Power racks keep you safe when you are training by yourself. They also provide a good starting position for the bench press and the squat. 

 

 

 

One of the main benefits of a power rack is safety for beginners. The squat and the bench press can both be performed in the power rack combined with safety pins. You have the following safety options on a rack: 

 

 

here are three main safety options for a power rack:

 

 

Safety pins are the most common and are available in almost every gym. They are cheap and stable. They are also great for pin squats when you have problems getting out of the hole. The negatives of safety pins are that they can be annoying to set up. Fiddling the steel rod into the hole of the rack can be time-consuming. More often than not you will not set it up parallel to the ground but with a tilt. Another disadvantage is the bounce. Pins deform and bounce the bar back up. This not what you want on a heavy drop.

 

Safety straps are one step up from safety pins. You don't see them as often as safety pins in regular gyms. The two big advantages are that they are easier to set up and have a dead stop when you drop the bar. No bouncing around The disadvantage is that they are harder to set up at the right height and therefore also not as good for pin squat.

 

The rolls Royce of safeties is the flip-down. The flip-down safety is usually hooked into the rack and has a wider space where you can drop the bar to. And can be used for pin squats and rack pulls with more ease and less noise. To some, you can even attach a seat for box squats.

 

 

Power racks are space-efficient for the security they provide. Compared to squat racks and other contraptions you will save space for being safe with a power rack. You will also have a protected space for yourself inside the power rack so that it is less likely that someone will randomly bump into you. 

 

 

A power rack can be used with many attachments and therefore can build the center of your home gym. You can use it with pull up bars, benches, chains, lever arms, and other upgrades to turn it into a full gym. 

 

 

Compared to other machines a barbell with a power rack are easy to adjust for each athlete. While the free weight movements can be hard to perform they leave you with a lot of freedom to move around the rack. Other machines need more complicated adjustments to fit the exercises you want to do. 

 

 

If you are serious about lifting heavy in a safe way you will use a power rack. A good combination of machines and free weights usually yields the best results. 

 

Further reading

• Rack on a budget
• Barbell on a budget