Major Fitness F22 Functional Trainer Power Rack Review: All-In-One Starter Home Gym
Introduction
The Major Fitness F22 is an all-in-one home gym that combines a 2x3 power rack and a functional trainer. It’s equipped with a plate loaded pulley system, a multi grip pull up bar, low row footplate, landmine attachment, and even band pegs. Coming in at $929 with free shipping, in-theory it packs a lot of punch in the functionality department, but how does it stack up after using it? Let’s check it out.
What is this product?
Hey guys this is Michael with The Jungle Gym Reviews, today I am reviewing the Major Fitness F22. It’s a 4-post power rack with 2x3 uprights and made out of 14-gauge steel, so it has a 1000LB weight capacity. Each side of the rack has it’s own individual plate loaded pulley system with the typical 2:1 pulley as with most functional trainers. This means if you load 200LBS on the weight stack, you get 100LBS of resistance just due to the physics of the pulley configuration and weight distribution. So, just keep in mind you want to do heavy rows or lat pulldowns you will need a few extra weight plates laying around to load accordingly.
With that in mind of course, for science, I had to check to see how many plates could fit on the cable weight loading horns, and I was able to fit 300LBS on each functional trainer stack side. The weight loading horns are nicely angled upwards though so you don’t have to worry about the plates ever falling off, and in the case you have thinner plates, you can experiment with just how many you can load up on the 7.5 inch width of the loading horns.
The overall height of the racks is 82.5 inches so it should fit in most spaces comfortably. The width is 69 inches but that includes the weight pegs, bang pegs, landmine, and footplate attachments sticking off the side. One thing to point out with the width dimension is that you need to remember to consider having even a few inches more additional room on either outside to comfortably carry, maneuver, and load the weight plates on the weight horns, so plan to add some more space accordingly.
The inside front to back depth of the rack portion is approximately 42 inches, and the interior width between uprights is 42.7 inches. This width which is a really nice spacing to give you enough to move around inside, to grab weight plates, load them on the weight horns, and also allow you not to hit the uprights especially if you have long arms, during movements like bench pressing. I have had racks in the past that were around 41 inch interior width and had to sell them just to get a 42 or 43 inch bigger width rack to not hit my elbows during benching, because I am 6ft2 with long arms.
The cable height are adjustable from approximately from 9 inches from the floor to in the lowest setting, to the highest at 71 inches in height. The spacing between the cable heights is metric, so it’s actually 10CM on center increments in between those cable height settings. The same 10cm on center spacing is also the spacing for the spotter arms and j cups holes on the front, the 1 inch attachment holes.
Speaking of the spotter arms I tested the capacity to see how stable the rack was, and even with 405 on the bar and my 175LB bodyweight bouncing on top, the spotter arms and rack felt stable. My wife didn’t want me to try to do the “Cooper Mitchell” 700LB drop test despite my creative make-it-or-break-it engineer side wanting to do so.
Lastly, in addition to the rack, Major Fitness also includes a few other quality of life items with this rack package to just really maximize the functionality and versatility you get for the price. It has a lat pulldown bar, a small straight bar, cable D handles, rack mounted dip bars, landmine row handle, and your standards spring clips for weight plates, so this this is pretty ready to go right out of the box.
What does it do?
So, this F22 rack does a little bit of everything since it’s geared towards home gym users across a variety of training disciplines. Because it’s a power rack you can do your typical barbell-based movements using the included j cups and spotter arms, but the functional trainer aspect allows for an endless number of unilateral and bilateral movements. You can also use one side for unilateral movements like a one arm lateral raise or row or use both cables together for added bilateral variety outside of the barbell movements like a chest fly. And then obviously since you can do all those movements you can also hit your typical triceps extension, bicep curl, and any other cable driven accessory movements you can possibly think of. It also has the low row footplate to be able to hit cable low rows, which is a nice touch.
