Power Racks RANT

[quote]Joe Weider wrote:
Keith Wassung wrote:
Bill Starr wrote an article about Power Racks in which he stated that virtually all high end power racks were constructed with far more strength than would ever be needed and that for 99% of the people who lift-an economy rack would suit them just fine.

He also wrote an article in which he said overtraining was really beneficial too.
Bill Star is one of my favorites, but lets not get crazy.[/quote]

If you’ve ever seen or read any of Jay Schroeder’s work, you’d see that if properly calculated and in moderate amounts over training can in fact be benificial.

But like you said, let’s not get crazy here. I think the current price for a power rack is pretty damn valid.

On what hoosierdaddy etc. wrote:

I have no doubt it works…especially if you then give yourself chance to recover.
I also think when the steel is all that’s between me and being squashed by several hundred pounds, I don’t want to quibble about the quality of the steel, I want to know it was good stuff.
Like you said!

I think the one that was gong for $350 holds over 1200lbs, even when I get up to being able to squat over 600lbs, I don’t see paying almost twice as much for a stronger metal.

If someone made a power rack with a super alloy metal frame that can hole 5000lbs dropped from 20ft, and charged an incredibly low price for the quality, but it was still over twice the price of the highest quality power rack that’s out now, would you buy it?

It’s all relative. I can see paying more if you’re going to use it, but if a company says that their equipment can hold x amount of weight, they’re not going to take the chance of getting sued, so I’m willing to bet that the $350 rack can hold more than what it’s rated for, which is still hundreds of pounds more than I’ll ever put on a bar.

I don’t see anything wrong with trying to find the best price of something either, even if you sacrafice some quality, as long as it’s going to give you what you need. To me it’s like buying a $300 cell phone and only using the features that you could have gotten with the $150 phone.

I think, unless you’re truely coming kind of close to pushing the limits of the rack, the only benefit to getting the stronger, more expensive one would be bragging rights.

Just my oppinion though. If I could find one that (only) holds 800lbs for $200, I’m buying it, and won’t feel that my safety has been sacraficed, but then again, maybe I’m just cheap…

On what SWR-1222D wrote:

Exactly correct.
Buy the one you want at the price-point/quality point you want.
Just don’t complain about the price of the better made one is all I’m asking here!

Yea Joe, between a $3million per person/incident insurance policy and about a quarter mill. in equipment, plus the payroll, if we weren’t making about $250per hr. we were hemorraging money. Very hard earned money.

On the rack though- No company wants to put out a product that is going to cost them in the long run. See Fords history with the Pinto for details.More recently, Bowflex. No one wants a tower falling on their head, do they? So they have to take measures to ensure a product is safe. The more they have to do, the more it is going to cost. If you want to pay minimum you will get minimum. Thats just in production. Take into consideration that everyone who touches that item is going to get paid-Manufacturer-Wholesaler-Retailer-shipping if necessary, and you have a rack that is gonna cost at least 600 bucks new.
Not bad when you consider what went in to it.

If you want cheap get you some 2x4’s and some 4x4’s and build you couple of sawhorses to match the height you need and go from there.

[quote]Joe Weider wrote:
provy07 wrote:
Joe Weider wrote:
go learn how to weld, buy the steel, buy the torches and stuff…then get back to me.

Yeah, I would love too (sarcasm). I don’t have time to do that nor do I have any desire to. A power rack should cost about $300.00 if that. The design of the power rack is not very complicated. Especially compared to other equipment that cost much less.

So you don’t have the time or desire to learn to weld (and you have to be really really good to make a nice commercial rack)…and yet you bitch about the price?
WTF, dude.
$300 MIGHT pay the guy’s time.
Do you know how much good steel tube is now? I don’t actually at this moment, but I know it’s steep.
Now add in the time spent dressing it so the pins or crossbars slide easily…and you’ve gotten pricey.
Go over to EliteFTS.com and tell Dave Tate his racks are overpriced. Even better, go find Dave somewhere and get in his face about it. Have someone there with a vid cam though.

