a normal pushup, the movement is more difficult and more effective than doing so with your palms on the floor. And if you’re an absolute exercise animal, you’ll twist your torso at the top of each pushup, lift one YBell off the floor, and raise it upward.

Go to the YBell website, and you can watch that mean feat, as well as other instructional videos. Some are for the first-timer, others for the super-fit, but every one makes it clear that using YBells is an effective way to work out at home while saving time and space.

What’s not as obvious is the purpose of the remainder of this column. YBell tutorials abound on the internet, and in this instance a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, so what else can I share with you?

The mad scientist in me to inspire the saner one in you.

The first video I watched was a complete 30-minute full-body workout combining weightlifting and cardiovascular work; therefore, I didn’t think YBells would be right for me. Soon to be 61 years old and still riding a bicycle about 600 hours a year, the last thing I need when I work out with weights is to keep my heart rate constantly elevated.

I need to take the targeted muscles to failure, allow those muscles to rest, and then take them to failure again and again. So here’s how I worked my pecs and lats one day using YBells in an up-the-ladder-down-the-ladder pattern.

I set the adjustable bench at a 15-degree angle and did flyes to muscle failure. Immediately afterwards, I did an abdominals exercise, allowing my pecs to recover.

I changed the angle of the bench to 30 degrees and then did both exercises again.

I continued working like this, increasing the bench angle to 45, 60, and 75 degrees before reducing the angle similarly and finishing with a 10th set and the bench flat.

To target the lats, I set the incline at 15 degrees, lay face down upon the bench, picked up the YBells as if they were kettlebells, and did rows. I took the lats to failure, recovered by working my abs, and then continued with the intent of repeating the aforementioned up-the-ladder-down-the-ladder pattern.

But a 75-degree angle was too steep and a flat bench didn’t allow for a full movement, so I stopped after seven lats/abs sets, put away the YBells, and finished the workout with some core work, including seated trunk rotations where I used a YBell instead of a medicine ball.

On the lifting days I work my legs, I’ve learned that YBells provide better balance than dumbbells when I do any variation of a lunges, especially side-to-side; all types of squats, including one-legged split-squats; and a version of deadlifts designed for cyclists to improve pedaling power and found in the book Maximum Overload for Cyclists (Rodale, 2017).

On days I work my biceps and delts, I’ve discovered something that - if you experience aches and pains while lifting because of past injuries - could be a game changer. The early-workout aches and pains I used to sometimes get in my hands, wrists, arms, and shoulders from gripping and using dumbbells don’t seem to occur when I use YBells.

I believe that’s because YBells are well-balanced. If fact, they’re so well-balanced that the 22.5-pound ones I have feel as light to me as my standard 20-pound dumbbells.