About

I built my home gym basically for free during the COVID lockdowns, back when equipment was gold and nobody could get any. It went from a hobby to a full blown obsession pretty fast.

I was already buying and testing equipment for myself, so I started putting my opinions out there for anyone shopping with the same questions I had. That was the old version of this site, and it was mostly written reviews.

The problem with a review is that it only covers what I happened to buy. If you are deciding between four racks and I own one of them, I have helped you with a quarter of your decision. So I rebuilt the whole thing.

What this is now

Flex Marks the Spot is a catalog you can filter. Every product is broken down into the specs that actually decide things for its category. Shaft diameter and knurl on a bar. Upright gauge and hole spacing on a rack. You pick what matters to you and the list ranks against it.

Think PCPartPicker, for home gyms.

• Find equipment filters and ranks a category by spec, or walks you through a few questions and sets the specs for you.
• Builds plans a whole gym as one list, prices it, and gives you a link to share. No account needed.
• My Gym holds what you own, what you are watching, and your price alerts.

Prices get tracked over time, so a product page shows what something has actually sold for instead of just today's number. You can also get an email when one drops.

How it makes money

Affiliate links. If you buy through one I get a commission and you pay the same price either way. That money keeps the site running and buys equipment to test, same as it did on the old site.

Commission never affects ranking. Not the order of results, not which product sits on top, not how ties break. The ranking engine is built that way and the exact rules are written out on how we rank.

When a product says Reviewed, it means I have used it. It does not move that product up the list. A Reviewed product can sit in the middle.

How the catalog gets built

By hand, one category at a time. I read the spec sheet, pull the numbers, and enter them. It is slow and there are gaps.

Where a spec is missing, the site says it is missing. It does not guess and it does not fill in a number that looks about right, because a made up number quietly changes the ranking and you would have no way to know.

Get in touch

Corrections come first. A wrong spec on this site is a bug, so tell me and I will fix it. Product requests and partnerships are welcome too. Send a message.