MARCYSmith Cage Workout Machine Full Body StrengthTraining Home Gym Equipment System with Leg Developer, Press Bar, PEC Deck, and Squat Rack

I read review after review before finally pulling the trigger on this purchase. My wife wanted this machine and I was concerned about the size, the complexity, and the weight.First...the size. It is tall, wide, and long. You will also need to consider that you need about 2 feet on the three, non bench, sides to move weights. So when deciding where it will go, don't forget that fact. On the bench side...you will need even more. You will be moving the bench in and out and up and down and need some room to maneuver. We have about 6 feet in front of the machine and that seems to work well. We ended up with about a foot on one side and the back and while it works...it is not ideal. The last thing on this point...this is not a knock on the machine...it is just something to consider when purchasing.Next was the complexity of the machine. Using it is a breeze. My only complaint is that the two latches on the bench (for the seat back, and the curl pad) must be unscrewed and screwed back in. I saw this in other reviews and was willing to accept the annoyance. But know... it is not a 2 second operation...more like 30 seconds.Now...the real complexity with this machine is the assembly. I saw lots and lots of negative comments about it. But also lots and lots of helpful hints. I will condense several of those and few of my own here.First...this thing comes in three, big, boxes. They are heavy. You will need to inspect them when they arrive for damage and don't accept them if you notice any or if any of the boxes are heavily damaged or have been ripped open.Once you have ownership of the boxes...carefully unpack them and sort the pieces. In my case, I matched each part with the picture in the construction manual and put a small round sticker with the part number on each. ***If you have one take away from my construction story...this should be it...take the time to organize and label your parts. It will pay off in spades as you work.The hardware was packaged well and labeled on cardboard packages and was very easy to work with.Take your time. Understand what you plan to do...get all the parts ready...ensure you understand your goal and then proceed with each step. You will do much better if you have someone to help you. Sometimes, just someone holding a large bar in place will save you a ton of time.Start by assembling the bench. It is fairly straight forward and you will learn a lot before you get into the bigger pieces. The super structure is straight forward and is just bulky...this is where the second person really comes in handy. Make sure you have everything lined up and bolts in before you tighten the bolts. In some cases you simply need the "wiggle" room to get thing to fit.In any case...the most complex and confusing part is the cables. Three hints here.1. Take all the time you need to logically work out what they are trying to do. It is complicated and involves multiple fly wheels in one, very complex, mechanism. It was not until I was finished that I understood how it was going to work. The part that can get very confusing is the long cable that goes through the part with two wheels side by side. Really study the picture and understand the direction of the cable as it goes through. This is the part you will get backwards if not very careful.2. In the Owners guide, they give you the same pictures as the construction guide, but they add words for the cabling. Read this. It helps a little.3. Do not tighten everything up, for a step, until you are 100% sure you have it right. This will save you a lot of heartache later!In the end, it took my wife and I about 90 minutes to label everything and about 7 hours, spread over 3 days, to finish construction. I used a pair of pliers, a rubber mallet, and a socket set. Those were the only tools I needed to provide...the allen wrenches were included with the hardware.The last area to consider is the weight of this machine. I live in a house that was built in the early 60's with wood construction. This would not fit in our basement so it had to go on the first level. I was concerned. About 400lbs of machine...say...another 200lbs of weights...and then me ~300lbs and possibly my wife...(no weight here...I am not a rookie husband)! But we are easily pushing 1000lbs. Hmmm...should I be worried? Yes. So I called a friend of mine who was a contractor in my neighborhood (so knew our houses). He told me it was not a problem. He said...think about a bedroom set with a water bed. Four contact points and well over 1000lbs. Fair enough. This machine has the footprint of a small bed...and the feet are actually wider than that of a water bed. There is also a fifth foot under the rear weight assembly. So that concern was negated. We installed it...have about 150lbs of weights and not a creak can be heard from the floor. So no problems there.In the end...we love our machine. We use WD40 on back post and on the posts for the bar bearings. We also make sure the cables are not kinked. We adjusted the tension on the cables after the first week (see the owners maual for how), and have added some padding to keep from banging heads and legs on things. The quality is good and machine is sturdy and works as advertised. I highly recommend this machine and look forward to updating my review after we have used it for a year (to give you an idea on wear).

First I'd suggest buying this equipment from Costco online. I orginally bought it from a "distributer" on Amazon, and when it arrived at my house it had a Costco Shipping label on it. I discovered the "distributor" had just purchased it from costco online and just had it shipped directly to me, all while charging me a couple hundred dollars profit. Costco.com offers it for $675 (without a costco membership there was a $30 service fee) with free shipping! At about 700 dollars this equipment is an awesome value.Assembly of the machine is a pain and time consuming (took me about 10 hours), but it is worth it at the end. I put it together completely by myself so if you are alone it can be done. The instructions were not bad, although they were vague at a few steps.I've been working out with this equipment for about two weeks now and I love it. It has exceeded even my high expectations. I recently moved to a more rural area with less gyms in the area. Plus, I work nights and like to workout later than most. Having the equipment in my basement has made it so convienent to workout I have zero excuses not to get to the gym. The versitility of this equipment makes it so much better than similarly prices home gyms that target only specific exercises like leg press, lat pull down, peck deck, and seated chess press.The equipment really stacks up against gym quality equipment. I don't know how it will hold up (as I've only had it two weeks), but the equipment feels very solid at this point. The bearings on the smith rack roll easily and freely. The cable exercises feel similar to exercises on equipment at a gym designed specifically for that one exercise. The pully system also offers enough resistance so that you don't have to try to completely overload it with weight. Between the uppper pullies and lower pully you can do so many different exercises (seated rows, standing cable curls, seated cable curls, skull crushers, tricep extensions, tricep kickbacks, overhead tricept extensions, peck-deck flies, cable cross overs, and the list goes on...). I have found I can change some minor things to make exercises work that I wouldn't have expected to be done on this equipment. For example I used to do standing lateral cable raises at the gym, but found the range of motion wasn't far enough on this equipment from the low pully. So instead I must do them seated. You can really come up with a ton of different excercises to do on this equipment. Someone in a different review commented that the lat pull down doesn't hold down your legs so it is useless. I have found that if you put the smith bar down on your legs and lock it into place using the pins for racking a free bar to the front of machine, it will hold your legs down. So again sometimes it takes just a small change to make an exercise work. When you add an olymic bar, a set of adjustable dumbells, and a pull-up bar to the mix, the list of things you can do includes nearly everything I would do at a gym. I guess the one shortfall of the equipment would be exercises for legs. The bench has the leg extension equipment on it, but the length of my legs make it diffcult to use.All in all if you are thinking about buying a home gym get this one!