The Gym upgrade is coming faster

In 2024, I put down a preorder for one of Rogue’s new Twin Stack Functional trainers. I was never going to be able to fit a full 43” 6-post Twin stack in my tiny space, and our housing instability felt a lot further away. We lived with the mantra: we stay here as long as we have access to the field behind us. Nobody was interested in it at the time, and nobody was taking care of it. Moved on with my life. We bought Jeremy (the mower) and took care of it ourselves after years of spending 3-4 hours every weekend push mowing it. I chose the half rack, replacing my old RML-390F. A sweet couple from Belle Villa purchased it and all of my attachments.

The FM-HR Twin is an excellent cornerstone, but you have to work for it. Deadlifting a box of 1” assembly bolts set the tone. There’s something about being a 5’3” woman buying equipment like this that was intimidating at first. 5/8” is plenty. The industry focuses on 1”. That’s an undeniable fact, but I never understood the actual gap in equipment quality until my hands were on it. Rogue's 1" J cups are awesome, they hug my rack with perfect tolerance. We also snagged a bunch of Oak Club Mfg accessories before the Tarriflation. I love it and would never go back unless I had to.

The Half Rack has been so much work. Heavy on setup time and discipline. So many best-practices have been learned over the two years I’ve had it. Safety rotation, cable trolley locations, pulley position, attachment location, bench location, barbell locations, J cup locations, it’s all been tetris. I didn’t think that would ever change because I had no interest in selling my rack and buying a new one. The answers were going to be convert to digital resistance (RepOne eStack/Voltra) or buy a second rack when I had more space: one dedicated to barbell lifts, so the FM HR Twin could be a dedicated cable machine.

The 2x Voltra + 4 or 6 post rack is not appealing...

But Rogue green-lit a request to sell a conversion kit to upgrade my rack from HR to 43” FM-6. And Chase offered to give me the living room. The project has a big price tag because it includes my flooring upgrade as well as some additional plates I’ve been hurting to include. These were all planned purchases, but mixing it into the middle of our housing crisis was not in the plan. It means the gym moves twice. It sets me back a few months on being able to move forward with any potential housing plans.

We found a few home contenders for sale, but every time I take inspection to it, the costs become too unreasonable. We still treat building as our least favorable option. I’d hoped that my plans would be ironed out by the time Strike came home. We were so close to purchasing a house 2 weeks ago, but we had catastrophic findings in the attic of the house that closed the door.

The awful economic factors increasing interest rates puts our current location a little further in my favor. The land was so close to selling a few times this year, but maybe it won’t now. I spent two weeks 'off' from the housing and house plan fiasco for the first time since November of last year, and it's SUCH A RELIEF. Even if I'm absolutely clueless about where we go from here.

I say: bring on the FM-6 Twin.