Macrofit Home Gym Review: A Calisthenics Swiss Knife?

You live in a small apartment and want to do Calisthenics anyway? In comes the Macrofit Home Gym. Built with small living spaces in mind, the Macrofit 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. The Macrofit Home Gym came in second place in our earlier review of the 10 best Free Standing Pull-Up Bars. Time to take another look at it with a full Macrofit Home Gym review.

Popularity of the Macrofit Home Gym

The Macrofit Home Gym is immensely popular. So popular in fact, that there is a waiting list if you order one now and you shouldn’t be surprised if you had to wait 4 to 8 weeks for it to arrive. They’ve apparently emptied out all their stocks and all incoming orders have to 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 looking and of course space-saving design. This is also what the Macrofit Home Gym is advertised as so we’ll keep that in mind during our review.

Macrofit! Home Gym

Get it here:

macrofit.co

About JointFitApp

Part of the Macrofit Home Gym’s popularity stems from the company that produces it. JointFitApp 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 JointFitApp. 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 the successful Kickstarter campaign which managed to raise close to 120,000 dollars you-es. That’s some level of dedication and TRUST right there!

Our Expectations for this Macrofit Home Gym Review

There’s nothing to temper our expectations here really. We’ve already used the Macrofit Home Gym in the past and we think 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 Macrofit Home Gym in three different ways;

• Ease of use: since its very premise is quick assembly and disassembly
• 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 in three parts. First, we’ll look at both the setup and the breakdown of the Macrofit 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.

Secondly, we’ll closely inspect the Macrofit 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 Macrofit Home Gym really is. 

The Setup and Breakdown

The Macrofit 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 have to depress each latch spring first. 

The floorboard gives you options in that you can move around the various parts at will. We call the Macrofit 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 built it up half-way. This way you can create dip-bars, push-up bars and/or use the floor board for banded exercises using a resistance band. 

All configurations can be made, changed or dissembled within one minute. This, of course 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 space (especially considering the Macrofit 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. We found that the aid of gymnastic tape, gymnastic gloves or some liquid chalk aided us greatly. 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 Macrofit 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 Macrofit 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 floorboard. 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 for 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 Macrofit Home Gym tick. And how! 

Stability & Comfort

Performing our usual Calisthenics exercises worked like a charm. There is really no difference between the Macrofit 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 Macrofit Home Gym produce more movement by the momentum generated by us than what 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. Our only addition outside of the Home Gym itself was the use of liquid chalk.

General Thoughts About the Macrofit Home Gym

We like this product. It’s compact and it’s versatile. It allowed us to do everything we want 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). 

Conclusions and Final Thoughts

If you don’t have a lot of room where you live or don’t have the money to spend on three or four difference devices, then the Macrofit Home Gym is an all-in-one solution for you. It delivers high quality and versatility to basically cater to all your Calisthenics needs. Is it *as fast* to transition between a pull-up bar and a dip-bar if you had both devices there already? No, of course not. But those all cost a lot of money and the Macrofit Home Gym gives you the option. We think it’s a great product, one you’ll enjoy for many years to come.

Macrofit! Home Gym

Get it here:

macrofit.co

Video of the Macrofit Home Gym