Freak Athlete ABX Review – The Best All Around Bench in 2026

Last updated on February 21st, 2026 at 11:21 am

Freak Athlete currently makes our FAVORITE Nordic Combo Bench by means of their Hyper Pro. The Leg Developer might just be the current best-in-class option. And now they dropped their newest Adjustable bench by means of the Freak Athlete ABX. This thing claims to tackle 10 machines in 1, leveraging some of their favorite marketing language from the Hyper Pro. The question is, can they take their success with the Hyper Pro, and put it into a VERY crowded adjustable bench market?

The Freak Athlete ABX was part of a Adjustable Bench Showdown we did at the tail end of 2026 with half a dozen of the best benches available. So we’ll be comparing it to a number of offerings from REP, Prime, Bells of Steel, and more.

Transparency Note

Freak Athlete sent me the Freak Athlete ABX along with all of the attachments for testing purposes prior to full launch. As an early product tester for all of them, I’ve had a hand in helping push these forward a bit. That said, my plan as always is to provide a clear and detailed review that can help YOU make the right decision for your home gym.

They have also provided an affiliate link. Clicking these links helps me get a kick back for my work, while costing you nothing. These funds go towards managing this site, producing YouTube videos, and more. I appreciate your support.

Freak Athlete ABX Overview

The Freak Athlete ABX has been in development for 2 years. I’ve been talking with Freak Athlete and have seen early prototypes, provided feedback, you name it. After multiple iterations, their have launched what they believe to be the BEST Adjustable Bench w/ Attachments on the market. In our testing, the Freak Athlete ABX is a strong contender to be the ONLY bench in your home gym.

Freak Athlete ABX Specs

• Brand: Freak Athlete
• Made In USA: No
• Adjustment Angles: 0, 15, 22, 30, 37, 45, 52, 60, 67, 75, 85
• Seat Pad Angles: 0, 10, 20, 30, 40
• Foldable Headrest Angles: 0°, 8.3°, 30°, 38.3°, 60°, 68.3°, 90° and all the way down
• Dimensions: 24.85 W x 51.18 L x 17 H
• Recommended Weight Capacity: 900lb
• Weight: 96 lbs
• Warranty: Lifetime manufacturer warranty
• Return Window: 100 days to give it a shot, and return if it doesn’t work for you
• Frame Material: 12 gauge
• Pad Material: TruGip™ Leather Vinyl
• Powder Coat Type: Starlight Black

Freak Athlete ABX FAQ

Freak Athlete ABX Features

The Freak Athlete ABX has a few unique attachments, but lets start with the bench itself. It has a full ladder system on the back, with laser engraved numbers and 15 degree jumps throughout. These are also dual marked for the various attachments so you have a quick reference for how to set them up efficiently.

The bench has a back support post, along with grippy vinyl, which means you’ll be locked in for heavy powerlifting. I have benched over 300lbs on the Freak Athlete ABX so far with no issues. I’ve already noticed that Freak Athlete is attempting to refine some of the smaller annoyances with benches, like how the ladder essentially LOCKS in when stored vertically instead of bouncing around.

The star of the show for this bench might just be the auto-adjust mechanism for the pad gap. Where other benches require manual adjustments, this simply adjusts automatically. Legit nothing needed besides adjusting the angle of the bench and seat like normal. This is from the teams own creative design, so they have a nice patent, or copywright, or whatever the correct term is. The legal thing.

One area that we are missing, is decline functionality. The Buzzsaw was the only bench in my lineup last year that had a TRUE decline feature, but the Shorty and Nighthawk had their front seat decline. The Freak Athlete ABX does not. We’ve been using the front seat decline for hip thrusts lately, and it’ll come up again later in this article when we discuss some attachments.

Back Head Rest

When they first chatted with me about the bench, they had an idea for the back head rest to drop down for various exercises I ended up introducing them to Jay at Exponent Edge, who they ended up partnering with on that piece. I’m always happy when companies work together instead of just crush each other.

