Rugged Series Full Rack (w Jcups/Pin Safeties)

Bought the rack nearly 12 months ago, so thought I'd give an honest review

For the price nothing will beat the quality of the Rugged rack, as a few others have stated who reviewed the rack in the months before me, this will be your best bet for a budget well made rack capable of holding a heap of weight with minimal wobble or anything.

I bench 110-120kg most weeks out of this rack (1RM pushing 150kg where I'll have a crack every 3-6 months) and have failed a couple of times going to fatigue, the westside spacing and pin pipe safeties do their job, I can set the rack height to my benching specifications and have the confidence it'll hold anything I lift.

Being a 2x3 rack I find is an advantage for benching out of also as if you hold a wide benching grip you'll get a little more hand room racking the bar compared to benching out of a 3x3 rack which will be a bit more narrower reracking. The same applies for squats too, a bit more width there if you don't have great shoulder mobility.

Hopefully Body-Solid or whoever is in charge of the Rugged line comes in with more attachments in the future as 2x3 racks are pretty rare these days with 3x3, 60mm-60mm and 2x2 racks the norm in the Aussie market now (seem to be a few 2x3 racks in the US, but not in Australia). I have the lat attachment also and that completely took any wobble out of the cage. I found I don't need the Rugged floor foot brace, the lat attachment braces the side to side well enough. If you've got a slant in your garage floor, a little bit of cardboard under the feet will help too if there is a little bit of unevenness. The hardware is decent being mainly M16 (5/8s) hardware, a once over every 4-6 months tightening stuff is all I'll ever need in regards to rack maintenance, the lat attachment needs a bit of silicone spray every month or 2 and routinely checking the pulleys/cables, but apart from that it's very easy to maintain.

I've had 100kgs on the lat attachment for heavy pulldowns a few times (normally have 70-90kg on it every week) and it has so far held up well enough, the main flaw is the weight horns on the weight carriage are a little short (bumper plates aren't ideal for it as they're much thicker than trigrips/cast irons), but yeah, attachments like roller/sandwich J cups, strap safeties etc would be nice if whoever in charge looked into it, though I'll likely grab some weight horns and safety spotter arms eventually and that'll be pretty much it for now. In regards to my personal lifting I don't need a better rack, this will suffice for a long time.

I recently bought the Rugged dumbbell/plate combination storage rack, so will review that whenever also, but it's alot bigger than what it looks like in the marketing photos of it.

I wasn't sure on which rack to buy, after a quick consult with Lucas I decided on this and have not regretted it. This rack is solid and meets all my needs, building instructions are very easy to follow. Overall very happy

I've handled with great quality racks- brands ranging from Rogue, Verve, ATX, and Ironmaster. And also handled poor quality ones that are say 50mmx50mm (2x2). I managed to hunt down some happy Rugged rack owners and also got their thoughts before making my purchase. I'll echo with them by saying this is a high quality rack and you won't be disappointed with the quality. I didn't opt for the other brands due to the price and what my budget is limited to. I was glad to find this because it seems to be a hidden gem. Not highly marketed anywhere and not highly spoken about in the online fitness communities.

Firstly, when everything arrived at once in under 1 week from purchasing, I was shocked at how fast it it arrived at my door step between South Australia to Melbourne during Covid lockdowns! Not only that, all the boxes were not squashed or in bad shape. The condition was like as if it came straight from the factory. The edges of the boxes and everything was unreal. Nothing damaged. The provided manual instruction is thorough and in depth. There are clear illustrations to assist with the assembly. It took me and a couple of buddies a couple of hours. Make sure you have a socket and wrench kit - big sockets as the rack doesn't come with one. All the bolts, nuts and spacers are of good quality. Threads don't strip easily. Which meant I didn't come across any issues or obstacles while assembling the rack. The paint coating and 11 gauge steel is superb. It feels very solid out of the box and I wasn't expecting the amount of heft to each piece while assembling the rack. I'll have no worries for years to come with wear and tear. Built on a leveled ground, the rack will not sway or rock at all while doing pull ups and racking heavy weight on. My friends and I have very high confidence while doing dips and pull ups.

It comes with nicely laser cut numbers on each side of the posts so you won't have a hard time lining the J hooks and safety bars up. It has the modern Westside hole spacing half way up the rack which is a nice feature for bench pressing as a lot of racks from other brands now come like this. The pair of J hooks are standard with UMHW plastic, which do the job. I had no issues with their fitment on the rack. Rod and safety bars are a bit tedious to adjust each time as they are a two piece part for each, so requires a bit of admin but will definitely do their job if it ever comes down to it. It comes with a straight pull up bar which has a very nice knurling to it and is an added benefit for a no slip grip.

I also purchased the lat pulldown attachment and the dip bar as extras. I wasn't too happy with the nylon bushing that slides up the guide rail at first. It meant for a bit of resistance. This was resolved with the Bestfitness/Rugged team's technician providing some helpful tips and solutions which in the end had it going up and down quite smoothly with little to none resistance. Note, the plate holders are fixed and cannot be removed - the only plates that will fit on are olympic sized.

The dip bar is is also solid equally to the rack in terms of quality and heft. Like the J hooks, the fitment was perfect.

Being a 2x3 or 50mmx75mm rack, you'll have a hard time finding attachments for it in Australia. Because every other retailer generally sells 50x50mm, 60x60 or 75x75 racks. This one being an outlier among all. Although in the States, you've got the Rogue R-3 Inifinity and the Titan T-3 rack which is near identical to this rack's dimensions and they have a plethora of attachments available to go with it as extras. You could probably try and import them here but it may cost an arm and a leg. In addition to that, this rack's hole size for the attachments are 5/8 inches. With that being said, the ability to "do more" with the rack is quite limiting such as having a multi grip pull up bar, upgrading the safety spotter arms, having an extra pair of J hooks for convenience, etc.

I dealt with Lucas at Bestfitness and he was an absolute legend with answering every one of my questions promptly and professionally, even after business hours surprisingly. Rest assured, there's an actual technician to assist if you have any issues. I don't understand how we're all able to purchase this rack only alone for under $1000 including with shipping! To get the same quality albeit different dimensions, you're looking at over $1400 in Australia after doing a lot of research.

Overall, I'm very happy with the purchase and on going support from the Bestfitness and Rugged team. If you can live with the above con of lack of attachments and availability of them then I would definitely recommend this.

We bought the rugged full rack and lat attachment. It is absolutely solid and great quality. Shipping was super quick an lad we actually couldn’t be happier. We haven’t even bolted it down yet and don’t know if we will. 👍🏻🤙🏻

This was the final piece of my home gym puzzle. Quality, price and delivery were exceptional very happy buyer!!