My Home Gym: BodyCraft F430 Rack, F602 Bench, Oly Weights

marathonic

Last week, I paid the balance of my order with PowerHouseFitness and cancelled my current gym membership (they have no powercage so I was doing a dumbbell routine). The following is what I ordered:

Bodycraft F430 Power Rack
Bodycraft F432 Dip Attachment
Bodycraft F602 FID Bench
235 KG Olympic Weight set
and a free belt and gloves


I'll post a follow up with photos later this week.
For those of you interested, PowerHouseFitness do a flat £45 shipping to Ireland for most orders – couldn’t believe that was the shipping rate for a delivery that’s almost 400kg in weight. Also, never buy directly off the site – they have room for bargaining the price down if you contact them on the telephone or via Live Help on the site.

I’d looked at a lot of racks including the Bodymax CF375 and CF475 – two cheaper options from PowerHouseFitness. I also looked at the two options from Irish Lifting.

I was turned off the Bodymax CF375 by this post: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=123957191. When buying a rack, I want to be confident that the rack will support the weight should I fail and that thread didn’t inspire confidence. There’s a chance it’d be fine but, having read the above, it’d always be in the back of my mind and affect my training.

A useful site for comparing racks is http://bodybuilding.wikkii.com/wiki/Power_Racks. In this site, you’ll see that the Bodymax CF375 is only 101lbs in weight (about 46kg). The Bodymax CF475 appears to be a better option at 152lbs (about 69kg). This is quoted as the same weight as the lighter of the two Irish Lifting racks – their racks are the TDS models.

Given the choice of the Bodymax CF475 or the cheaper of the Irish Lifting racks, I’d probably go for the Irish Lifting one because it’s an Irish site, the price difference is minimal, you get free delivery if you order over 500 euros worth of equipment and, perhaps most importantly, I believe the spacing between the holes on the rack is smaller on Irish Lifting’s rack – meaning there’s a better chance of a good fit when adjusting the safeties.

However, I decided to go for better quality again – taking into consideration the safety aspect and the fact that, regardless of which of the racks that I’m discussing here are purchased, they should always hold a lot of their value. I’m assuming they’ll hold 60% of their value when selling them so, if the need arises, I’ll get €60 back out of every €100 I spend.

Therefore, I had a look at this package: http://www.powerhouse-fitness.co.uk/bodycraft-power-rack-system-bench-and-200lb-stack.php and put down a £20 deposit. That was over a month ago and they hadn’t got the rack in stock at that time but were expecting it soon. The package was priced at £779.99 at that time. I checked their site last week and was surprised at the huge price increase. I then got in touch with them via LiveHelp (on their site) and was told that they would honor the original price. One change I had requested originally, and am still going with, is to replace the Lat Pulldown, Low Pulley, and 200lb Weight Stack with a 235Kg olympic weight set. They said they could do this at the same price.

According to the website above, the BodyCraft F430 rack weights 282lbs (about 128kg). That’s not far off double the weight and is even heavier than the Irish Lifting’s heavier model – which weighs 250lbs according to the same website. One disadvantage is that the BodyCraft is rated to 800lbs as opposed to the 1000lbs for Irish Liftings rack but 800lbs will be more than enough for me. The weight of both racks should mean that they won’t budge when you are doing chinups/pullups either.

I’ve read multiple reviews of the BodyCraft F430. A lot of them advise you to buy extra J-Hooks so that you can do standing O/H press off the front of the rack. More recent reviews have stated that BodyCraft updated the design for 2011 and the 2011 model has extra J-Hooks attached to the front of the safeties which means that extra hooks may no longer be required. I’ll confirm this when I receive the rack.

Regarding the bench, the F602 seems a good quality bench but, according to the reviews I’ve read, you’ll not be able to do seated O/H presses inside the rack because, when the bench is upright, it won’t get close enough to the rear uprights to grab the bar. Some have suggested doing seated O/H presses with the bench flat to alleviate this problem. Others have suggested getting the BodyCraft F320 instead as this bench was designed to avoid this problem.

Again, I'll follow up this post with plenty of photos in case any of you are interested in purchasing any of this equipment.

Satanta

Nice looking set up. That would buy me 5 years gym membership though.

marathonic

Satanta wrote: »

Nice looking set up. That would buy me 5 years gym membership though.

Yeah, that's how I used to look at it but now I look at it as saving me roughly half an hour per gym session. If you go to the gym 3 times a week, that's 78 hours of saved time in a year. It also saves on fuel costs and so on for travelling to and from the gym.

Funk It

marathonic wrote: »

Yeah, that's how I used to look at it but now I look at it as saving me roughly half an hour per gym session. If you go to the gym 3 times a week, that's 78 hours of saved time in a year. It also saves on fuel costs and so on for travelling to and from the gym.