Vertical Storage & Mobility

The Freak Athlete ABX comes standard with vertical storage and wheels for mobility, which at this point should 100% be standard offerings for a bench meant for a home gym. On the REP Nighthawk we have an issue where the back pad bounces in and out of storage. It isn’t a huge problem, but annoying. And the front seat often falls because of the ladder system.

The Freak Athlete ABX avoids the front seat issue with the pop-pin selection, and manages to keep the back pad locked in during transit, in and out of vertical storage, and literally at all times until you adjust it.

Unfortunately, they made a decision to have the wheels not engage until you lower to a certain level. As a 6ft tall dude I consistently find myself catching the wheels when moving it around the gym.

The Nighthawk clocks in at 8lbs lighter than the ABX, but in a quick felt weight test it is almost 10lbs lighter from the front handle. When Audrey did her mobility test for all the benches, the ABX was one of the most difficult benches for her to move, likely because of that increase in weight and the wheel transitions.

Overall, the Freak Athlete ABX has the specs for storage and mobility that we want, with some strong wins, but a few items you need to consider for your own gym.

Aesthetics

We are going to bring in the REP Nighthawk here for some comparisons on the aesthetics and design.

The Freak Athlete ABX currently comes in the black with white accent layout. This is without a doubt the best color scheme available on the market, and I am in no way biased about that. But the Nighthawk has 6 different color options.

Where the ABX has black powder coated handles with plastic end caps, the Nighthawk has fully welded nickel plated handles. Where the Freak Athlete ABX has your more traditional hardware in terms of nuts and bolts, the Nighthawk has the more recessed style hardware for a cleaner look. Where the attachment port for the ABX is a basic metal port and is already showing signs of chipping due to metal-on-metal contact, the Nighthawk has a plastic liner to avoid this. The Nighthawk has cleaner stitching on the padding, the underside is a more aesthetic structure and flow, and the welds throughout are smoother and more refined.

Now I say all of that because I’ve had both of these benches, side by side, in my garage for months, and I’ve had the opportunity to nit-pick the details. In that same time-frame, I’ve had a dozen people with various levels of equipment experience come into my gym, and not a single one of them noticed any of that. When I’ve pointed out these details to them, most just go “Oh ok” and turn back to the ABX.

For my pickier of home gym owners, these details matter. For 99% of you, those little details won’t make a difference at all.

If the Nighthawk is a 10 out of 10 in looks, the Freak Athlete ABX is right behind at a solid 9. It is far better than something like the Bells of Steel Buzzsaw or the Wide Body Bench. REP just has some additional details fine-tuned.

Freak Athlete ABX Performance

I mentioned that the ABX could very likely be your ONLY bench. So lets take a look at how it performs as a bench, regardless of any attachments. The pad measures in at a width of 12 inches and just shy of 51 inches in length. This width is going to be ideal for the majority of lifters chasing down bigger and badder bench presses.

That is just a tad wider than the Nighthawk, but basically an exact match for length, where the
Thompson Fat Pad clocks in at 14.5” wide and 50” long, but that is truly only needed for the largest of lifters.

I’ve hit a 300lb bench on the Freak Athlete ABX , used it with a number of specialty bars, and it has handled it all. Because we have NO pad gap in the flat position, you should have plenty of room for your set-up whether you go fully arched or flat backed.

Because the bench has all the right incline adjustment angles, and the 10-40 degree adjustments for the seat, we have a lot of awesome options for incline work, whether we want a low press or higher pressing angle. I can manage to get by with my Nighthawk and the 0 to 20 angle options, but having them side by side REALLY sells the 30 and 40 degree angle on the ABX as a winner.

If you are dumbbell pressing, incline pressing, barbell pressing, chasing powerlifting records, you name it, the Freak Athlete ABX is going to check the vast majority of the boxes for an adjustable bench for most home gyms.

Freak Athlete ABX Attachments

I am so freaking happy to have a Freak Athlete product that was built from the ground up to accept attachments. We have a fairly typical attachment port for the Freak Athlete ABX. So we aren’t recreating the world like the Prime Shorty, instead sticking with the proven method. This looks a LOT like the Ironmaster attachment port with the pop-pin and tension knob. No knocks there. It works, it is simple, everyone understands it.