You can also hit seated lat pulldowns, but you have to just sit in or outside the rack to avoid sitting on the low row plate or the landmine post attachment. The other difficult part as with any functional trainer lat pulldowns, is that if you plan to go heavy, you will have to find a creative way to keep your butt/torso on the floor if you’re pulling more weight than you weigh. This isn’t Major Fitness’ fault it just comes with the territory of trying to do lat pulldowns from the floor instead, and if you know, you know the struggle. Major Fitness thankfully does sell an F22 leg holder attachment to address this, but it is not included, although it is nice to know they have thought of a solution for this problem.
Since they also have a built-in landmine attachment, you can add yet another avenue of creativity and versatility to your workouts. Because of all the different options for exercises and movement, you can even easily workout with friends or family together at the same time because someone could be using one or both sides of functional trainer while someone else is using landmines, or some similar split use configuration. Again, their goal for the rack is just maximizing the functionality while retaining all the same footprint you would already need for a typical power rack anyways.
The included dip bar is nice that it has two different widths for dips, or even able to be used for inverted rows if you like those, and the multi grip pull up bar has seemingly durable grip/padding with ergonomically comfortable and appropriately spaced handles.
The last thing to point out is that there are band peg mounts on the top and bottom of the rack, the bottom ones are quickly detachable with the include quick release detent pins. I personally don’t use bands in my barbell training so I can’t speak too much to their positioning or functionality is good or bad for such, but for those who are interested I think it’s at least a point to mention that you have the option to utilize a combination of training methodologies and configurations as desired.
What are the price/tiers?
I do want to take a minute to just mention the pricing again. The rack by itself is in the $900 range, but Major Fitness offers several different package tiers depending on what you currently have or need in your home gym.
They have the rack and bench for about $1200, a rack, bench and barbell set for approximately $1400, that prior combination plus 230LBS of bumper plates for about $2000, and their 320LB bumper plate combo for almost $2300.
I received the package with the barbell, bench, and 230LB bumper plates which costs approximately $2000 as listed. For that price without any sales or discounts, I would typically advise opt to source the additional items of the bench, bar, and weight plates yourself. Although that’s not an outrageous price, I think with a little time, energy, and effort, either used or new you can source potentially a better version of all those items, but I understand they are providing the convenience of a pre-selected click and ship ready package. For what it is worth the bench is solid with little ladder style adjustments from slight decline to 90 degrees, the barbell is black and sleek with decent knurling and has very smooth rotating bearings, and the bumper plates function just as one would expect bumper plates too and have a night bright color scheme. On the topic of plates, I would really consider whether or not you need or want to use actual bumper plates. For myself I would much prefer smaller change plates for ease of use and storage, and which I already do own, and since I don’t do a whole lot of Olympic movements, I never really drop the weights from a place where it would matter to have dedicated bumper plates over the standard rubber coated or iron plate options.
Again, to reiterate, if I didn’t have any plates, bench, or barbell at all and was looking to start my gym from scratch, I would likely purchase this rack, then source the other items separately. REP Fitness has a great line of affordable bench options, and you can find a decent boneyard barbell from Rogue, or a decent new bar option cheap on Amazon, and weight plates you can find anywhere in any style and color configuration you want for around $1 a pound, sometimes slightly more or less. If you’re interested in a future video going into more details on where and how to select and shop for these, please let me know in the comments below.
What are alternate options in this price range?
As far as alternate options go, it is widely dependent on your needs. If all you need is a cheap rack to be able to do some barbell movements on, you can find a cheap 2x2 rack on Amazon for a couple hundred dollars.
If you want a more reputable brand, Rep Fitness has their Rep PR1000/1100 and Titan Fitness with the T2 both are a 2x2 rack with 14-gauge steel that have support and ability to add a lot of more of their own attachments like weight plate storage, lat pulldown and low row, safety spotters, dip bars, multi grip pull up bars, etc. Those usually start around $400 for the base rack configuration but you can expand on those over time based on your needs.
