So this has been bothering me for a long time… This rack is in the free-weight area in my gym. I always knew it wasn’t a power rack, and for the longest time I thought this was a Squat Rack mostly because my gym doesn’t have an actual squat rack (although the school gym has one, so when I saw that one I had a kinda epiphany).
Here’s a picture of the rack. It’s just kinda always bothered me a little that I have no idea what to call the rack.
Other question…
The rack has these… steps… on it that are hinged to be out of the way when they’re not needed. I have yet to figure out what they’re for. The thing that always puzzled me about these steps is that, when you look from the side, the step only clears the J-hooks on the “front” of the rack by about 1". The only thing I can think of is that the steps are to give you a 5"-ish boost to the chin-up grips, but am I missing something? One time I tried to use the steps to give my lunges a little extra ROM, but that didn’t quite work as intended…
Pic related, it’s the steps (one up, one down).
EDIT: ATTACH YOU DAMN PICTURE!
I’d call it an open top rack.
[quote]samdan wrote:
So this has been bothering me for a long time… This rack is in the free-weight area in my gym. I always knew it wasn’t a power rack, and for the longest time I thought this was a Squat Rack mostly because my gym doesn’t have an actual squat rack (although the school gym has one, so when I saw that one I had a kinda epiphany).
Here’s a picture of the rack. It’s just kinda always bothered me a little that I have no idea what to call the rack.[/quote]
I’d call it ‘Never-been-used Rack’, or a multi-purpose rack.
I can’t help but notice the hardwood floor. Was it a dance studio at one time?
Looks like a multi purpose rack,
[quote]imhungry wrote:
I’d call it ‘Never-been-used Rack’, or a multi-purpose rack.
I can’t help but notice the hardwood floor. Was it a dance studio at one time?
[/quote]
I wish I could tell you that you’re not right, but in my experience you kinda are… I see loaded bars in the rack from people doing god-knows-what (the bottom bars, unmovable, are too high to even do floor presses, and I have long arms…). I’ve seen a grand total of maybe five people in two years doing squats or military presses or hang cleans in there (although I lift in the morning exclusively, and avoid the rush like the plague)…
As far as the floor, the whole area is carpeted outside of the area immediately surrounding the black rubber under the rack. The power rack on the other side of the room has the same rubber surrounded by wood thing. I don’t know what the building was before it was a gym, but assuming I can remember the area well enough from my freshman year, I believe it was built specifically for the gym and spa that are in the building.
Edit: Oh yeah, I finally saw Belt Man in the gym today. He had a very thin belt (maybe 1.5" all the way around) for his entire exercise which I think he pulled out of frat boy weekly (looked like early 30’s)… Curled in the whatever rack with 75# total (there’s a preacher station RIGHT NEXT TO THE FUCKING RACK!!!), then went downstairs for hammer curls and tricep-on-inclined-bench curls. I think he did some other stuff, but in the time it took him to rest between a set of hammer curls, I did a full set of 15 Kroc rows, rested, and started another set of Kroc rows.
Dunno but I wouldnt mind one of those at my house. Looks pretty handy for pretty much everything.
The panels would be for the pull up bars as well, I should imagine.
I lol’d at the thought of those panels sliding out from under someone as they lunged.
[quote]samdan wrote:
Other question…
The rack has these… steps… on it that are hinged to be out of the way when they’re not needed. I have yet to figure out what they’re for. The thing that always puzzled me about these steps is that, when you look from the side, the step only clears the J-hooks on the “front” of the rack by about 1". The only thing I can think of is that the steps are to give you a 5"-ish boost to the chin-up grips, but am I missing something? One time I tried to use the steps to give my lunges a little extra ROM, but that didn’t quite work as intended…
Pic related, it’s the steps (one up, one down).
[/quote]
Yes. What the fuck are these, and what the fuck are they for!?!? It’s been bugging me for years. All I can do is sit on them between sets.
The steps are for deficit deads?
I would fucking destroy that wood floor with heavy weights… Hell I would get tossed from that gym so fast.
The steps are there so when you move a free bench under there to do Incline bench press, a spotter can stand on them and actually spot you.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
The steps are for deficit deads?
I would fucking destroy that wood floor with heavy weights… Hell I would get tossed from that gym so fast.
[/quote]
With the bars across the bottom, your weights won’t even touch the ground unless something goes horribly wrong. My forearms, in a floor press position, are ~15" long, and my elbows miss the ground by about an inch when I do barbell floor presses in the rack.
[quote]John S. wrote:
The steps are there so when you move a free bench under there to do Incline bench press, a spotter can stand on them and actually spot you.[/quote]
That makes sense, I guess. And thinking about it and comparing it in my head to the incline bench station in the gym, definitely syncs.
[quote]samdan wrote:
countingbeans wrote:
The steps are for deficit deads?
I would fucking destroy that wood floor with heavy weights… Hell I would get tossed from that gym so fast.
With the bars across the bottom, your weights won’t even touch the ground unless something goes horribly wrong. My forearms, in a floor press position, are ~15" long, and my elbows miss the ground by about an inch when I do barbell floor presses in the rack.
[/quote]
Nah, stand on the steps, facing the long back of the rack, put the BB in the space between the catches and the weights.
Wa-La, deficit deads.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
Nah, stand on the steps, facing the long back of the rack, put the BB in the space between the catches and the weights.
Wa-La, deficit deads.
[/quote]
That’s something I never thought of, might have to try that sometime… In the gym’s defense, the rubber IS wide enough for your deads.
[quote]samdan wrote:
countingbeans wrote:
Nah, stand on the steps, facing the long back of the rack, put the BB in the space between the catches and the weights.
Wa-La, deficit deads.
That’s something I never thought of, might have to try that sometime… In the gym’s defense, the rubber IS wide enough for your deads.[/quote]
That is cool. Floor looks real nice too, would be a shame to utterly destroy it.
We have 4 of those in my gym, along with regular squat racks, and no power-cages.
I use that rack for rack pulls, military press, and shrugs. I will sometimes squat in it, but because of the distance between the hooks and my height, one hook is too low and one hook is too high.
It is also a bit hard to walk out heavy (500+) squats, as the bars that hold the foldaway platforms are kind of in the way of my feet.