Fold Down Head Rest

While it technically isn’t an attachment, it makes sense to discuss it here. The fold down head rest on the Freak Athlete ABX is similar in function to the Prime Shorty Bench. You get access to a better experience for overhead pressing movements without the need for a dedicated utility bench. And you get access to a MUCH better experience for prone work, since your face isn’t crammed into the padding.

Where the Freak Athlete ABX differs from the Shorty, is that the Shorty pad completely comes off with a pop pin, where the Freak Athlete ABX pad has a magnetic pin and multiple holes on the backside of the bench that allow it to be locked in place at different angles.

This means we can use it for holding our dumbbells for tricep overhead extensions. We can also use it to hold us for movements like seal rows. This works well for dumbbells, and since you can adjust the height with the ladder and the angle in multiples ways, you can accommodate multiple sized athletes as well as tinker with the ideal set-up for you.

For barbell work, you are going to need to play with your set-up because the frame of the bench can be in the way. It works, but I’d definitely take a rack attached pad like the Pegasus as my Plan A here. The same thing is likely to happen if you hold your dumbbells in a pronated instead of neutral fashion.

For seal row movements, there is a bit of a hiccup with the way the pad folds down and the rest of the bench back pad angles up into your face. I asked Audrey to help me film this, as you can see she is quite literally eating the bench pad. You can avoid this, but you’ll need to arch your head up a bit, or use a pad to raise up your chest.

You can also flip around on the bench and do a prone DB row with the pad simply out of the way of your face, which works pretty well. I also ran into issues with the handles on the ladder adjustment being in the way occasionally with the same DB Chest Supported Row movement. If you have longer dumbbells, like say a set of adjustables, you might consistently hit them on the handles. For reference, the Nighthawk handles are quite a bit shorter than the ABX.

Another area where the Freak Athlete ABX differs from the Shorty, is in the pad width. The Shorty is a full 2 inches thinner. This is a negative for pressing purposes, but a huge win for variations of prone work.

This chest supported cable row is one of my current FAVORITE back exercises. Unfortunately, it is not a favorite of my wife’s due to the different anatomy of her and I in the upper torso area, as well as the fact that the ABX is just too wide for her. Our Sunday crew of 8-year-old girls was also not able to do prone dumbbell rows on the ABX because the pad is too wide.

The last piece here, is that because the pin comes all the way out, you can actually let it free float. But don’t do that. The tension knob on the attachment port will run into the enclosed ladder frame and likely bend or scratch it up over time. Ideally we probably have a range limiter here so that doesn’t happen.

I like the fold down head rest on the Freak Athlete ABX , it opens up some opportunities, and it doesn’t take anything away from the bench, but I don’t think it is a home run especially for smaller athletes.

Leg Developer

The Leg Developer is the attachment that I deem the most important for a bench ecosystem. In our space it often gets used 2 or 3 times a week with all the athletes rotating through our gym.

The Freak Athlete ABX Leg Developer is similar to the Hyper Pro in concept, but differs in quite a few ways. Up front, no, they are not compatible in either direction, but the ABX is compatible with the Ironmaster Super Bench Pro V2… for the most part. You’ll have some minor issues with the bench being so light if you happen to go fairly heavy, but otherwise good to go.

The Freak Athlete ABX Leg Developer has improved padding, especially with the pads that go under your knees for leg extensions. These are much closer to a commercial leg extension style, and it is what we are seeing on the Dialed Motion offering, APEX, and REP Leg Developers.

The angle of the bench compared to the flat nature of the Hyper Pro, also makes for a better stretch and overall strength curve on leg extensions. My wife had some issues with the Hyper Pro torquing her knee, that isn’t the case with the ABX.

The attachment port uses a locking pop pin, so you can easily wheel the leg developer up, put it into the port, and then lock the pop pin in place, followed by the tension knob. And since the Leg Developer has a magnetic piece to keep the pivot arm from free floating, as well as wheels, it makes for a fairly easy transport.

