Strongway MultiGym Power Cage Review: A Rack and Cable Station for Under £400

Most home gym racks make you choose: a solid cage with nowhere to attach a cable, or a flimsy multi-gym with a pulley bolted onto something that wobbles. The Strongway MultiGym Power Cage sits in the gap, offering a walk-in cage rated to 400kg with a dual pulley system, landmine and dip handles thrown in, all for a shade under £350 at the time of writing.

That combination is unusual at this price. It's also, inevitably, a set of compromises: the steel is thinner than a specialist rack, the pulleys have more friction than a gym cable station, and putting the thing together will occupy most of a Saturday. What matters is whether those compromises land in places you care about.

Who it is for

This is a rack for someone building a first proper home gym in a garage or spare room, who wants to squat and bench safely without a spotter and would also like lat pulldowns and cable work without buying a second machine. On that brief it does extremely well.

It's the wrong purchase if you already own a decent rack and want to add cables, since a wall-mounted pulley from our best cable machine UK guide will be smoother for less money. It's also wrong if you lift genuinely heavy, past 200kg on the bar, where the step up to 11-gauge steel and Westside hole spacing is worth paying for.

The frame

At 209cm high, 110cm wide and 140cm deep, this is a real cage rather than a squat stand with pretensions. You step inside it to lift, which is the entire point: safety bars sit either side of you, so a failed squat gets caught by steel rather than by hope. Strongway rates the whole structure to 400kg.

The uprights use standard round hole spacing rather than the tighter Westside pattern found on pricier racks. In practice that means squat J-cup height is easy to get right and bench press safety pin height is sometimes a centimetre or two off ideal. Annoying, not dangerous.

Two pull-up bars of different diameters run across the top, which is a nicer touch than it sounds. The thicker bar makes grip work harder; the thinner one is more comfortable for volume. Both are welded rather than bolted.

The honest limitation is steel thickness. Under a heavy squat you'll feel a small amount of give that you wouldn't in a commercial rack. It's not alarming and it's well within the rating, but people coming from a gym with Rogue or Eleiko racks will notice.

The pulley system

This is the feature that justifies the purchase and also the one to set expectations about. Two anchor points let you run high and low cable work: lat pulldowns, seated rows, tricep pushdowns, cable curls, face pulls, wood chops. The included straight bar and lat bar cover most of it.

The system is plate loaded, meaning you hang your own weight plates rather than selecting from a stack. Cheaper, more flexible, and fiddlier between exercises. There's also a ratio to be aware of: like most home pulley setups, the load you feel is not identical to the plate weight, so don't compare numbers with the gym cable machine.

Cable smoothness is the weak point. Owners consistently describe the action as functional but slightly notchy, particularly in the first few weeks before the cables settle. Better than nothing by an enormous margin, worse than a dedicated station. If cable work is the main reason you're buying, look at a proper unit instead.

Squatting in it

The reason to own a cage rather than a stand is that it lets you train hard on your own. Set the safety pins just below your bottom position and a failed rep costs you nothing but pride. That safety net changes what you're willing to attempt, and it's the difference between training near your limits and always leaving a couple of reps spare.

Depth is where the safeties earn their keep. Squatting through a full range rather than cutting reps short produces better results, and a scoping review on the deep squat and the knee joint found that deep squatting with good technique is safe for healthy knees. Set your pins to allow the depth you actually want, not the depth you're nervous about.

Two strength sessions a week hitting all the major muscle groups is the NHS baseline, and a cage plus a barbell covers every one of them without a second piece of equipment. That's the argument for a rack over a machine.

Assembly and what else you'll need

Set aside an afternoon and find a second pair of hands. The frame goes together straightforwardly; the pulley routing does not, and the diagrams leave a couple of steps to interpretation. Owners who've built one recommend laying out and labelling every bolt type before starting, which sounds fussy and saves an hour.

You'll also need to budget beyond the cage itself. A barbell worth using, at least 100kg of plates, a bench if you plan to press, and rubber flooring underneath unless your garage floor is expendable. Realistically that's another £300 to £500 on top, which is worth knowing before you convince yourself the rack is the whole cost.

For alternatives at both ends of the budget, our best power cage UK guide covers cheaper stands and heavier commercial racks, and the Strongway 177kg Multi Gym review looks at the brand's stack-loaded machine if you'd rather have weights included.