How to Convince Gym to Buy Power Rack

Yes, you heard it right. My gym has neither a power rack or a squat stand. Yet I used to swear by them. You see, it used to have a great power rack until some jacked powerlifter decided to do a squat PR, failed miserably and broke his leg. Then they replaced it with a smith machine (The second goddamn one) and suddenly my gym turned to a private fitness club. I’ve been squatting for like 2 months putting the barbell on the parallel dip bars, but that really pissed some guys off (Who advised me to use the smith machine since “they’re the same thing”) and it takes a LOT of toil plating the bars on and off (Doing that actually raised my physics grade to A+ as I fully grasped torque by doing so). BUT, my torque understanding eluded me the last time I did squats and the weights fell BOOM BOOM BOOM on the floor. I attempted to leave the gym in shame but not before a personal trainer scolded me.

So here’s the question, how do I convince my gym to buy a power rack in such circumstances? I’m planning on appealing to their own profit by saying that I have 3 friends who are olympic lifters that won’t join the gym unless there’s a power rack and also give scientific evidence why the smith machine is less safe than a power rack and furthermore draw a plan for the gym itself with the power rack (Perhaps also threaten to leave myself?). Any more tips?

Go to a different gym.

Nail a piece of paper that says “YOU” on the door of the gym with a hunting knife.

oh, and on the note at the bottom it says : “GET A SQUAT RACK”

Good luck with that one.

I had no luck pleading with my gym to get dumbbells higher that 75’s.

[quote]Rhino Jockey wrote:
Go to a different gym.[/quote]
This

The only thing is switching gyms is not a viable option currently. I’m underaged to join another gym myself and my parents are content with this “fitness club”. I have memories trying to turn them into strength training in vain. Does anyone have any idea how much a squat stand or a power rack costs with international shipping? If it costs below $4500 I think I’ve devised a plan.

I would put in a comment card telling them that you have nowhere to perform standing barbell curls.

You should have several power racks within the week.

You can get a squat rack with safety bars from Ironmind.com for about $600.

I would buy a squat rack myself and hurl it through the front window of the gym. That’ll get the point across. If they flip out about the window just tell them it’s an even trade for the rack.

[quote]hockeydawg wrote:
I would put in a comment card telling them that you have nowhere to perform standing barbell curls.

You should have several power racks within the week. [/quote]

Hahaha, you made my day!

[quote]Jason van Wyk wrote:
You can get a squat rack with safety bars from Ironmind.com for about $600. [/quote]

And considering that is a huge thing, how much shipping cost would it have?

It kind of depends on where you live. What are you, Finnish? EDIT: Ah, Turkish. Google squat rack, power rack and so on combined with the turkish word for buy, “for sale” or something like that. Do you have an equivalent to ebay? Look there. Ask the gym where they bought their equipment.

Weightlifting is a somewhat big sport over there, no? There’s got to be a national distributor of exercise equipment.

You can mostly get an estimate if you go to a site, click add to cart, checkout, fill in shipping details and then you get an estimate. But shipping is of course pretty expensive. you should be able to get something pretty decent for a lot less than 4500 dollars though.

Tell the employees if they don’t put your squat rack back…you’re going to blow up the building

The only equivalent of ebay I found in Turkey has only 11lbs York dumbbells at preposterous prices. No luck on that. Amazon.com does not ship power racks to Turkey, though I’m not sure about Amazon.co.uk. Might you have any ideas? Interesting thing is that most weightlifting clubs (Which are usually dungeons) have squat stands made by carpenters or just use two sturdy pillars. One thing is that if they had a power rack once, they probably can gain access to it one more time with enough “compelling”.

[quote]UNCheavylifter wrote:
Tell the employees if they don’t put your squat rack back…you’re going to blow up the building[/quote]

I plan on doing the equivalent of this on every piece of sophisticated technogym fitness machinery.