If you’ve done any research at all into buying gear for your home gym, you’ve almost certainly come across Titan Fitness. You’ve also probably come across a variety of strongly held opinions about them. Very few other companies in the fitness industry are as polarizing as Titan is.
Some people hate them. Others love them. And that can leave you wondering if the gear they make is any good or should be avoided. The answer, as in all things in life, starts with “it depends”.
Titan Fitness is a budget-minded fitness brand with a broad array of products. Their impressively large assortment of gear is mostly made in China. The quality of that gear varies wildly from piece to piece. Some of it represents an amazing value. Other items are better sourced elsewhere.
Luckily for you, I own more Titan gear than I sometimes want to admit. Some of it I use to this day and love. Other stuff I couldn’t stand and had to sell. And there are an awful lot of their products that live between those two extremes.
To help you navigate the sometimes murky waters of Titan Fitness gear, here is a complete walkthrough of the company along with my recommendations of some of it’s better products.
2023/2024 Update
I wrote this article 3 years ago (I’m writing this update in mid-November, 2023) and a lot has changed since then. While I stand by everything in this article 100%, Titan has been making some very impressive changes lately.
Titan Fitness wants to play with the other grown-ups in the room now. Gone are the days of obviously copying other people’s products and producing a low-quality, low-priced knockoff. Instead, they have started to design and release some very good gear. So good, that if it didn’t say “Titan” on the side, you wouldn’t know it came from Titan.
The two categories they have made the most progress with are their barbells and adjustable benches.
They have several new barbells in their “Titan Series” which are outstanding. Specifically, their Titan series power bar hangs in there with quite a few other quality barbells.
With adjustable benches, there is only one new bench out so far, but that one bench is really good. The Titan series adjustable bench is probably the best adjustable bench in its price category.
The rest of their stuff still hasn’t changed from what I describe in this article, but it does look like Titan is making a ton of changes for the better. As they continue to do this, I’ll come back and update this article accordingly.
Who is titan fitness?
Titan Fitness is a division of Titan Distributors. Titan Distributors owns and operates 4 different companies. Titan Attachments, aka Titan Palletforks, primarily make forklift and tractor attachments. Titan Ramps make vehicle and wheelchair ramps. Titan Great Outdoors makes outdoor firepit, cooking, and hunting accessories. And, of course, there is Titan Fitness, maker of home and garage gym gear.
What do all of these companies have in common? Big, heavy, steel products. After looking at all 4, it’s clear that they have relationships with one or more steel manufacturing plants in China. Anything that can be made of steel that fits in one of these four categories they can make/import.
The primary company name, Titan Distributors, clues you in that they are simply middlemen. They contract for bulk orders of goods, advertise them on their websites, and ship them to their customers.
They are not set up for much of anything else. When you understand the structure of their company, you start to see why they do some of the things they do. You get why they have the weaknesses that they have.
Are Titan Fitness Products any good?
That, my friends, is a loaded question. There are some people out there (Alan Thrall on YouTube comes to mind as an example) who would tell you that Titan Fitness makes nothing but garbage equipment.
There are others that have a very different view. Coop over at Garage Gym Reviews on YouTube has done some glowing reviews of Titan gear. See his rebuttal of Alan’s views here.
In my opinion, the answer to this question comes down to two things. What are you expecting and what are you using the gear for.
I’ll use one of their more popular products as an example. The Titan X3 power rack (which I own, love, and recommend – check it out by clicking here) is one of a good-sized assortment of power racks made by Titan Fitness.
If you are buying this for a commercial gym whose members are beasts lifting 1000’s of lbs every day, you are going to be disappointed. If you are buying this to look pretty so you can show off high-end powder coating and pristine welds, you aren’t going to be happy. In these cases, you will say that the X3 power rack is not all that great.
If you are an average person building a home gym and lifting normal human amounts of weight, this rack works fantastically well. If you and several family members will use it daily, you’ll all be happy.
Most importantly, if you want your hard-earned dollars to go towards function and you are happy to sacrifice a little form to save some coin, Titan is a great choice in most cases! I’m perfectly comfortable with a lower-tier level of powder coating and welds that are strong, but not pretty.
With that example under our belt, let’s take a look at who should and shouldn’t buy gear from Titan Fitness. We’ll then dive into some of their better products as well as some cautions based on quite a few personal buying experiences.
Who should buy Titan Fitness equipment?
I’ll try to make this simple. If you are equipping a home or garage gym and you don’t have an unlimited budget, you should at least consider buying some of your gear from Titan.