Marcy MD9010G Home Gym - Smith Machine - Weight Bench

OK, so delivery was earlier than stated, it comes on a pallet in 3 boxes. There are a lot of parts, some big some small. Don't expect this to be a quick job, took me all day and I am a Mechanical Engineer, but the end result was worth all the effort. The picture shows some chains for the cross fly's these are not included, but i went on to the suppliers web site and ordered for next to nothing. Am I happy with the package? yes very. Been using it every day and have cancelled my gym membership, will have a simple payback period of 2 years, so for me it will also save me money.

The loading pins at the back of the machine does not glide and gets caught all the time so you can't use the cables properly. It just stops moving and can cause a serious injury. I have tried wd40 to make it glide but it keeps getting caught so does not help. The only bit I can use is the Smith bar. Really angry considering how much this cost. It took 10 hours to put together and can't be used. Would give zero stars if I could.

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).

Verry happy with it Takes some time to put it together but when done ausume machine Its a big and strong machine

So couple things. First of all, I’m a 5’4” 125lb woman and I put this together BY MYSELF cables included. It may be a little hard, but you do not need two people to assemble despite other reviews, just need some common sense and a ratchet set with the 5/8th bolt size. Second, do NOT rip open all of the cardboard sheets that hold the nuts and bolts. I took my buck knife and only cut out around the exact ones I needed for the next step and only took out the very one I needed. You can easily start mixing them up if you take out different lengths at a time as some of the bolts only vary by an 8th inch. ONLY WORK WITH THE EXACT NUT/BOLT COMBO YOU NEED AT A TIME. I went one page at a time on the directions and one nut/ bolt combo at a time pictured and worked my way through that page until I had completed everything. For some of the cable steps, you don’t attach the cable pulley mount to anything until a few pages later- just let it hang there until it says to attach it to something. Third, and this is VERY IMPORTANT IF YOU’RE SHORT OR WANT EXTRA RANGE OF MOTION. Being 5’4 and wanting to do hip thrust, deadlifts, stuff that requires the bar to be close to the ground, DO NOT PUT ON THE SAFETY HOOKS. As you can see from my one picture holding the safety hook up you lose about 3 inches of range of motion at the bottom if you have these on the pole. Being that it’s a smith machine and you can rack it every few inches I don’t think they’re necessary and it took about an hour to get them off after I had already assembled the whole thing, which can be done by removing the j shaped weight storage racks and sliding them off of the bottom of the pole- not fun. I included a picture at the bottom of my hip thrust range of motion which is the perfect height without the safety hooks being installed. Clamps- upgrade to quick release clamps, I got the amazon recommended black ones pictures they run about $8 a set and are worth not having to deal with the metal ones. Attachments- they’re just okay, I bought a separate ankle strap that is much more padded and a Bar pad from perfect peach athletics- $26 and is so worth it. I also recommend purchasing some quick release carabiner hooks to attach all the accessories with, I found 4 for $7 on here which is better than having to unscrew them each time. Weight types- this machine CAN run off OLYMPIC OR STANDARD WEIGHTS you just don’t put the black sleeves on if you want standard sized plates. Bench- the bench is actually pretty good when it comes to the leg/ bicep attachments and again can work off Olympic or standard weights. Only thing I don’t like is that there’s a lumbar support in the bench it is not completely flat and that you have to unscrew the pin to incline the bench. Otherwise fairly sturdy. Also it doesn’t have wheels which is annoying to move. Take your time putting this monster together, I did it in about 8 hours over a couple days and it went almost completely smoothly since I took my time. This is a great addition to any home gym you can do SO many different exercises with it and is well worth the price. Also, I found an entire set of Olympic plates at goodwill for $112 plus a lot of standard sized and dumbbells. Check out second hand before you spend a fortune on a few plates of iron- I restored mine with a wire brush and some rust oleum spray paint and they look new again. Hope this review helped you make a decision and happy lifting guys!

