Best Sissy Squat Benches of 2026

Nineteen and three-quarter inches across is the first measurement we care about with any of these, because it decides whether the machine lives in the room or in the way. This is the narrowest full station in the group, slim enough to stand beside a rack or in the dead space at the end of a hallway, and the four suction-cup pads under the foot plate hold it down on a hard floor while you lean back.

It also carries the highest rating of the machines here, and a session on it shows why. The foam rollers sit under your calves where the pressure goes, assembly is a handful of minutes with the hardware in the box, and nothing about the setup asks you to be handy. For a small room and a modest budget it's the easiest yes in this group, a machine that disappears into a corner and still lets you drive your knees well past your toes.

A 33-inch base and a 330-pound rating are the two numbers that put this one at the top of our list. A sissy squat loads a machine in an odd place: your heels come up, your knees drive forward past your toes, and most of your weight presses down on the front edge. Width and frame mass are doing real work there rather than padding a spec sheet, and at 26.5 pounds this one is light enough to shift alone and settled enough once it's down that we stopped thinking about it mid-set.

It's also the most usefully adjustable machine of the group. The rear cushion moves in height, which changes where the pad sits behind your legs, and the foot holder sets where your heels land, so the same bench adjusts down far enough for a 5-foot-2 user and back up for someone much taller. If more than one person trains at home, that range is worth more than any of the extra exercises on the box. Setup is a single bolt out of the carton, and the whole thing folds up against a wall when the car needs the garage.

The one thing we don't ask of it is back extensions. The rear pad is shaped for squatting, and depending on your leg length it can land high on the thigh and press rather than support once you turn around for extension work. Sissy squats, sit-ups and push-ups all came out fine. Treat the hyperextension position as something this machine tolerates rather than a reason to buy it.

Eight exercises is the headline on this one, and it's the number we ignore. What the Goplus actually is: a padded sissy squat station with two front wheels so it tips and rolls out of the way, knobs on both cushions so their heights change without tools, and the lowest price in this group.

On the movement it's built for, it works. The rear pad lets you lean back far enough to drive your knees well past your toes, and its small footprint fits rooms the wide machines don't. One habit worth building: seat the adjustment pin fully every time the machine has been moved, because a half-engaged pin is the one thing here that can spoil a set. Otherwise it's a straightforward way to try sissy squats without committing much space or money.

Its height range runs higher than most of the group, and that's exactly where it gets awkward: crank the cylinders to the top and the pad angle stops matching a natural squat, which is where the back starts taking load. A notch or two lower and the geometry settles into something we rate. The T-shaped base spreads the load across the floor rather than sitting on four small feet, and the padded rollers hold your calves without pinching.

What separates it from the cheaper machines is the extra movement: the rope pulley adds a pulling exercise none of the others have, and both cylinders and the mat adjust in height and angle, so the setup covers more than squats. If you want one station for a varied circuit rather than a dedicated leg machine, that breadth is the argument for it.

Light commercial is the claim in the ALTAS title, and the alloy-steel frame is where the money goes. Whether that matters depends on where the machine lives. In a garage gym used by one person, most frames here will outlast the enthusiasm. In a space where several people rotate through, the heavier build starts earning its place.

The adjustment set is the most complete in this group. Foot holder height, rear cushion height and rear cushion angle all move independently, which gives you more control over where the pad sits than the cheaper machines allow. The T-shape base with front wheels is stable in use and easy to push back against a wall afterwards, and that combination is what you're paying for.

So the question isn't whether it's good, it's whether you're the buyer. We rate it for a shared or semi-public gym where the frame gets leaned on by more than one person, and for a solo setup the 8300 covers the same movement for noticeably less. Nothing about the way it squats argues with the price; the arithmetic is the only thing that gives us pause.

There is nothing to assemble. The GM8300 comes out of the carton, takes a pin, unfolds the cushion, and you're squatting, which sounds like a small mercy until you've spent an evening with an Allen key and a bag of bolts. It also folds down to roughly 30 inches long, so the gap beside a sofa or the bottom of a closet counts as legitimate storage.

It carries the same 330-pound rating as our top pick in a footprint about a foot shorter, and the foot holder clicks through five height positions, so a shorter lifter can find the pad placement without hunting. The calf cushion is thicker than the rest of the package suggests, and that's the difference between finishing a set and stopping because your shins hurt.

Judged as a spare-room station rather than a gym centrepiece, it earns its keep because it never becomes furniture you have to work around. The cushion and rollers take the pressure off your calves, the pin locks the position positively, and it's ready the moment you unfold it. That's a narrower brief than the 8300's, and it's one this machine fills well.