We have multiple adjustments to accommodate different sized lifters, which is huge in my space.
And we have both a plate loaded option and a cable driven option for resistance.

For cable driven to work, we need the leg developer to connect at the top and bottom of the bench, which they use a screw pin to accomplish. This feels like a “we couldn’t think of a better solution” kind of answer as it takes awhile to set-up, take off, etc.

Like with the Hyper Pro, you are going to need to have some decent space to set this up for cable work… The bench is about 52 inches long… The Leg developer is about 21… And the cable is about 40 from the front of the leg developer… So we are talking about 113 inches from your cable machine, to the end of the bench, to fit this set up.

Like with other bench attachments, because this doesn’t have a seat pad in the back, if you are a heavier lifter, you’ll have a tendency to get lifted off the seat. So, you might need to tinker with something like the Gym Pin seat buckle. They did include handles here, but I found that they have a lot of movement to them at my heavier sets.

The other key consideration, is around storage. This thing isn’t going to be stored on a wall, or storage rack. You are going to need some floor space, so factor that into your decision.

All in, this is arguably the best plate loaded bench attachment we’ve used to date, and the cable function is pretty fantastic, with only the Dialed Motion prototype we tested at HomeGymCon sneaking in front. I wasn’t able to fully max out the weight horn, compared to a number of other benches we tested. And moving to a cable system gives us a TON of head space for resistance.

I credit this with the quality strength curve that has a pretty solid stretch at the beginning and doesn’t drop off too much at the end.

This is our current go-to for leg extensions and leg curls in our gym.

Dips

The Dip Attachment for the Freak Athlete ABX is pretty basic. It functions very similarly to the Ironmaster option. The biggest difference is that the Ironmaster is meant to be used with the bench at a full upright position, and the ABX is meant to be used at 60 degrees…

My dude Rogue Crusher from r/HomeGym actually had a friend of his snag the ABX dip for his Ironmaster bench in a short ceiling environment. Because the attachment ports are almost identical, it works just fine and buys back some head space.

There is a pretty decent amount of play when you get up into position, which I think there is probably nothing you can do there. But it locks down pretty well in use. At my 250lb frame at 6ft tall, I didn’t feel like I had any issues here. The back support post can easily be used as a step as well, which is a nice feature to get into place, and it won’t likely be in the way.

If you are a dip enthusiast, hanging multiple plates from your waist and banging out reps, you are going to have the bench frame in the way, which could be troublesome. There are a couple of things I’d like to see to improve the Dip handle. Move away from the rubber grips, these eventually break down and aren’t ideal in general. At the very least they are firmly adhered to the handles. Instead of a fully neutral hand placement, I’d like to see an angled solution like the Mutant Metals UDA. This allows you more options because you can grab closer or wider and change the grip width.

Overall, this is a fairly simple and overall well executed attachment that takes up minimal space. If you are grabbing the Freak Athlete ABX and need a dip handle, this isn’t winning any awards, but it ain’t bad.

Decline Sit-Up

Would an adjustable bench be complete without a decline attachment? They went ahead and added the handle, which is a solid win compared to the MAJORITY of decline attachments. You are limited here in terms of the angle you can safely decline to, compared to the Ironmaster. So this will be a good option for most, but not quite as challenging for other more experienced decline sit-up professionals.

The one item that COULD be a problem, is that we don’t have a decline option for the seat. So depending on your height, you might run into issues of the back pad and the seat not being a nice flat transition.

Bicep Attachment

The bicep attachment brings in an incline curl option, and arguably the second most requested bench attachment out there… preacher curls! A number of adjustable benches attempt to do this, but no one does it as well as the Shorty Bench. So, we’ll spend some time comparing these two here.

The bicep attachment connects into the back of the bench with another magnetic pin, and out the gate we get incline dumbbell curls. This is similar to the shorty elbow pad function, and works much like doing curls against a bicep bomber.

I appreciate the concept of this, but if I’m doing incline dumbbell curls, I want my arms to come down so I get the full stretch at the bottom, targeting the long head of the bicep. With the pad here, we get more stability, which means we can probably handle more weight, but the tradeoff isn’t worth it in my book. This isn’t an exercise that would be a regular in my personal rotation.

