Building a budget home gym but not sure what to buy? In this article, I review a quarter rack based on cost, effectiveness, versatility and practicality, and tell you whether you should buy it, whether you should consider it, or whether you should avoid it.
Contents
Cost
Effectiveness
Versatility
Practicality
The Verdict
Cost
This is a quarter rack, and it's probably something you'll never see in a commercial gym. This quarter rack is made by a company called GronG, and it's very sturdy, comes with safety bars, plate holders and even dip bars. I bought this quarter rack from Amazon, Japan for ¥15,840. With all these features, that's a bargain!
Coincidentally, the price is about a quarter of what you would pay for a full cage power rack with similar features. But keep in mind that you will also need to purchase a barbell plates and a bench to use with this quarter rack. So in total you'd have to pay around ¥60,000.
For cost, I rate this quarter rack 3.5 stars.
Effectiveness
Barbell exercises engage the most muscles of any type of exercise. I'm sure you've heard of the Big 5. The Big 5 are five barbell exercises, and they are widely known as the best exercises for building overall muscle mass. These exercises are the squat, the bench press, the deadlift, the overhead press, and the barbell row. Of these five very effective exercises, three require a power rack to perform safely at a weight that is still going to achieve effective muscle growth.
As well as barbell exercises, the bars on the back of this quarter rack will allow you to perform dips, which are some of the most effective upper body exercises.
For effectiveness, I rate this quarter rack five stars.
Versatility
In addition to the squat, bench press and overhead press, there are so many exercise variations you can do with this quarter rack. Just to name a few, you can do front squats, Bulgarian squats, lunges, push pulls, behind-the-neck presses, behind-the-back shrugs, incline bench press, and JM press. And of course, let's not forget that the bars at the back of the quarter rack can be used for tricep dips and chest dips.
Something you might not realize is that having a rack, even a quarter rack, provides so many more options in the type of resistance band exercises you can do. Just tie the band around the rack, and now you can do almost any band exercise.
Fore versatility, I rate this product five stars.
Practicality
The biggest advantage to this quarter rack is its practicality. First of all, it has 11 height settings and ten width settings, allowing for fine adjustments to match the dimensions of whoever is using it.
The next advantage to this quarter rack is that it has eight settings for safety bar height. A problem I had when I used to work out in a very popular chain of commercial gyms is that the lowest setting for the safety bar on their brand of power racks was just too low to use a full range of motion in the bench press. Some of you may consider removing the safety bars in this situation, but that is extremely dangerous. An average of 22 people die every year in the U.S. alone from doing this. So obviously, I'm not removing the safety bars.
In order to solve this problem in the commercial gym, I had to put cushioning pads on the bench in order to lift me up so I could use a full range of motion in the bench press while still being safe. But not having a hard, stable surface underneath me prevented me from achieving the maximum effect from the bench press. With this quarter rack, being able to very accurately adjust the height of the safety bars eliminates these problems. In fact, the ideal safety bar setting for me in the bench press is two, so I could actually go lower if I needed to.
But the biggest factor that makes this quarter rack so practical is the height and the width. Even at a height setting of 11, the maximum height of this quarter rack is 141 centimeters. For someone like me, whose home gym has a ceiling height of 210 centimeters with a light and air conditioner that come even lower than that, I just can't fit any of the full rack or even half rack products that are available into my home gym. And being able to adjust the width anywhere between 72 and 117 centimeters means you can probably get this quarter rack to fit even in the narrowest of home gyms.
And if you're wondering how safe this quarter rack is, it has a guaranteed tolerance of 200 kilograms. Unless you're a competitive international powerlifter, you'll never get anywhere near lifting that amount of weight.
For practicality, I rate this quarter rack five stars.
The Verdict
These are the results for this quarter rack, but now it's time for the big question: should you buy it, should you consider it, or should you avoid it?
This quarter rack is a product you should consider. This quarter rack will fit into almost any home gym, it can be adjusted to perfectly match the size of anyone who uses it, and it will allow you to do many very effective exercises. The plates holders are very useful as they help save a lot of space, and the dip bars are an excellent addition, as they allow you to do other exercises than just barbell exercises.
But in order to get the most out of this quarter rack, you will need to buy a barbell, plates, and a bench, and in total, that's quite a large investment. And of course, if you have the extra money and space and unlike me, you don't have a low ceiling, then probably it would be best to get a full rack or a half rack that comes with not only plate holders and dip bars, but also a pull up bar and maybe even a built in cable pulley system.
For the most effective fitness and nutrition in the shortest amount of time, contact Tokyo Titan
I am Tokyo Titan, an International Sports Science Association certified bodybuilding specialist personal trainer and nutritionist. Using advanced bodybuilding techniques, I develop a fully customized program optimized for each of my clients' individual needs. Lessons can be provided online, at a convenient location of your choosing, or at my personal gym in Ota City, Tokyo, just 4 minutes walk from Omori-machi Station on the Keikyu Line.
I am also a bilingual English and Japanese speaker, and provide lessons in either language. If you want to build up your language skills and your body at the same time for more lessons, contact me today!
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