Fit Home Gym Review: A Calisthenics Swiss Knife?

You live in a small apartment and want to do Calisthenics anyway? In comes the Fit Home Gym. Built with small living spaces in mind, the Fit Home Gym is meant to be easily assembled and disassembled and to be stored inside essentially a suitcase. With a slick design and all the features of a free-standing pull-up bar, she is assembled or disassembled within 60 seconds. We’ve done an extensive video review of the Fit Home Gym to see if it deserves a place on our list of 10 best Free Standing Pull-Up Bars. You can watch the video below and use this article as an in-depth log and easy reference to the review.

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Popularity of the Fit Home Gym

The Fit Home Gym is immensely popular, scoring a solid 4.4 stars on TrustPilot. So popular in fact, that there is a waiting list if you order one now and you shouldn’t be surprised if you must wait 4 to 8 weeks for it to arrive. We had to wait around 10 weeks ourselves for our package to arrive. They’ve apparently emptied out all their stocks and all incoming orders must first be manufactured before they can be shipped. That’s some crazy levels of clout and it makes us wonder if we might have dropped the ball somewhere. Why is this free-standing pull-bar so popular?

Oft cited reasons are its effectiveness as an all-around pull-up bar, its comfortable use, its super sleek look and of course space-saving design. This is also what the Fit Home Gym is advertised as, so we’ll keep that in mind during our review.

About the JointFit App

Part of Fit Home Gym’s popularity stems from the company that produces it. JointFit App is well-known in the Calisthenics scene. They’re the brains behind Project Calisthenics and Yogasthenics, both of which help introduce Calisthenics to a broader audience. Helping to improve the health and fitness of so many people all around the world, they’ve built themselves quite a following. 

These aren’t the only courses you can follow on the JointFit App. Almost every sport imaginable will find a representation on their platform, which is quite amazing and insane at the same time. 

When they came out with the idea of a free-standing pull-up bar which anyone can use, can fit inside a small apartment or condo, is high quality and affordable; their followers were nothing short of jubilant. The evidence of this is their successful 2021 Kickstarter campaign which managed to raise close to 120,000 dollars you-es. That’s some level of dedication and TRUST from the community right there!

Our Expectations for this Fit Home Gym Review

There’s nothing to temper our expectations here really. We’ve already used the Fit Home Gym in the past and we have thought of it fondly already. So, for this review we need to take a step back and look at things objectively. We’ll be looking at the Fit Home Gym in three different ways;

• Ease of use: since its very premise is quick assembly and disassembly, this will be a high priority.
• Fit & Finish: quality of the materials and their finish but also the little details in the shaping of the pull-up bars.
• Versatility: put simply, what can you do with it? 

To best illustrate the above aspects, we’ve divided this review again into three parts. First, we’ll look at both the setup and the breakdown of the Fit Home Gym. This will tell us how easy it is to use and for the occasion, we’ve moved her to a smaller room than where we usually do our reviews. This room should be analogues to an average one-person bedroom.

Secondly, we’ll closely inspect the Fit Home Gym from top to bottom. We’ll go over each shape, materials chosen and down to the nuts and bolts used. Lastly, we’ll perform Calisthenics to test its stability and comfort while engaging in multiple Calisthenics exercises. This should tell us how versatile the Fit Home Gym really is.

The Setup and Breakdown

First, the basic specifications:

• Floor dimensions: 43” x 23” x 2” (110cm x 58.5cm x 5cm)
• Height Top Bar:  75” (193cm)
• Dimensions Dip Bar: 19¾” x 23¾” (50.5cm x 58cm)
• Weight: 38lbs for the baseplate and 64lbs for the frame
• Capacity: 400lbs (180kg) 
• Materials: 1¾” powder coated tubular steel, plywood

The Fit Home Gym comes in what is essentially a large suitcase. The whole device comes out easily and will pack back into that same bag just as easily as well.

Setting it up is all fit and click with latch springs, there are no bolts to turn or screws to tighten. If you’re quick, you can do it in 30 seconds. Disassembly goes nearly just as quick, and everything fits back into the bag the way it came out. The only thing which slows down the disassembly over the assembly is that you now depress each latch spring first. 

The baseplate gives you options in that you can move around the various parts at will. We call the Fit Home Gym a free-standing pull-up bar because that’s what it is in its full configuration. However, you can change out various parts or only build it up half-way. This way you can create Dip Bars, Push-Up Bars and/or use the baseplate for banded exercises using a Resistance Band.

