7

I've just moved into an apartment with a built in gym.

Yay! I can save money on my gym membership

BUT! They dont have any barbell or squat rack. How will I ego deadlift now????

Wondering what dead loft alternatives I have on a cable machine?

Also willing to consider kettle bells or anything else I can buy / donate to the gym short of an entire barbell set and squat rack

top 3 comments
sorted by: hot top new old
[-] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 2 points 12 minutes ago

If they have the two-column/gantry style cable machine and you’re willing to BYO bar, you could add removable cable attachment points to each end with common pipe and cable hardware.

For example, on each end of your bar, you could slide on a shaft collar like this

steel shaft collar

But replace the set screw with a shallow eyebolt like this

steel eyebolt

Then attach cables of lower-inside pulleys to the eyebolts at each end of your bar, and test.

It won’t replicate the dynamics of plates but should let you find the correct angle of resistance into the floor and maintain your form while training with cables.

[-] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago

I guess you'll just have to lift the entire cable machine /s

[-] Shellofbiomatter@lemmus.org 3 points 1 hour ago

Not sure there are any good or direct cable alternatives for a deadlift, mostly because cable machine stacks aren't big enough for deadlifting.

There was a video of Jeff Nippard doing deadlifts on a cable row machine. If you're interested in testing it out. https://youtube.com/shorts/mYROrXBWfKA

But otherwise you'd probably have to separate out this movement into multiple different movements rather than single one.

this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
7 points (100.0% liked)

Fitness

4872 readers
61 users here now

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS