Valor Athletics BD-7 Power Rack Review

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The Valor Athletics BD-7 power rack includes both high and low cable pulleys, for safely performing both isolation and compound exercises.

Our review takes an in-depth look at the features and workout options, in addition to customer feedback from sites such as Amazon. This is to help you decide if the BD-7 is the best power rack for your own home workouts.

Rack design

If you are building up a set of strength training equipment in your home gym, once you get beyond the standard dumbbells and barbell set you’ll probably need to start thinking about a power rack or smith machine.

One of the most highly rated designs is currently the Valor Athletics BD-7. The reason for its popularity is that it goes beyond the standard power rack design, providing a range of extra features and exercise options to include in your workouts.

One feature that you won’t see on most power racks is the pull up bar which has been integrated into the top of the frame. The texture of the bar has also been knurled at key points, to give your hands a better grip through those important last few reps in the set.

Safety features
One of the main reasons for buying the Valor Athletics BD-7 Power Rack over a standard walk-in squat rack is the added safety it provides.

If you are buying this rack to setup in your home gym, the chances you will usually be working out without a spotter.

This is why Valor Athletics have included a set of high quality safety rails, together with 2 sets of adjustable bar supports. These allow you to perform important mass building exercises including squats and bench presses without the fear of getting ‘pinned’ under the bar.

Bar supports are also supplied in a couple of different lengths. The shorter set is designed to hold the bar before you start the exercise, while the longer set is useful for catching the bar if you can’t quite complete the rep.

These supports are both reversible and adjustable through a range of 17 different height settings, ensuring that you can find the safest option for your height and exercise.

Although there are no weight plates or barbells supplied with the Valor Athletics BD-7, 4 weight plate storage pegs have been added to the sides of the frame.

The diameter of the pegs is 1 inch, meaning that they can support any standard sized weight plates you might currently have, as well as the full sized Olympic plates.

High and low cable pulley system

With power racks being one of the larger items of weightlifting equipment you can add to your home gym, it’s important to make the best use of the space it takes up.

This is where it’s so beneficial to find a rack that also includes some form of cable pulley system to allow you to perform isolation exercises after the main compound movements.

While some power racks offer a lat pulldown as an additional attachment, this extra expense will often push the price to over $1,000. Fortunately the Valor Athletics BD-7 includes this as a standard part of the power rack.

Although the high cable pulley is usually shown with the lat pulldown attachment, the quick change cantilever clip allows you to use this with a range of different attachment options.

The low cable pulley also provides a range of exercise options, from seated rows to shrugs and bicep curls, the 250 lb weight limit will create enough resistance to work your muscles effectively.

Customer reviews

While it’s relatively easy to find reviews on treadmills and exercise bikes, when it comes to choosing a power rack, it’s often much more difficult.

However, due to the quality and popularity of the Valor Athletics BD-7, Amazon has dozens of reviews and more than 20 answered questions from people thinking about buying this particular rack.

Although we would recommend reading through as many reviews as possible to get a balanced impression of the BD-7, we’ve also summarised the most frequently mentioned positives and negatives and put them into a list below.

Pros

Cons