The preacher curl function requires us to drop the headrest down, which rotates the pads around to the backside of the bench. We adjust them down with a pop pin, and we are in business. I’ve been able to mix the preacher curls up in a number of ways, using my VOLTRAs off the rack, curling out of my Tandem Tower, and even rigging up a pulley that could work for essentially any cable system.

But I do have some gripes with the preacher curl set-up as well.

Because the pads come off the side of the bench, and we have a 12 inch wide pad, your arms are going to need to be fairly wide to perform curls. Not a problem for me most of the time, but if I was trying to perform a closer grip curl, or had a smaller athlete trying to use this, it wouldn’t work. In the same idea, taller and shorter athletes are going to struggle to get into the right position for this, as there is no way to accommodate those with different sized torsos with any kind of adjustments. The bench pad length is simply what it is.

The Prime Shorty also has a rack on the bench that can be used for dumbbells, curl bars, or when you get crazy, cable attachments. For the Freak Athlete ABX, we don’t have that. So when we finish a tough set, we have to bring the bar or dumbbells back up to us, which can be difficult if we really pushed our set. If you had to bail you’d need to drop it, likely on the frame of the bench.

And the kicker for me, is the angle of the pads themselves. The preacher pads are at a 45 degree angle from the bench, and have no option to adjust that any lower. For me, I consistently find that my arm isn’t flat on the pad, and my armpit isn’t locked in and over the top. The Prime Shorty has just a bit more of an angle, which makes it the superior choice for preacher curls in my experience. Even just one more hole in the adjustment angles would potentially fix this.

Should You Buy The Freak Athlete ABX?

Ok, we’ve come to the important section… Who should buy the Freak Athlete ABX and who should consider another bench?

The Prime Shorty is still the best bodybuilder bench on the market. The thinner padding, the superior angles for the preacher pad, and the integration into their SMART Arm system, make it the better choice if your primary use of an adjustable bench is accessory work for hypertrophy purposes.

The REP Nighthawk is still a more refined bench in terms of aesthetics and finishing touches, plus it is lighter and easier to move around. If you need a bench that is suitable for the whole family, and don’t need a bunch of extra attachments and features, the Nighthawk is the way to go.

And if you need a bench that does EVERYTHING, the Ironmaster Super Bench Pro V2 is still the GOAT in that regard.

The Freak Athlete ABX isn’t the best at any one thing, but it might be the adjustable bench with the least missing pieces to the puzzle.

The Nighthawk is, arguably, just a bench. And their leg developer, while it looks nice, is almost twice the size, twice the price, and our initial tests would say it isn’t as good.

The Shorty is awesome for accessories, but if you flat bench at all, especially like a powerlifter, it leaves you wanting a lot more. And to get what I believe is the most important movements, leg extensions and leg curls, the SMART Arm costs as much as the entire Freak Athlete ABX system and has its own drawbacks.

And the Ironmaster does a TON with their ecosystem, but their attachments aren’t friendly in a multiple sized lifter environment, and keep in mind that the Freak Athlete ABX can also take the majority of the Ironmaster attachments.

The Freak Athlete ABX is the most suitable one and done bench for a home gym with multiple lifters on the market right now. It has the attachments I would want for my bench, and they all work pretty dang well, for larger and smaller lifters alike.

The bench itself is robust enough to handle heavy flat bench, with the right angle adjustments for incline work. And it looks great. Even after some extensive testing, banging around, and DIY experiments.

Other Options On The Market

Buy THIS Adjustable Bench For Your Home Gym In 2026

If you want to check out all of the other adjustable benches we’ve reviewed, check it out right here.

Wrap Up

The Freak Athlete ABX isn’t the best at any one thing, but it might be the adjustable bench with the least missing pieces to the puzzle. It has the attachments I want, does some things that other benches don’t, and it looks great. This is a very solid bench. Not perfect, but no bench is.

💲Want to buy a the Freak Athlete ABX? Use this link.