Valor Athletics BD-6 Safety Squat/Bench Rack Review

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The Valor Athletics BD-6 Safety Squat and Bench Rack allows you to perform heavy squats, presses, and a range of other compound exercises without needing a spotter. This makes the process of heavy lifting so much safer and more accessible in a home gym environment.

The Valor Athletics BD-6 is one of the best power rack setups that you can find online, and a great addition to any home gym, but how does this compare to some of the best power racks from XMark or Body Solid?

In our detailed Valor Athletics BD-6 safety squat/bench rack review, we’ll look at all of the key design features of the BD-6 heavy-duty power cage, including its ability to support up to 650 lbs.

We will also take a look at what different exercises it can be used for, how it will benefit your home gym, how it will benefit you, and lastly, we will look at the reviews that have been left by other users of this safety rack.

Design Features

The BD-6 Safety Rack is a multipurpose heavy lifting station with safety support. It can be used to perform dangerous exercises safely without the need for a spotter. It is designed for exercises like squats, bench pressing, deadlifts, shrugs, and many more.

Whether you are replacing your current squat cage or just looking to expand your current home gym, it’s important to find a design that suits your needs, including enough weight capacity so that it can support many years of strength gains.

The Valor Athletics BD-6 Safety Rack comes with a recommended bar weight of 500 lb, resting on either the safety bars or main racking points. At the same time, the 12-gauge steel can handle up to 650 lbs without issues.

To prevent buying a separate weight plate tree, 4 weight plate storage pegs have been added to the sides of the frame. These allow you to organize the weight plates in terms of their sizes if required, at the same time as keeping everything within easy reach during your workout.

Safety Features

The main design feature that you should look for in a squat and bench safety rack is the ability to hold heavy weights, taking into consideration that you will get stronger over the years. With that, goes the ability to hold that amount of weight safely while also offering trusted safety catches.

In a commercial gym, you may have a spotter who is there to perform a safety catch in case you cannot lift the weight anymore and need to drop it. With the BD-6 safety rack, it is designed to offer adjustable safety bar catches so that you can train heavy even when training solo, while also training safely in the comfort of your own home.

The angle of the frame and racking pins also makes it safer to return the bar to a resting position. The biggest dangers come in when we get exhausted and we cannot safely put down the weights. The BD-6 solves this issue for us so that we can lift at our limits without risking injury through an accident.

This is especially important in a home gym environment. In a commercial gym, there are always other people around and training buddies will always come to assist when there is an issue.

At home, we often train alone. So, when something dangerous happens, there is nobody to assist us. For this reason, home gyms need to be ever safer compared to commercial gyms.

Adjustable Rack Positions

A unique feature of this particular Valor Athletics squat and bench safety rack is the design of the spotter stands. These can be adjusted through 5 different positions for up to an 8-inch adjustment in height. This offers great variety with adjustable safety catch positions.

The main rack provides 5 solid steel bar support positions that are set between 32 and 61 inches off the ground. These bar supports are for racking the barbell during squats and bench presses.

This makes BD-6 bench and squat stands ideal for a variety of users of different heights, as we will often find in our homes with male and female adults and children. The safety rack’s variable positions also offer users a wide variety of exercise options, including squats, bench presses, overhead presses, dips, shrugs, and more.

Heavy Duty Material

The BD-6 is a heavy duty power cage that is made from 2-inch x 2-inch 12-gauge steel. It includes safety bars that hold Olympic bars, as well as storage pegs that are designed to hold Olympic plates.

With its 650 lb rating on the pins and supports, the Valor Athletics BD-6 can support a large amount of weight plates on each end of the bar.

This piece of equipment is as strong as it comes.

Exercise Options

The greatest benefit of adding the Valor Athletics safety rack to your home gym is the large variety of exercise options that you can perform safely.

A large amount of open space has been created between the frame of the BD-6 by positioning the base support bar towards the back, leaving plenty of room for you to position your weights for the bench. Custom cages give the most flexibility in terms of how we can use them to train.

Although there’s already a range of exercises you can perform using the rack and barbell on their own, adding a weights bench allows you to also work your chest.

The following list is made up of all compound free-weight movements that are possible with the Valor Athletics BD-6 rack. This is when combined with a standard size 7ft barbell and Olympic weight plate set (not included).

