If you’re ready and motivated to up your workout game, here’s a quality and versatile piece of exercise equipment. The Fitness Reality Power Cage is ideal, especially if you’re already familiar with the machines and equipment at a local gym, and how to use them.
If you don’t have experience with weight machines, hiring a personal trainer would be worth the investment, because this machine will definitely bring your physique up to the next level of muscle development.
If you have an area/section in your house or apartment that’s about 6 feet (72 inches) square, that’s all the room you need for this power cage. It has a width of 46 inches and is 50.5 inches from front to back. With the Lat Pull-Down Attachment installed, there are 68 inches from front to back – enough room for your 6-foot square area.
Your unit is 84 inches high (7 feet) – pullup bars are at the highest point. So ideally, you’d want to have an 8-foot (or higher) ceiling in your house or apartment. This will give you enough room, so your head doesn’t bump the ceiling when doing pullups.
However, if your ceiling is a little lower, you can install the pullup bars inverted. There are also different attachment points for the pull up bar.
This unit is very sturdy, considering its not bolted to the floor like some equipment that’s in your local gym. The bottom feet (bars) are flat, which means your machine won’t tip from side to side or front to back. The square steel frame is 2 inches by 2 inches. It has a back brace bar and length adjustable handles. It uses ball bearing pulleys, and the frame is 11-gauge metal.
Included are two 3 1/4-inch-long chrome lock-on safety bars, and two 23-inch-long chrome dual mounted safety bars. These Safety Bars are compatible with 7-foot Olympic bars (not included). You need to use 2-inch diameter Olympic Plates (also not included).
Your best value is to get the unit with all the optional attachments, shown above. There are optional attachments for J-Hooks, Dip Bars, Weight Plate Holders and a “Landmine” attachment.
A Landmine Attachment attaches to your rack and has an open end. Your barbell slides in the open end and you secure it with a screw. Then you can do a one arm “Landmine Press”. This is like a vertical press, but you’re pressing the barbell up at about a 45-degree angle instead of straight up and down.
You have multi-position over head chin up/pull up grip bars. It includes high and low row pulley systems. It uses a high tensile strength nylon coated cable and an easy glide 2-inch x 2-inch chrome guide rail for smooth operation. Included are one 39-inch bar and one 20-inch low row bar attachment with foam grips.
An extended lower rear cross bar provides extra space for fitting in benches and footrest for seated row exercises. It also comes with a 6. 5-inch-long weight plate storage post. Two 1-inch Spring Clip Collars included. Use it with Olympic or standard weight plates.
A Leg Hold-down can shift along the long safety bars for your comfortable secure position. The height can be adjusted by shifting the long safety bars up or down along the cage height. Two adjustable foam rollers are included.
This is NOT a Smith Machine but has Safety Bar Rack attachment points almost like a Smith Machine. In other words, you can set them up wherever you want, so you’re ready to put the bar back on the rack easy and safely when you’re lifting some heavy weights.
You can attach bars a few feet from the floor, so when you’re squatting with a heavy barbell, you can pause at that point – if for some reason you want to just pause, get tired, or the weight is too heavy, you can just let the bar rest on the bars at that point.
Times given by people to assemble this range from 45 minutes to an hour and a half. Having a power screwdriver makes the process a little easier.
Ways this can be purchased:
Lat Pull-down Attachment Only
Power Cage Only
Cable Crossover + Lat Pulldown Only
Optional items that have to be purchased separately:
Bench – for doing Bench Presses, etc.
Olympic Bars and weight plates
Other optional accessories mentioned above – J-Hook attachments, Dip Bar attachments, Weight Plate Holders, etc.
Examples of exercises you can do:
Squats
Bench Presses
Overhead Presses
Deadlifts
Squats
Lunges
Cable Curls
Cable Squats
Wide Lat Pulldowns
Lat Pullover
Pull Ups – do different kinds – narrow grip, wide grip etc.
Triceps Extensions
Triceps Pushdowns
Seated Rows
This is not a complete list – you can do many other exercises depending on your experience from training in a gym, or what a personal trainer teaches you.
What do users like most about the Fitness Reality Squat Rack Power Cage?
Many users say this unit is manufactured well and built with quality material.
With the optional attachments, people say there aren’t any exercises they can’t do at home, that they would have to go to a gym to do.
Some older (over 50 or 60 years old) users say they can work out alone with this machine, because the “1 inch spotting bars” (as they call them) allow them to rack the weight quickly if they’re trying for extra reps and run out of steam.
Several users have used their machine for well over a year and say it’s still in good condition and working well.
Is this worth buying?
Even the highest price option for this Power Cage unit is a lot cheaper than machines you’ll see at your local gym which cost many hundreds of dollars. Plus, you don’t have to make any trips to the gym.
You can build the muscles in your chest, upper back, shoulders, arms (biceps and triceps), legs, and other areas. Since this is a machine, you can lift a lot of weight safely. Just easily rack your bar if you get a little exhausted.
At an 800-pound weight capacity for the fully optional unit, you can lift as much as you want – only a professional bodybuilder might need more weight than this machine can handle.
So, if you’re ready to step it up a notch or two and get serious about weightlifting, this is the workout machine for you. As long as you have about a 6-foot square area of floor space, and about an 8-foot-high ceiling, you’re ready to go.
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