Training at home in a home gym is one of the best ways to get the most out of your training.
When you have the equipment available to train at home, it takes away the cost of a gym membership, the time it takes to DRIVE to the gym and get changed, the hassle of waiting for equipment and, of course, the benefit of being able to listen to your own music!
Personally, I've been training at home in my basement for more than 20 years. I occasionally get out to commercial gyms but for the most part, I much prefer home gym training.
The only major piece of equipment I was missing was a Smith Machine.
That's why I was very happy to test out and review the M1 Smith Machine rack from RitFit.
Overall, I like it. It's got some excellent features (the Smith machine unit is on par with most gym-quality Smith machines I've tried) and it's got some innovative designs. There were some functionality issues (which I get into in the video), but as I said, overall it's a nice piece of equipment that will allow you to do most gym exercises very effectively.
For the full review of the rack and the exercises you can do with it, definitely watch the video. I cover every feature of the rack in detail, from the Smith machine attachment to the cables to the weight plates posts.
Below the video, I've got information on assembling the rack (including the issues I ran into and what to watch out for so you can avoid those issues).
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Get Your RitFit M1 Smith Machine Rack Here (link goes to home gym package deal)
Use code NICK to get 12% off!
Putting the Rack Together
Overall, the assembly of the rack took me about 6 hours of total work time. It was mostly straightforward but I did run into a few hiccups with the instructions that I want to pass along, in case you run into the same.
First off, here are how the nuts and bolts arrive. They're arranged very logically and it's easy to understand what is what.
Here's the a few steps in...
There are two things I want to draw your attention to.
The top blue circle is the hole facing forward...this hole (as well as the others on that face of the post) should be on the BACK of the rack. They have a big hole and a small hole. The big hole goes on the back.
These are where the plate holder posts go in. Because I didn't see in the instructions how exactly to orient them, I put them on backwards and had to turn them 180 degrees.
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The lower blue circle is the bottom side cross-bar of the rack. It's a bit hard to see but the two holes need to be towards the BACK. These are the holes that the cable weight trolley poles go into. I had to take them off and switch them fairly soon into the build. When I looked back at the instructions, it was pretty clear...I just didn't see it at the time.
This is where the posts go. You can see at this point I still had the back posts 180 degress wrong. Luckily, it didn't take long to fix and I didn't have to take it all down...just loosen bolts and spin the posts.
This what the weight holder posts look like close up.
A nice feature of the cable trolleys was adjustability. There are nuts on the trolleys that you can turn to adjust so that the trolleys rest on the rubber stoppers. You don't want them off the stoppers at the bottom as this puts constant loading on the cables.
The Smith attachment took a bit of messing around to get the bar on, but it wasn't too hard.
They do recommend this as a two-person build but I was find putting it together by myself.
Here's the finished product...
Sample Exercises With the RitFit M1 Smith Machine Rack
I posted these up on my Instagram feed...they'll give you a great idea of what kind of training you can do with the rack. It really offers a wide variety of exercise options.
The Bottom Line
As I mention in the review, I do like this machine. It's a good piece of equipment, and offers good value for the price.
It's got a lot of good features and it's solidly built. It does have a few design issues that I think could be improved but most of those are fairly straightforward to deal with. You'll see those in the video.
Get your RitFit M1 Smith Machine Rack Here
This link will take you to their current "total home gym" package deal offer that includes an adjustable incline bench, bumper weight plates, 300 lbs of dumbbells (including storage rack), and a variety of professional quality pulldown and row handles.
If you're interested in just the Smith machine rack, you can get that for a lower price just on it's own. Just use the top navigation on the site and go to Racks -> M1 Multi-functional Smith and you'll see it there.
Use code NICK to get 12% off!
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