Jesus, you have all bases covered. Good set up, and if your happy with it, and most importantly, that you will make the best out of it then fair play, nothing like having a decent set up around the house as well. How many more would spend the same amount on alcohol over a few months. Fair play, and hope that you enjoy your new toys

Michael 09

I can't believe that you haven't invited us over to use it yet.

Marathonic you are so rude sometimes

marathonic

Well, the stuff arrived today. Just after finishing up getting it set up.

They seem to have delivered 185kg weights as opposed to 235kg but they sent the lat pulldown, low pulley attachement as well so I'm happy enough with that.










As you can see, there are bar hooks on the front of the safeties which, as I said in my OP, are a new addition to the 2011 model of the rack.

You can also see the dip attachments on the right hand side of the rack.

It's a very sturdy set up and I'm really looking forward to using it. Just need to come up with a new workout routine now

marathonic

Michael 09 wrote: »

I can't believe that you haven't invited us over to use it yet.

Marathonic you are so rude sometimes

lol.... you'd have some travelling to do if ya wanted to use it - with me being from Donegal.

Satanta

Another Donegal man. Cool. If you are ever about lk community centre gym gimme a shout!

Zamboni

Nice set up marthonic.
Get onto them about the missing weights!

Satanta wrote: »

Another Donegal man. Cool. If you are ever about lk
community centre gym gimme a shout!

I'll be training in that gym myself this weekend.
Grand little spot. Cheap too.

john t

Good equiptment very nice....

Mellor

How tall is it? or specifically, how much overhead space is there inside the cage. Looks tight for pressing. Although, the outside hooks means this isn't an issue

Limousine Fred

Nice setup mate check out http://www.alkavadlo.com/ for some good bodyweight workouts etc ...

marathonic

Mellor wrote: »

How tall is it? or specifically, how much overhead space is there inside the cage. Looks tight for pressing. Although, the outside hooks means this isn't an issue

Yeah, I haven't tried pressing inside it but, according to a review I read before buying, someone at 5ft 9" was saying they can just about press inside it but if they were any taller, they couldn't. I'll be just pressing outside it though.

That's why I'm so happy it's the 2011 model they were stocking.

marathonic

I asked them about the missing weights and it turned out they were out of stock of 25kg plates. They offered to replace them with different sized discs or wait until the 25kg ones were back in stock.

I opted to wait until the 25kg ones were back in stock (next week) because:

• They should place the bar in a better position for deadlifts
• Excercises where I hold a plate (such as oblique twists) are easier with one 25kg plate than they would be holding a couple of smaller ones

As they are delivering anyway, I asked PowerHouseFitness whether I could add a couple of things to the order without paying additional delivery - as they'd be shipping the plates anyway.

They've agreed with this and I'm getting the following items:

http://www.powerhouse-fitness.co.uk/bodymax-pro-leather-dipping-belt.php

http://www.powerhouse-fitness.co.uk/bodymax-tricep-rope-cable-attachment.php

I'll have no use for the belt yet but, hopefully, this will change pretty soon. I thought I might as well add them now when getting free delivery.

Overall, I'm very happy with PowerhouseFitness and have found Lisa (the person who seems to deal with most of their online sales) very good to deal with.

marathonic

Just one further piece of information - I've just noticed that you can get 10% cashback through www.FatCheese.ie with Powerhousefitness.

I didn't go through FatCheese but I got a good deal anyway via the LiveChat on their site.

marathonic

Just a quick update, I've now got my two 25kg plates, tricep rope and dipping belt.

My maxes so far in dips and chinups is 3 * 12 and 3 * 8 respectively. I'm not sure what to do regarding adding weight. The 12 reps in the dips is probably enough to start considering adding weight to the third set but I'd like to build up the volume in the chinups before adding weight. Maybe I'll just add a 4th set to each with 5kg added. Have you any thoughts?

I'll probably use the triceps rope for some ab excercises but not just yet - the 25kg plates will be sufficient for weighted crunches and oblique twists for now.

My lifts are currently at 80kg for squat and 115kg for deadlift. The plates I have total 235kg so it will be quite a while before I need additional plates - if ever.

marathonic

DUPLICATE (didn't see the 15th post on this and thought I'd forgotten to provide an update)

Thud

How much are you charging for membership?

marathonic

Thud wrote: »

How much are you charging for membership?

I've decided to keep them as ornaments. I regret getting the 25kg plates. I wasn't aware of the fact that they would make the bar more difficult to Press....

Power1987

marathonic wrote: »

I've decided to keep them as ornaments. I regret getting the 25kg plates. I wasn't aware of the fact that they would make the bar more difficult to Press....

Hello. I am about to buy the same package as you did although it has gone up in price a fair bit since 2 years ago. Would you say it is worth it now that you have owned it 2 years? Any drawbacks you could tell me about? Any help would be appreciated.