My Home Made Squat Cage

archepic · 07-15-2008, 07:38 AM

Hi guys, I know this topic have been discuted on a couple of threads. Instead of posting my pics in every thread I will be doing it here and posting updates about it. I would gladly accept criticism and comments as long as it's constructive. Keep in mind that I started squatting 2 months ago and only doing 200 pounds for 8 reps for now. I could add more but I prefer to refine my technique for now and get used to it. My goal is 300 (my whole olympic set) for 10 reps by the end of the year.

The rack costed me under 50$, mostly coming from the wood. This exclude any tools I bought to build the rack. It also exclude some wood I already had and dumbells bars I cutted and used for racking pin and plate storage.

FYI I do plan to buy a commercial grade cage (or build a metal one) in 2 or 3 years as soon as I buy a house. The main reason is that my current basement is 7" and won't accept any commercial rack. 2nd reason is that I prefer to keep my money to actually buy the house.

archepic · 07-15-2008, 07:45 AM

More details on construction :

Rack : Treated Spruce wood. All plate holders are dumbells cut in half. Racking pins too. I added handles with flex bands scavenged from the flexstation, to do like a crossover machine with 2 height position possible.

Custom bench : A bench I made from scavenged piece of 2 different machine, a York 300 abs bench and a small flexstation. I added a removable preacher curl attachement and it's foldable so I can leave it in a corner when doing squat or deads.

Turboboy · 07-15-2008, 08:02 AM

Damn bro, nice work! Looks pretty damn solid and at a great price. Should give you some great workouts and it looks safe too.

headhuntr · 07-15-2008, 12:34 PM

Looks really nice, great work! You've got talent!

dolson27 · 07-15-2008, 12:48 PM

That is one of the best looking homemade racks I think I've seen in a long time. Very nice job!! It looks to be really sturdy. They only thing extra I would do is either add another line of 2x4s on the inside of the rack running parallel to the outside ones and/or install some corner supports. Your rack probably doesn't need it, but again, I'm overly cautious.

When you do get a house, you're probably better off building another one like that or better yet, keep it for your new home and use the money for weights/dumbbells.

k-wind · 07-15-2008, 01:17 PM

wow nice job.

that could probably last you longer than 2-3 years, like the guy above me said save that money and spend it on food/supplements/equipment etc...

archepic · 07-15-2008, 01:20 PM

Thanks guy, I appreciate !

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turboboy

Damn bro, nice work! Looks pretty damn solid and at a great price. Should give you some great workouts and it looks safe too.

I look forward to !

Quote:

Originally Posted by headhuntr

Looks really nice, great work! You've got talent!

I'm not identifying myself as a manual guy but I look forward being better and do more project like that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dolson27

That is one of the best looking homemade racks I think I've seen in a long time. Very nice job!! It looks to be really sturdy. They only thing extra I would do is either add another line of 2x4s on the inside of the rack running parallel to the outside ones and/or install some corner supports. Your rack probably doesn't need it, but again, I'm overly cautious.

When you do get a house, you're probably better off building another one like that or better yet, keep it for your new home and use the money for weights/dumbbells.

I will definitly add some more 2x4 so it stops rocking when I do chin ups ! Saving money is alway$ a good idea, we'll see how it goes with this rack.