Home Gym Equipment: Power Rack
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If you’re serious about building out a home gym, a power rack is a must have. While it’s a large piece of equipment, it will allow for safely executing many weightlifting exercises.
Building out a serious home gym is not a simple or cheap endeavor. I’ve talked about basic fitness equipment, and more advanced equipment to start building out your home gym. Those are all great starting points to begin building out a home gym, but they will become limited quickly.
To build out a competitive replacement to your paid gym membership, you’re going to need somewhere that you can lift weights, and do so safely. A power rack may be your most expensive piece of equipment (unless you’re adding a treadmill or other cardio piece of equipment), but it will also be the central piece of your home gym.
The first consideration when buying a power rack is to figure out how much space you’ve got for it. Specifically, you’ll need to look at how much height you have available, and you’ll need to look at how much depth you have. In terms of width, you’re going to need about 9 feet - a weightlifting bar is 7 feet long and will hand off the edges of your rack. Adding at least a foot to each end for clearance will be required as well - you don’t have much flexibility on your width requirement. In terms of height, ideally you have at least 8 feet, and ideally you have 5 feet of depth.You can get by with less, but it’s going to be tough.
The second consideration when buying a rack is what your budget looks like. You can buy power racks all over the board in terms of price. The more expensive you go, the stronger your rack will be. For a good power rack, you’ll be spending at least $300. Anything below that is generally going to be a compromise.
Once you’ve figured the above out, it’s time to look at racks. Below are a few ideas, along with pros and cons for each item.
Squat stand
If you’re limited in space, then a squat stand may be an option to go with. While they aren’t the best option for all exercises, they are safe enough to use for squats as they have specialized arms to help spot you. They also have a pull up bar attachment at the top which is really helpful.
The downsides to a squat stand is that they’re a bit harder to perform a squat in as you have to perform it a certain way to be safe. They also can’t store as much weight on them as you’re limited in space that way. Also, they’re not helpful for a bench press - you can’t get your bench in far enough to safely perform a bench exercise.
Depending on your needs and space availability, a squat stand may be a good option, but I’d really only go this route if you don’t have the space for something bigger.
Titan T-2 Short Rack
If you have less than 7 feet or less of clearance, then a short rack is going to be your best option. Titan is one of the best power rack companies out there, and they make this short rack that’s just under 6 feet. It should feet in most any space in terms of heights.
The real downside to this rack is the height. If you don’t need a short rack, then I’d skip it. I’m just a shade under 6 feet tall, and this rack is a bit awkward to use as you have to duck under the bars to get in it. I’d only recommend this rack if height is an issue in your space.
I’d prefer this over the squat rack though for a couple of reasons. Namely, it’s a full rack, so you can safely perform squats in it and have safeties that you don’t have to worry about whether you’re over them or not. Secondly, you can perform bench press exercises in it. An additional bonus is that all of the Titan accessories will work in this rack, just as in any of their other racks.
Full power rack
If you have the space, I’d go for this option. You’ll have the full gamut of options available to you in terms of accessories and exercises by going this route. I have a full power rack in my home gym, and I couldn’t be happier with it.
There are two routes for a full power rack. You can go with a basic, no-nonsense option, or you can go with an option that has a few accessories.
For the basic option, I’d once again look to Titan - the standard X-2 model. It’s well built, and has a great company behind it. It has all of the pros of the short rack mentioned above, but without the cons of it. It obviously takes up more space in terms of height, but that can be a good thing as well.
The other option is something with some more accessories. Namely, you’re looking at a rack that has a lat pull down attachment on it. The added bonus to something like this is that you have added some extra exercises that you can do in your home gym. The major downside is that it will likely be a bit more expensive to go with this route. The other downside is you’ll need a bit more space. I actually have this rack, and I love the attachment on it - I use it multiple times per week for different exercises, so I’m really glad I went with it. If you have the space and budget, I’d highly recommend it.
Conclusion
Adding a power rack to your home gym will mean you’re really serious about working out at home. Choosing a rack can be a bit stressful, but it’s really important to get the best option for your money and space available.
