Hi all, We are making offers on some houses in greater London, and I want to make sure the house I make an offer on has space to set up a squat rack/cage.
Some basic queries:
1 - I have shortlisted to Bodypower Titan and Bodycraft F430 having tried both in stores. Is it a must to bolt these to the floor, and how easy is it to do that? Can I have them non bolted? I am not planning to squat over 315 lb, Bench will be around 250 max
I have never tried Rogue folding rack. Are the support arms good enough for above weight? Is it too cumbersome to fold/unfold every session.
Do typical garage shed floors in the UK have any issues while deadlifting 315 - 405? Do they need reinforcement?
The rack will likely be fine strength-wise but it’s the sideways force of the loaded bar slamming into the hooks that will destabilise the rack if it’s not bolted down.
That being said, I have mine bolted to thick decking planks (like skis) so there’s more front-back stability as I wasn’t sure I could sink anchor bolts accurately enough. It’s been fine and the wood has kept the rack off the floor when it gets wet/damp in the winter (unless your floor is new enough to have been tanked) and it means I can move the rack about to get new bits in.
I deadlift with 20kg bumpers as my first plates to avoid damaging the floor but you could also put a sheet of plywood down with some plastic van flooring stuck to it. 3 coats of garage floor paint have been fine for the last couple of years.
My matting in the rack is 43mm thick with a grid base like multiple tiny stilts - this helps drain trapped water when my garage floods but it does feel a bit spongy underfoot at load. If my garage was guaranteed dry, I’d go for a simple solid rubber crumb tile at least 20mm thick for anywhere I might drop or dump the bar (hasn’t happened yet!). Again, I have plastic van matting around the rack for dropped plates or chains to stop them chewing up the cement floor.
I have the Strength Shop Thor rack - it was on offer, and their QC isn’t the greatest: the black powder coat parts (main uprights and upper cross struts) are great. The yellow hooks and lower crosspiece on mine are painted and it chips as soon as you look at them. The safeties are 25mm thick probably because the steel is cheap, so needs to be excessively thick to make the 400kg rating. Some curved bits of the safeties need judicious application of a 2x4 and a hammer to stop them jamming. The bar knurl is grinding down the hooks (I’ve covered mine in plastic pipe). That said, it’s never rusted and it’s always done the job these 5 years.
My first bar was a chrome Wolverson 28mm - it’s fine but it’s slippery above 120kg so relegated to squats only now.
I use the Strength Shop 10kg 15mm bar for bench as I’m tight for space and it’s less than 6 feet long but rackable. Terrible quality but sharp knurling works with some chalk. I use 10mm thick laser-cut flat steel plates made by Watson Gym for bench and loadable dumbbells as they take up little room on short bars but they were pretty expensive for what they are.
ATX Ram bar for deadlifts and pulls is great. 28.5mm but does rust if you don’t keep it wiped down over winter.
Also made myself a cable lat pull-down and row inside the rack by mounting commercial pulleys across the top of the rack (oak boards with Grade 8 steel fixings) and into the floor, then getting a plate-loadable pin and few custom length cables made up.
Edit: missed your question about bolts - you can get Rawl anchor bolts from Screwfix or eBay and they are easy to use. Just make sure your drill is up to the task - an 18V hammer model with the right (over)sized masonry bit at minimum; SDS mains drill preferably. My little 14.4V struggled and it took 2 days to drill one hole for the floor pulley (not even kidding). Also make sure you drill deep enough - if the bolt bottoms out in the hole on hard concrete, the end of the thread will shred and you’ll never get it out again.
Also decide in advance if having the rack square with the floor (most garage floors slant towards the door), the walls, or the ceiling rafters while you bench is most important or it may drive you insane - one or more of them will be wonky with respect to the others.
The Ram Bar is a good all-round powerlifting bar and I like that it’s 28.5mm as I have small hands. It feels very ‘dry’ to grip though even the unknurled part tears up my shins if I don’t wear long socks.
The Wolverson is the all-chrome version of their Foundation bar, which is a CrossFit bar with dual rings but no centre knurl. It’s a ‘medium’ knurl but I found the chrome quite slippery. Because the Ram is more secure it tears my hands up less, hence I just squat with the Wolverson bar now (and I squat quite low-bar so the centre knurl wouldn’t touch my back even if I had it).
I have 3 bars mainly so I don’t have to keep manoeuvring them in and out of the rack when there’s not a lot of side room (and I’m lazy).
I squat and deadlift ~140kg on a good day, so no issues with those loads on my floor or rack so far.