These are some of the exercises you should be including in your workouts if you want to see the greatest strength and size gains.

• Front squats
• Back squats
• Overhead press
• Upright row
• Bench press
• Deadlift (using the valor fitness deadlift bar)
• Shrugs
• Barbell rows

Along with these above-mentioned exercises, there are also other less common exercises that can be performed using custom gear.

For example, a lat pull attachment can be added to increase lat training ability. Custom dip bars can also be added to add that training option, and a bar at the top of the rack can be used for pull ups.

All in all, the Valor Athletics bench and squat rack can train the following muscle groups:

• Front deltoids
• Pectorals
• Hip flexors
• Quadriceps
• Trapezius
• Back deltoids
• Triceps
• Lats
• Lower back
• Glutes
• Hamstrings
• Calves

Pretty much a full-body workout option with the ability to go as heavy as you can.

Professional fighter, Alex Rojas, claims that he uses a safety rack to improve his fight game for the next tournament.

Customer Reviews

Despite having so many customer reviews available on Amazon, it was difficult to find any negative points about the Valor Athletics BD-6 rack.

Most of the reviews we could find were either 4 or 5-star rated, with customers finding that the rack was stable and strong enough to support every exercise they wanted to perform.

The overall rating is 4.4 stars out of 5 from a total of 13 global reviews. Almost 75% of the reviews are 5-star. That is just about as good as it gets.

Some of the customer reviews read as follows:

“Purchased this squat rack for my new home gym setup and I could not be happier with the purchase.”

“It doesn’t take up as much room as a box style power rack, but it definitely has all the advantages.”

“This was perfect for my small home gym.”

Valor Athletics BD-6 Safety Rack Pros and Cons

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Cons:

The Benefits of Adding the Valor Athletics BD-6 Safety Rack to Your Home Gym

The biggest benefit of adding the BD-6 to your home gym setup is the large amount of training variety that you get for such a small dedicated gym space and such a low investment cost.

This bench and squat safety rack has a very small footprint and takes up much less space compared to its competition. This is a key feature that everyone with a home gym will be aware of. Space is always limited so you want to use what space you have to give you the maximum amount of training options.

The great thing about the training options you get with the BD-6 is that it offers you all the big muscle groups, as mentioned above in the “Exercise Options” section.

We could go as far as to say that the only piece of equipment that you need in your home gym is the Valor Athletics BD-6 safety rack

The Benefits of Bench Pressing

One of the main exercises that you can do using the BD-6 safety rack, is bench pressing.

If you go to any commercial gym you will see that bench pressing is just about the most popular exercise that people do. But what are the reasons behind it being such a key training method?

Any athlete who is in a competitive sport will agree that bench pressing is the key to overall upper-body strength. It is the key to performing at a high level when it comes to power and performance.

On the other side, trainers who are more focused on aesthetics will agree that bench-pressing is the key to getting a good upper-body look.

Some of the main benefits involved with bench pressing are the following:

• Increases upper body strength
• Increases the size of pectoral muscles
• Higher performing pectorals
• Shredded serratus anterior
• Stronger delt muscles
• Stronger triceps
• Improves bone health
• Helps with rapid progress

Along with all of these benefits, there is also a fair amount of risk involved. Normally bench pressing is done with as much weight as possible. This is why there is often a spotter for when the muscles give out due to fatigue.

As the saying goes, “no pain, no gain”, because the biggest benefits come when we are training at our limit. So this safety rack makes it possible to do this, at home, safely.

The Benefits of Squatting

Squatting is the other major exercise that the BD-6 and other similar safety racks are designed for.

As with bench pressing, squatting is mostly done as heavy as possible so that it can give the maximum amount of benefits. With this, comes the risks of hunting ourselves. Squatting is also mostly done with a spotter to make sure that there are no injuries.

When the legs suddenly give in, the large amount of weight can easily crush a person and it could lead to some very serious injuries. Using the safety rack will greatly reduce the chances of something dangerous happening.

That being said, squatting might just be the most beneficial exercise of all. It is mostly a lower-body exercise, but it touches on a full-body workout because your entire body is active and involved.

Some of the biggest benefits of squatting include the following:

• Stronger leg muscles
• Improved core strength
• Improved mobility
• Increased overall power
• Stronger joints
• More explosive
• Improves posture