If you’re looking for a more comparable rack to this F22 that including the functional trainer, the market is all over the place and the prices start to fluctuate wildly dependent on numerous factors. This is where you need to think about and prioritize your use case and what you really need:
1. Do you need barbell movements with occasional cable use? – an option like this is perfect
2. Do you need the cable use as a priority? – I would probably opt for a selectorized cable machine
3. Do you have the floor space to have a separate rack and trainer? – then I would likely suggest having both separately.
In an ideal world, I would almost always recommend a separate power rack and functional trainer, because when you buy them individually you just have a lot more options for customization and long-term compatibility, plus it’s easier to get a really good power rack and a really good functional trainer as separate items either new or used. Although the caveat to that statement is that since we are now in the year 2024, when you start getting into the beefy 3x3 racks that have the rack mounted selectorized functional trainer options that all the big equipment retailers are starting to offer like Rep Fitness, Rogue, Titan Fitness, Bolt Fitness, Vulcan Strength, Vesta Fitness, Fray Fitness, you name it, these two machines combined in one actually tend to feel just as good as standalone machine at that price point and general quality level.
Overall Rating (Final Thoughts, Fit and Finish, Packaging, etc.)
Functionality: 7.5
Features/Design: 8
Fit/Finish: 7.5
Value: 7
Overall: 7.5
Overall, the Major Fitness F22 is definitely a very functional piece that maximizes the amount of movements you can do in a singular and relatively small footprint. Nothing about it screams “premium” but it does a little bit of everything quite well and for a fair price. If you want a one stop shop to start your home gym, any of their offerings will do just fine based on your individualized needs.
Another observation I noticed while using this machine, is that the cables and the pulleys that come by default are not the smoothest. They work, but compared to my dedicated Centr/Inspire SF3 selectorized functional trainer, and my REP PR5000 selectrozied lat pulldown and low row, and a few other pulley driven machine I currently or have owned, there is a noticeable difference in overall smoothness for the cable travel. Again, if you plan to use cables as a primary training method, I would generally advise you to consider a dedicated functional trainer option both due to the smoothness and the ease of use, or just even the convenience that comes with a selectorized version vs. a plate loaded trainer version. I want to also mention that Major Fitness does offer an aluminum pulley set upgrade option on their website for $160, and then you can swap out all the pulleys, so that would definitely make things smoother and be a consideration of mine if I have long term ownership of this machine.
Another point to note is that when you buy one of these all-in-one racks from a specific manufacturer, you also do lose some of the universal rack attachment compatibility between other brands. With this specific rack upright combination of width, orientation, hole spacing, and hole diameter, there aren’t many cross compatible aftermarket attachments that can be added. However, Major Fitness has done a good job at covering their bases for the needs of their users, and do offer a lot of good attachments in my opinion. So you can additionally purchase the ones you want and are compatible to your specific Major Fitness rack from them directly. For the F22 they have a rack mounted leg extension, a lateral raise machine attachment, lever arms, a leg holder for lat pulldowns, an upgrade to this racks functional trainer to a fully selectorized 170LB weight stack on both sides, and a few othes. So again, just know that when you buy this rack, you can probably only use the attachments that Major Fitness offers, but those seem seems to be plenty for now.
If you specifically interested in more cross-market attachment compatibility, I would looks to a 2x2 or 3x3 racks, as there are a few more attachment offerings for the 2x2 racks with 1in holes, 3x3 racks with 5/8in holes, and of course the gold standard 3x3 rack with 1in holes which pretty much any and all rack attachments are made for.
So guys that’s pretty much it for the Major Fitness F22, thank you for checking out this review, if you have any questions or suggestions for future reviews, please comment and I will be happy to answer or at least try. Thanks for tuning into The Jungle Gym Reviews, we will see you next time, take it easy, peace.
Michael - The Jungle Gym Reviews
