Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Health & Fitness
  3. Reviews

This Is Why I Bought the Decathlon Domyos Smith Machine 900

By
Decathlon Domyos Smith Machine.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Having an awesome at-home gym has always been an admirable goal, but in the era of COVID, it’s gone from convenient to essential. While home fitness setups come in all shapes and sizes, boasting a wide variety of tools and equipment, few items are as useful as a quality power rack.

A power rack for an at-home gym.

Even the most basic of power racks will up your home-fitness routine considerably. Not only do they make it possible to perform the heavy lifts and movements that are normally relegated solely to the gym, but they can be built upon endlessly to offer an ever-expanding home gym setup.

Recommended Videos

With that in mind, let’s take a look at one power rack that goes far beyond the basics, making it easy to bring home an extremely diverse range of workouts and lifts.

What to Look for in a Home Gym Power Rack

Before I dive into a specific rack suggestion, here are a few elements I considered when choosing a product for a recommendation.

Durability and build quality are perhaps the primary consideration. While there are plenty of pieces of home fitness equipment out there, the truth is that most of them feel like they could fall apart at any moment. Obviously, this is not ideal when you plan on lifting heavy, so I’ve prioritized a durable design.

Features and versatility are also key. At an actual gym, there’s plenty of room for different pieces of equipment that are intended for specific purposes. It’s unlikely, however, that you have that much space at home. Accordingly, I’ve looked for a power rack that offers the versatility and range of features necessary to bring home a comprehensive workout.

Finally, space efficiency is essential. That means that a rack has incorporated a wide variety of features into a design that takes up as little of your living space as possible.

The Best Home Gym Power Rack

Decathlon makes an extremely wide range of fitness gear—they have something for virtually every activity you can imagine—and their weightlifting equipment is all-around solid and versatile. The best representative of this is the company’s Domyos Smith Machine 900.

This lifting cage not only offers all the key aspects of a power rack but is bolstered with the addition of a cable machine. Between the two, you can perform virtually any weightlifting motion. In other words, it’s the very definition of a complete home gym.

A few key features:

  • Multi-handle, integrated pull-up bar
  • Adjustable bar support pegs and safety catches
  • High and low cable capabilities
  • Includes pull-down bar, pull triangle, and weight plate diameter adapter
  • Integrated weight plate storage pegs

Decathlon Domyos Power Rack Review

For a sub-$1,000 power rack, this is a truly impressive piece of equipment. It’s easy to put together and solid once assembled, and while it’s large enough to perform full pull-ups and other movements, it’s compact enough to fit into your living space.

Once assembled and set in place, it delivers an outstanding lifting experience. The rack itself doesn’t rattle or move about and offers confidence-inspiring stability. At the same time, while many home-cable machines offer an inconsistent experience at best, this cable pull is surprisingly smooth. In other words, you can use all the features in the rack without worrying that it’s going to fall apart on you. The design is solid.

To get the most out of the rack, it should be paired with a weightlifting bench, and you’ll need to equip it with weight plates and a bar. The company recommends using it with their Domyos bench 900, which turned out to be a great choice as it not only provides a reliably stable platform, but can be adjusted for flat, incline, and decline presses. The rack will work with any weights and bars, and those from Decathlon itself are fine options as they’re more affordable than many others.

One of the best aspects of this particular rack involves the fact that you can bolster it with a virtually endless array of additional equipment. Use the cable element with handles, rope-pulls, ankle cuffs, or any other pulling tool. The eyes drilled into the frame make it easy to expand its capabilities via attachments like dip bars, spotter arms, inversion boots, rope pulls, speed bags, and more.

In other words, it’s a great platform around which to build your ideal home gym.

Nick Hilden
Nick Hilden
Former Contributor
Nick Hilden is a lifestyle and culture writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Afar…
Topics
Tired of shaky workouts? Meet the MERACH UltraWalk W60 Plus – a walking pad built to last
Animal, Canine, Dog

Finding time to exercise is hard enough. The last thing you need is fitness equipment that feels unstable, sounds like it's about to fall apart, or struggles to keep up with your pace. Yet that's exactly what many budget walking pads deliver. Lightweight frames, noisy motors, and limited performance often turn what should be an enjoyable workout into a frustrating experience.

The MERACH UltraWalk W60 Plus aims to change that. Instead of simply offering another compact walking pad, MERACH has built a treadmill-grade under-desk fitness machine designed for long-term reliability, stability, and everyday convenience. Whether you're walking while working, squeezing in a quick cardio session, or looking to stay active without leaving home, the W60 Plus is engineered to make movement feel effortless.

Read more
From wheelchair to walking: The power of mindset, movement, and never giving up
Sometimes it's the hardest roads that lead us to a deeper sense of purpose
Steph Zee Christmas Secret Music Video Steph Green

I never expected I'd have to learn how to walk again. That journey took me from writing for doctors and magazines to spending thousands of hours researching health and autoimmune disease. When we have excellent health, many of us don’t give it much thought until those sneaky symptoms start to show, and one day it all comes crashing down. Now, our health becomes one of the most important priorities. When we feel good, we can be more productive and chase our dreams. When our health declines and we don’t feel so good, one of our biggest dreams is just to feel better. 

I became a health writer 12 years ago, shortly after graduating with my creative writing degree and getting a diagnosis of the autoimmune bone condition, ankylosing spondylitis. In an effort to improve my health, stay mobile, and help prevent my bones from calcifying and fusing, I spent thousands of hours studying everything from nutrition and naturopathy to conventional medicine and holistic healing. I heard this somewhere, so I can’t take credit, but I like to say I went to “save my ass university”, because pain and illness are some of the biggest motivators.

Read more
I tried Magic Mind for a month and here is what happened to my productivity
Does Magic Mind really help with your productivity or is it just another buzz.
Furniture, Business Card, Paper

I am proudly an all-brown beverage man. I say it often: I am coffee in the morning, bourbon in the evening, and Pepsi/Coke in between. I know what you're thinking: What about water? Well, all of those are mostly water. And who wants to drink the same thing they bathe in? That sounds gross. All jokes aside, the coffee addiction is real, and I am not alone. Who thinks they can truly conquer a day without a hard shot of caffeine? I would get it in an IV if it were feasible to do on the subway instead of a cup to go. But that doesn't have to be the only way you develop your productivity. Instead, you can look to the more natural and healthy methods to maintain and increase your effectiveness. I got my hands on some Magic Mind recently, one of the many different products that claim to elevate brain health, increase mental performance, and, of course, replace the coffee without losing the energy boost. But does it work?

The scientific hoolah

Read more