All configurations can be made, changed or disassembled within one minute, easily. This already gives you great versatility. You no longer need different Calisthenics equipment for each type of exercise; you can simply change the configuration of this one device you have. That saves a lot of space (especially considering the Fit Home Gym itself can be reduced to the size of a suitcase) and, moreover, money. 

Fit & Finish

Made of coated, tubular steel, the framework has a durable look to it. The coating is even and has no rough spots or protrusions. For us, the grip on the bars was sufficient but we can that in a sweaty situation, Calisthenics Gloves would be a good pairing with the Pull-Up Bar. The real linchpins of this design are of course the spring latches. They make for the quick assembly and play a role in the modularity of the Fit Home Gym as a whole.  

The tubular construction fits well, they’re easy to shove into their sockets and depressing the spring latch goes without trouble or resistance. What we often find with spring latches is that the spring inside is too stiff to be depressed comfortably or that the tubes fit either too loosely or too tightly together. Having one stubborn latch spring is bad enough but if they’re all like that, it just results in a sore thumb. 

The Fit Home Gym’s spring latches are depressed without any trouble though and the tubes fit snugly together. There is no wiggling whatsoever and the frame operates as if it were made from an all-welded construction.

The real innovation is of course in the baseplate. Made of high quality, lamellar plywood, it comes with a series of fitting points for either the tubes or to latch gymnastic bands on. The surface feels nicely polished with just enough of a satin finish left to provide a good grip. It is the heaviest, single part of the device, which is necessary to help keep the center of balance low even if you’re doing pull-ups. In our minds, this is the real star of the show which makes the Fit Home Gym tick. And how!

Stability & Comfort

Performing our usual Calisthenics exercises worked like a charm. There is really no difference between the Fit Home Gym and a traditional free-standing pull-up bar. After our pull-ups, we rearranged the setup into Dip Bars and did those as well. At no point did the Fit Home Gym produce more movement by the momentum generated by us than we’d ordinarily expect. The pull-up bar can take a maximum weight capacity of 400lbs, more than enough for us to perform safely on.

General Thoughts About the Fit Home Gym

We like this Fit Home Gym. It’s compact and versatile. It allowed us to do everything we wanted to do on a pull-up bar, dip bars and push up bars. The sleek design is a real eyecatcher and fit and finish were good. The spring latches operated smoothly. The joined tubes didn’t feel like they were segmented (no wiggle) and they slid into place without resistance. Assembly and disassembly went largely as promised and the whole device literally fits under your bed (unless you sleep on a box spring). 

The Negatives 

The quality is there, and the versatility is there, and the Fit Home Gym has some clearly defined limitations which we simply cannot expect it to do like side-to-side movements (Archer Pull-Ups). There are some minor negative aspects, though, which we do want to highlight. The first is the price, which does not seem minor, but it doesn’t detract from its many qualities either. You get a quality product and a lot of versatility for which you need to buy at least 3 other pieces of Calisthenics Home Equipment instead. That said, it does cost 400 dollars which is quite an upfront investment.

The second negative is the long delivery time. We waited approximately 10 weeks and that’s only slightly above average. If you look back at their TrustPilot score and select the 1-star reviews, they almost all complain about the long wait time. Without that, the Fit Home Gym would score even higher than 4.4 stars. This tells us that supply cannot keep up with demand. That’s a negative but you can also be assured that you’re waiting for a much-wanted, quality product. 

Conclusions and Final Thoughts

If you don’t have a lot of room at your disposal or want one tool that replaces three or four different high-end tools, then the Fit Home Gym is the all-in-one solution for you. It delivers high quality and versatility to basically cater to all your basic Calisthenics needs. Is it as fast to transition between a pull-up bar and the dip bars if you had both devices there already? No, of course not. But those all cost a lot of money (if you desire similar quality) and the Fit Home Gym gives you the option. At the same time, we were impressed by its quality, craftsmanship and just how quick you can assemble, disassemble and change its configuration.

You pay a tidy sum for this and that’s to be expected. You’re getting a whole lot for your money, though, and considering you’re (almost) acquiring a whole home gym set up with one purchase, it kind of justifies the price. What you will need is patience when you order it. 

In the end, this is a great product with a lot of potential and versatility in store. You’ll enjoy your Fit Home Gym for many years to come.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Fit! Home Gym

Here are some frequently asked questions about the Fit Home Gym.