It costs money to be a welder, and run a welding shop. Take a picture from Elite to a local shop and say you want one just like it, specify the nice hard steel etc, and tell the guy you want it done for $300 tops.
If he can do it for you and will…you’re fucking golden. My guess is you might get away without an acetyline torch up your ass.
[/quote]

Good Lord. I didn’t mean to offend you. I am sure that welding is a tough job. I’m just frustrated because I’m a 21 year old college student and have already paid over $1,000 for equipment. I’m broke as it is and all I want is a freakin power rack! Whaaaaa!

I got me the powertec rack that has the pulldown/rowing attachment, the dip bars, and pull-up bar on it and 395 pounds of olympic weights (including) bar (with top notch bearings) for 350 bucks. The part about the deal that sucked was that I got it all from a friend’s co-op who passed on in a motorcycle accident, and his family was trying to sell off everything in the co-op.

I still haven’t found a place to build that rack either, but I have it damnit!

I paid $264 for a Body Solid power rack (new) at Play-It-Again sports. I didn’t pay for the extra cable attachment for pulldowns, rows, triceps pushdowns or biceps curls, and I don’t feel that I need it. No complaints. I’ve had more than 400lbs in various places (for various exercises) and have not had a problem. Great piece of equipment for the money.

If I had $700-900, I would have gotten the Elite power rack. Maybe some day in the future. But for now, the Body Solid power rack works great!

Re: the 1200 lbs and squatting 600 lbs, remember, the 600 lbs won’t just be “sitting” on it, it will be FALLING on the cross bars. That puts a lot more force than if you just set it down, which is why you need a rack than can hold probably twice what you can lift, at least.

Maybe someone good at physics can chime in.

The Soderberg criteria or margin of safety should be 2-3 times its usefull or rated strength.Of course that is an old criteria, and probably outdated. So a frame rated to hold 600 lbs. should tolerate 12-1800lbs before yeilding.

What I would consider is that the metal is not likely to completely fail. A mild steel will usualy stretch a good bit before ultimate failure, whereas a harder steel will have a higher point of yeild but ultimately fail or break more quickly past the point of yielding. The result of a rack being overstressed would probably just be some bending/stretching in the bars of the frame, not a complete collapse of the entire rack.

If the rack failed as a result of fatigue(which I really don’t see happening), it would be brittle failure, and you’d have virtually no warning signs.

The approximate endurance limit for steels subject to fully reversed bending is .5*Su, with ultimate strengths <200ksi.(Ansel C. Ugural,2004). Note, that’s not taking into account stuff like surface finish factors or stress concentrations (you’d be amazed at how much these can reduce the allowable stress).

The Soderberg Criteria:

(sa/Se)+(sm/Sy)=1

where:

sa=alternating stress=.5*(Smax+Smin)
sm=mean stress=.5*(Smax-Smin)
Se=modified endurance limit
Sy=yeild strength

correction:
sa=.5*(Smax-Smin)
sm=.5*(Smax+Smin)

I consider $600 cheap for a good power rack. You get what you pay for, and the price of steel has quadrupled in the last two years.

Yes but the sum of 1 should be placed over the factor of safety.
Also are you analyzing that as an isolated body or as a frame? In a frame the forces are going to be distributed, and even in an isolated member there will be yeilding before ultimate failure.

[quote]mindeffer01 wrote:
Yes but the sum of 1 should be placed over the factor of safety.
[/quote]

If you want to incorporate a safety factor into the Soderberg Criteria, the equation would be:

(sa/Se)+(sm/Sy)=1/n

where n is the safety factor.

I haven’t analyzed anything.
Fatigue failure is extremely different than static failure. If the rack, or any of its members, failed as a result of fatigue, you would notice virtually zero distortion.

[quote]provy07 wrote:

Good Lord. I didn’t mean to offend you. I am sure that welding is a tough job. I’m just frustrated because I’m a 21 year old college student and have already paid over $1,000 for equipment. I’m broke as it is and all I want is a freakin power rack! Whaaaaa![/quote]

So it’s not that they’re expensive, you’re just poor :slight_smile:

“‘You can’t put a price on your family’s safety.’ ‘You wouldn’t think so but here we are.’” Homer Simpson.

Yep go cheap, get crap metal with thin walls and bolt together bits that wobble around and is only rated to hold a little more than you can lift. You don’t need to think about your safety!

Or you could get something of quality.