Full Rack vs. Half Rack

I’m planning for my home gym and I am trying to decide between a full rack and a half rack.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what can be accomplished with a full rack that can’t be accomplished with a half rack. Am I just missing the obvious?

Here are a couple of examples. What can I accomplish with the first link that I can’t accomplish with the second?

http://www.shoppowertecfitness.com/product.php?id=23
http://www.shoppowertecfitness.com/product.php?id=24

Thanks for the help…

If I were deciding between the two you posted, I would go with the half. I wanted a half for my home gym, but couldnt find one in my price range that had a pullup bar. I needed the pullup bar on the rack to mazimize space.

I like the “open” feeling of the half rack. With the full rack, If I’m doing something with alot of weight inside the rack and then I want to move the bar outside the rack, its a pain in the ass.

If I were deciding between the two you posted, I would go with the half. I wanted a half for my home gym, but couldnt find one in my price range that had a pullup bar. I needed the pullup bar on the rack to mazimize space.

I like the “open” feeling of the half rack. With the full rack, If I’m doing something with alot of weight inside the rack and then I want to move the bar outside the rack, its a pain in the ass.

id go for the half, fuck paying an extra $300+ for a pull up bar.

with that money you could buy an adjustable cable stack you could do rows, pulldowns, pressdowns, cable curls, etc with.

ok so itd be more than $300 for a pulldown/row setup but IMO youre gonna need to drop at least 5k on equipment if you want a decent home gym.

but i really wanna stress i think a commercial gym is much more worth it than a home gym.

are there really NO gyms where you live? i find that hard to believe unless you either work odd hours or live in East Bumfuck and have to drive 45 minutes to and fro Ma and Pa’s Lift-O-Rama

if you bought that half rack

this cable station

http://www.pro-fitness.com/Lat_Pulldown_Cable_Crossover.htm

and a leg press, hack squat, or front squat machine (+2,000)

youd be at ~$5500 w/o plates.

Home gyms are only better if you plan on living in that house for years.

The convienence just cant be beat.

Even then Id still perfer to lift in a commercial gym, you make friends, you get to look at girlies, etc.

If you’re going to drop a grand on a power cage/ rack, you might as well get the full one. Do you really want to eventually be doing 600lb rack pulls off those bars in the half rack? The full rack looks much more solid. That’s just me tho. It is a tough decision.

[quote]LiveFromThe781 wrote:
id go for the half, fuck paying an extra $300+ for a pull up bar.

with that money you could buy an adjustable cable stack you could do rows, pulldowns, pressdowns, cable curls, etc with.

ok so itd be more than $300 for a pulldown/row setup but IMO youre gonna need to drop at least 5k on equipment if you want a decent home gym.

but i really wanna stress i think a commercial gym is much more worth it than a home gym.

are there really NO gyms where you live? i find that hard to believe unless you either work odd hours or live in East Bumfuck and have to drive 45 minutes to and fro Ma and Pa’s Lift-O-Rama[/quote]

Well actually this half-rack also has the pull-up station so there’s no compromise there.

Space is a consideration and the half-rack obviously takes up less space…but what I am trying to determine is do I lose any functionality by going with the half rack.

As far as a commercial gym in my area, there are only two that are close enough to be feasible and they both f**king suck. Believe me if I had convenient access to some of the gyms that I see T-Nation members going to in the little clips they post up, that is definitely what I would be doing.

[quote]jbmfsu wrote:
I like the “open” feeling of the half rack. With the full rack, If I’m doing something with alot of weight inside the rack and then I want to move the bar outside the rack, its a pain in the ass.[/quote]

Good point…never thought of that.

[quote]elano wrote:
If you’re going to drop a grand on a power cage/ rack, you might as well get the full one. Do you really want to eventually be doing 600lb rack pulls off those bars in the half rack? The full rack looks much more solid. That’s just me tho. It is a tough decision.[/quote]

The rack/catches on the half rack are rated to 1500 lbs. so I don’t see those as limiting since I will never be pulling anywhere close to that.

[quote]JPCleary wrote:
LiveFromThe781 wrote:
As far as a commercial gym in my area, there are only two that are close enough to be feasible

[/quote]

it takes me 45mins to get to my gym and 45mins to get home from my gym. it’s worth it.

So how 'bout it? Can anyone give me an example of functionality that I lose with the half-rack. So far the only example I’ve gotten is in favor of the half-rack in that it is easier to move a loaded bar from the j-hooks to the platform from a half rack.

Actually I just thought of one, without the full rack you couldn’t do reverse band deadlifts because you wouldn’t have the top of the rack to attach the bands to.

[quote]JaX Un wrote:
JPCleary wrote:
LiveFromThe781 wrote:
As far as a commercial gym in my area, there are only two that are close enough to be feasible

it takes me 45mins to get to my gym and 45mins to get home from my gym. it’s worth it.
[/quote]

I think these things just come down to the difference in people’s lifestyles and personal circumstances.

For example, do you work full time, go to school part time, have a house to take care of, a wife that expects to see you and a child that likes you to go to his/her extra curriculars?

You just described a hour and half drive time on top of my 60-90 minutes in the gym…that’s 3 hours hours out of the evening. If I am getting off work around 5:00PM that puts me at home every night at 8:00PM. If I want my 8 hours of sleep I need to be in the bed by 10:00PM so that leaves me two hours to eat dinner and not much else.

So for me, that wouldn’t work out. I either need a gym at home or close to home.

oh, i completely agree with you. It all comes down to personal circumstances, i wish it were different, trust me. haha

goodluck building your own gym, i wish i had the money or space for that…one day.

I used to train home, and I miss it now (shitty fitness gym…). As for the rack, I’d say the full one offers more safety: think of what would happen it you fall during squat…

Well I would of said the full rack as I wasn’t aware you could get a lat attachment on a half rack. The attachment will add a shit ton of exercises and variety which is exactly why I brought a full rack and not a half rack for my home gym.

In that particular half rack, there isn’t really anything I can think of that you could in a full rack that you couldn’t do on the half, with the exception of rack pulls. I have a hard time believing those bars can hold 1500lbs. Not that would ever need to anyway.

Seems rather expensive though.

Would you choose a woman with a half rack over the woman with a full rack?
lol

Check Craigslist for gym equipment. You can pick up great deals if you just keep a watchful eye. I have a kickass garage gym that I put together this way, although I did build some of it myself. Having said that, I’d opt for the half rack if you’re pressed for room.

Half rack is definitely better for the stated reason that you can take the bar out of the rack very easily. However, if you want to do rack pulls then you need the Full rack. Personally I would go with the half.

to answer your question, it looks like you would have to remove the bar in order to do pull-ups/chins, whatever. that seems like it would be a pain in the ass, since i consider those movments to be staples. if you look at the half rack, it looks like you’d have to remove the bar, then put it back or whatever when you are done. if you are a pull-up guy, it may be worth the convenience (plus the fact that the full rack can hold more weight, etc.)