In case you are not aware, muscles react 30% better to free weights then they do to machine weights. The problem for many people, is getting that free weight motion safely if you have to workout alone. This Smith Machine concept tackles that nicely. I researched for weeks what would be the best free weight (or similar) home gym, at the lowest price possible, and as safely as possible without a spotter, but without sacrificing quality. This Marcy smith system won the toss. There were a few other possible runner-ups (like the Body Solid Series 7 Smith Machine at $2800, or the PowerTec Multisystem Leverage Gym at $1500). Both had their pros (quality) and cons (size/price), but in the end when I compared everything this Marcy gym won hands down. The Linear Bearings used in it dramatically increase the quality factor, and while some reviews said they were not "Thompson" bearings, I find them to be of very good quality and extremely smooth (besides, how "brand name" do you really need little steel ball bearings to be anyways). Anyhow, there are a few things to note about this gym: PROS: GREAT price at only $982 on Amazon w/ free shipping (and it arrived in a week) EVERY major exercise you can think of. I pulled out my exercise routine I followed when I was a member of Bally's Gym, and I was able to do every single exercise on my list. I am still amazed at everything this gym has! THE SIZE of it is even more compact than I thought. The frame is only about 5 feet wide by 5 feet long (but keep in mind that the smith bar extends about 7 feet across, and the bench sticks out about 2 feet longer than the frame itself). LOOKS - it is probably the most stylish smith gym I have seen in blue and white (coincidentally, our walls are the same color blue, so that was a bonus) CONS: You need to buy separate olympic weights. This is not actually a CON, since most of these free weight gyms require the same, but you can tack on a few hundred more for those (I found the best deal at Sears for 300 lbs + the bar at only $275) The instructions - although they are fairly easy to read, they are aboslutely horrible for matching parts. NOTHING, not a single solitary part (and there are about 100) have labels. You have to actually hunt through the boxes to match the right piece with the right step and diagram you are on to make sure you have the right match. What were they thinking here? The good news is that ech part is pretty much one of a kind, so you shouldn't have too much trouble matching the piece, it's just finding it amongst 100 pieces that is the trouble. They could have made this much easier. The build time as stated in several reviews online said 5-8 hours, and yes it took me all 8 hours simply because of the hide and seek of matching parts. Proper labeling could have easily cut this down to 6 hours at a maximum. Lastly, two of the frame pieces were bent when they got here (although no visible damage to the boxes). I had to hammer one piece back to it's correct shape, and the other had an elongated hole in it for a bolt to fit through, but because it was bent so much I had to drill about a 1/4" more space to accomomidate the bolt. All in all, I would absolutely buy this again, as long as you don't mind an 8 hour build time and the "possiblity" of a little extra handy work. My logic with this product was to buy it for $982, buy the Bowflex SelectTech dumbells (see my 2009 model review of those on Amazon) as well, buy the free weights, and buy an extra EZ curl bar but still stay under $2000. I did exactly that, while at the same time maintaing the ability to keep free weight quality and encompass all necessary exercises. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, AND WE ARE 100% SATISFIED!

So I wanted to wait a little over a year before posting a review to ensure I had really experienced this. I'll have to say, for the price, I'm very impressed. I workout anywhere between 4-6 times per week. Typically heavy lifting and this system has met my needs with few exceptions. I have had to improvise a few lifts- seated calf raises have to be done with the smith machine and a pad. There's no lower cable cross- it only comes from the top. But other than those small inconveniences, this thing has held up great. The action on the pulley system obviously isn't going to be as smooth as a system 3x this price, but it works perfectly fine. I do recommend some sort of spray on grease just to keep the rails and pulley wheels moving smoothly. What else you'll need: Somewhere to do pull-ups and dips if you're into those. Good barbell and Olympic weight set (not included with this). Dick's had a good set for about $150. Spray on grease for pulleys/rails. New clips! The ones that it comes with are threaded and take way too long to change. Carabiner clips work MUCH better- just make sure they're rated for the correct weight. Thread lock compound- the seat on the bench tends to wiggle loose pretty often. A little thread lock will fix that problem easily. As others have mentioned, set up is a BEAST. I did do it alone with a helping hand just a few times from my wife to hold up a bar here and there while I secured it. Its going to take a long time. Turn on some music and settle in for the long haul. Best advice I saw on here was to separate out the various nuts and bolts and label them. I used plastic cups for this. LIFE SAVER. Do not skip this step. You'll regret it later. Overall, great workout system. I would definitely buy it again. Holding up great and not seeing any signs of it breaking down soon.