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REP Fitness – and in particular their adjustable benches – have taken the home gym scene by storm! Established in 2012 they have built up an organisation that is attracting a TON of attention for both competitive prices and innovative designs
BUT (there’s always a BUT somewhere..!) finding a REP Fitness AB-5000 (or any other product for that matter) in the UK has been pretty much impossible, until now…
Let’s explore this a bit more – and thanks to those who have reached out to help pull this together!
At a glance…
- REP Fitness are NOT currently shipping to the UK
- But you can buy a clone of their AB-5000 adjustable bench here
- The AB-5000 is an AWESOME adjustable bench, and our pick for most home gyms
- A huge benefit of the REP Fitness bench is that it is one of the few ZERO GAP benches in the UK
- There are a few other REP Fitness benches cloned and available in the UK, but no power racks that I’ve found
Do REP Fitness offer UK shipping?
No. Quoting from the REP site directly:
“Currently, our shipping is limited to the continental US. We plan to expand globally in the future and hope that we can make you a REP customer at that time. Our goal is to expand into Canada and Europe in 2021, please sign up below to receive updates as they become available.”
REP Fitness official site; Linked here
So for now we are out of luck – no REP Fitness UK shipping 🙁
Can I buy a REP AB-5000 in the UK then?
Sort of. You can buy a clone.
I’m not normally one to condone buying a copy of another design, but as REP don’t ship here then if we want a zero gap bench in the UK we don’t have much of a choice…
A bit of background on REP Fitness…
REP is an awesome gym equipment brand established in Colorado by a couple of brothers looking to bring quality and affordability to the marketplace. Through hard work and great timing they have grown exponentially ever since!
To deliver on their target of affordable equipment they design their products in the USA but outsource manufacturing to other countries – at the time of writing this is mainly China.
While REP have protected themselves to an extent (their agreements with their manufacturers prevent ‘rebranding’ of their designs for other brands to then sell under their own name, basically white labelling) evidently their designs have either been white-labelled against their wishes or reverse engineered at competing factories in the region as virtually identical products ARE out there.
I am not sure if they have patents or any other IP that could protect them further here – but even if they do enforcing it would be an uphill battle when outsourcing manufacturing abroad.
What this means for us is that we can pick up a REP AB-5000 clone in the UK from Bulldog Gear in the absence of REP Fitness shipping to the UK itself yet.
If REP do offer shipping to the UK in the near future (they mention Europe but I am unclear if this includes the UK at the moment) then we will have a moral dilemma on which product we buy… Until then, it’s got to be the Bulldog simply because it’s all we have!
Why should you buy a REP AB-5000 clone?
If you’ve found yourself on this page then the chances are that you already know that the REP AB-5000 (or the Bulldog Gear Adjustable Bench 2.0 Incline / Decline clone) is one of (if not THE) adjustable bench to to have. I’m working on a FULL review of the Bulldog Gear bench which will cover all of these points (+ a ton more) – but in summary:
- High specification – 11 gauge steel construction with 450kg weight capacity
- ZERO PAD GAP – so the seat pad can be slid forward to eliminate pad gap, this is super handy for a home gym where you only want ONE bench as it means you get the benefit of the adjustable bench but the practicality of a flat bench with no gap.
- 12” back pad – compares favourably to the more common 10” pad for a lot of people, personally I can work with 10” or 12”, but have a slight preference for the wider, more stable 12” platform
- Decline option – a true FID bench
- Wheels and handle – make moving the bench around much easier as it’s a heavy beast otherwise!
- Three foot design (sort of) – more flexibility for feet positioning when using the bench, personally I find traditional bench feet get in the way (thus why I like this and the Legend 3103 over the likes of the ATX adjustable bench which has a wider front foot) so I love this
The bench is not quite perfect unfortunately, so in the interests of balance lets touch on a few bits that are a bit annoying:
- 90 degree position – this is just not comfortable in regular use. An 80 – 85 degree upright position would be a massive improvement (even the guy in the official REP picture looks like he’s having a nightmare!) I think this is just a poor design choice and given how easy it would be to fix I’m surprised they haven’t adjusted the hole spacing.
- Zero gap adjustment is amazing to have – but in practice it CAN be a LITTLE fiddly. Compared to the pop-and-go Legend it is another thing to think about and sort out. That said I typically only adjust to zero gap for flat work as it doesn’t interfere with my lifts as much on any other setting so we all find our groove eventually, but then you have to ask if it’s worth paying for the feature to only use it for one position? For me, yes it is, but I can see others being more conflicted particularly if working to a budget at this point in time.
You can check out my full review here!
What about other REP products?
Following the same fact pattern as for the AB-5000 you can pick up numerous other REP Fitness items in the UK if you’re happy to buy clones. A few that I’ve found so far are as follows:
| REP Fitness Item: | Equivalent available in UK: |
|---|---|
| AB-5000 | Bulldog Gear Adjustable Bench 2.0 Incline / Decline |
| FB-5000 Comp Flat Bench | Bulldog Gear Power Lifting Bench |
| AB-5200 | Bulldog Gear Adjustable Bench 1.0 |
| REP Power Racks | Not found any UK equivalents as yet |
Notably I’ve not found any REP Fitness power rack clones in the UK yet – again they get favourable reviews in America but it seems – for now – we will have to wait to get our hands on them..!
Conclusion
Those of us desperate to get our hands on the REP Fitness AB-5000 in the UK can now FINALLY get our hands on… a clone. While REP Fitness do not have UK shipping this is all we can do to get our hands on what we believe is the BEST adjustable bench design available.
As for the official route – if REP Fitness benches become available in the UK we would be over the moon 🙂 Until then, luckily we have Bulldog Gear to keep us satiated for now.
Zero gap benches in the UK are a rare thing indeed so while we wouldn’t normally advocate a clone, if it’s the only option we have then it’s worth pulling the trigger.