Fitness Reality Power Cage: Your Home Gym Essential

The essentials and the value
TLDR: great value for the price. Hits all the essentials and is efficiently sized.To give context of the type of athlete I am: I strength train consistently, bench 220lbs and squat 275 lbs at 181 lbs. Ultimately, I would consider myself a intermediate weight lifter who trains to be fit and look good.Due to COVID and elevated chances of getting it at a gym, I decided to invest into a home gym; with a Power Rack as my first purchase. My objective was to buy a Power Rack that will be safe to lift moderate to above moderate weight. And of course, I was looking for a product with the best value. I also did not have the option to bolt down a rack or bolt a rack to a studded wall, since it was going to be in an unfinished basement.I researched all of the top brands and read/watched many online reviews (shout out to Cooper at Garage Gym Reviews!). Pretty quick, it became clear that there were two options: go with a top brands like Rogue or go with a budget-friendly brand, many of which can be found on Amazon.The top brands come with a high price tag but you get what you pay for: sturdy and consistently build equipment with great customer service and warranties to back it up. One hiccup in the process was not many items are in stock due to the low supply in the industry. I was turned on to the FR 810xlt from a YouTube review, which concluded that this product has all the essentials needed in a Power Rack for about a quarter of the price of the top brands. I also liked the attachment options – I ended adding four plate storage pins, the dip bars, and landmine attachment. I nearly bought the lat pull down attachment too but found an alternative pulley system that took up less space and was removable (I highly recommend that too – they’re about $50; in contast to the $200+ listed on Amazon for the FR lat pull down attachment).Pros:- It is sturdy… enough. There is a very slight wobble but it’s nothing to be concerned about if you are under the max weight cap. This slight wobble is expected since the rack isn’t bolted in.-The space in the power rack is perfectly sized for one person. Any less space would be too tight to comfortably lift. Any more would take up space for other equipment in your workout area. Perfectly sized for my needs.-The paint quality and finish is not cheap. I have already done my fair share of aggressive barbell reracks and would have thought by now some of the paint would’ve chipped off. I’m happy to report the rack looks fantastic still.-The Price. When I bought this rack a month back, with was ~$250 without the attachments. That’s incredible for the level of quality and costistency offered by this Power Rack. Even if the rack has increased in price due to lack of supply, this is still worth the price point.Cons:-The holes are not numbered. This honestly is not a big deal to me. I’m going to by some magnets to label which holes I use for each exercise.-The rack didn’t come with wrenches for configuration. I ended up having to buy a socket set, which I should’ve had in the first place.-The Packaging is very heavy. Fair warning… You will want someone else with you to carry it. Say sorry to the UPS guy too.-The assembly process was difficult for one person. There’s a lot of bolting and socketing. That was a work out on it’s own. It probably took twice as long for me to set it up since i did it myself. I recommend having someone help you, if possible. The manufacturer recommends that as well.-The pull up bar handles are a little slick. I wish the were knurled or had some texture for a better grip. If that’s a concern for you, you can buy pull up grips on Amazon.-The pin holes are only on two sides of the upright (front and back). Fitness Reality probably did this for the structural integrity reasons. It would be nice to have holes on all for sides. It would allow for so many more attachment options.In conclusion, this rack is one of the best values on the market. I was very close to purchasing a Rouge Monster Lite rack but I decided to take a chance on this rack. I’m very glad I did. I have a feeling this rack is going to be with me for a very long time.

Very happy with this now that the very annoying assembly is behind me. Never taking it apart. Ever.
This is for the lat pull down pulley attachment:I’m very happy with this purchase, it’s going to open up a whole new world of exercises that I can do in my home gym.HOWEVER, I cannot emphasis how annoying it was to put together.1) You will 100% want a socket wrench set2) The arm attachment doesn’t quite reach the pull up bar. You’ll either want someone to help wrench it into place so you can set the bolts or you’ll likely do like I did (see pics) and crank them close to each other using progressively tighter zip ties. There wasn’t quite enough real estate for me to use clamps I usually use to hold PVC pipes or wood.It took me ~2.5 hours to put together and a solid percentage of that was man handling and trouble shooting the overhead arm to get it to attach to the pull up bar. Otherwise it was really straight forward.

10/10 would recommend to anyone looking for a power rack.Tl;Dr – tape the j hook posts as a temporary solution to them spinning out, while waiting to buy better jhooks. Machining of the holes has imperfections that MAY CUT YOU, check and file as nessisary. Impact wrench with 17mm socket, and 17mm wrench needed to righted out the shakiness. A socket wrench instead of impact will do if you have a breaker bar.I tested my 1rm and was comfortable squatting 585 off this rack. I also failed at 605 and dropped in the center of the safety from about 2.5ft, no bending on safety pole, nor on the loading holes on the posts.I would recommend new J hooks, these feel cheep and also tend to rotate when you lift on and off of them. This leads me to the setup I had to do beyond what was instructed:I wrapped the posts of the jhooks in electrical tape so they where tighter in the hole and didn’t have a tendency to rotate as easy.Regarding the build, you will need tools, this DOES NOT come with tools. It comes with one of those flat metal cut outs of a wrench. That may be fine to put together an Ikea lamp, but not adequate for anything load bearing. At the very least you’ll need 2 17mm wrenches, better is a socket wrench. I put it together using a 15mm socket on the nuts with an open end wrench on the bolt to keep it in the place. After tightening the whole thing well, I did notice it has a slight jiggle. And I was also surprised there was no tourqe specs listed. I ended up taking out my 20v impact wrench and retighted all the nuts to the point where I could see slight indentation if I looked hard enough, probably somewhere around 300ft lbs. After doing all that, the jiggle was gone.I also cut my finger running my hand down one of the posts, one of the holes had a burr. Upon checking I found slight sharp burrs in 4 other holes. I filed them down with a flat file.

This is my first rack. I have been using this rack for a few weeks now. I am 6’1 and I am able to do chin ups in, though sometimes my feet hit the floor, either way it still usable. I can also squat and bench inside the rack without any issues. Sometimes its a little difficult doing lunge style squats inside the rack, I have attached safety arms to the outside of the rack to perform them in front of the rack. My only complaint about the chin up bars is that its smooth metal, light gnarling would have been nice for some grip. I worked around this by wrapping hockey tape around the bars for the chin up part, works perfectly. I do weighted chin ups and it feels sturdy to me. My only other complaint about it is that it has no way to secure to the floor. I worked around this by putting “all-round” over the feet and screwing into the floor (able to do so where I have it). This keeps it from tipping and sliding when doing dips off of the dip attachment i bought, and also when doing any band work where I am standing out from the rack. You can also use 6′ barbells with this rack if you are limited on space like me. The collars will be really close to the safeties which can be annoying but they will sit safely outside the J hooks and safety pins. I probably wont be able to push the limits of this for a while, I am only ~160 lbs and only bench ~165 lbs and squat ~170 lbs though I feel like this rack can handle heavier loads (it’s tubular steel). I bought some additional j hooks and safety arms for the outside. The option for attaching a lat pull down machine is a bonus (if it ever comes back in stock); however I was able to build my own upper and lower cable system off of the rack. I built it a few weeks ago, I have only checked the bolts once and all were still as tight as they were when I put it together. Assembly was pretty straight forward, I was able to do it by myself without any issues. The fact that it uses 1″ holes means there are A LOT of compatible attachments.