The Ultimate Portable Belt Squat Platform? BodyKore Squat Box Pro Review

The BodyCore SquatBox Pro is a portable belt squat station that allows you to load up to 500 pounds of resistance via this direct cable drive. It's a dedicated low pulley slash pulley point for any and all exercises that you would like. It has a handle for stability.

You can attach it to cable systems, resistance bands, take it with you, and it stores in a very small profile when not in use. So let's check it out. Hey guys, this is Michael with the Jungle Gym Reviews. Today we're reviewing the BodyCore SquatBox Pro.

This is a dedicated belt squat platform that you can attach to any cable system to do primarily belt squats, but obviously has a variety of exercises that you can perform outside of just belt squats because it's essentially just a low cable pulling point. Now before I get into the video, if you could quickly hit that subscribe button below if you haven't already, it'll continue to help us grow the channel and make sure you get notified when we post our weekly review videos throughout the rest of 2025. And if you're interested in purchasing this SquatBox Pro after the review, check out that affiliate link in the description below. I'm going to show kind of how it works and gets set up. It's already actually connected to a cable machine as you see here. The main feature is that it is cable driven, starts at the bottom center of the box. And again, you can attach to whichever cable system you would like.

Right now I have this attached to my GetRx Tornado Power Rack. It's about a four foot-ish, four to five foot cable. Goes from here on a swivel pulley that goes 180 degrees. This thing can go 180 degrees, so it doesn't have to be directly in line with your cable.

It can be a little off-center if you want to pull this direction, that direction vice-versa. They give you with the Pro Belt Squat Belt that's included. So this is their kind of proprietary Belt Squat Belt. Those of you familiar with Home Gym's Fitness Belt Squat Belts will notice they don't normally come with this like seat belt buckle. It goes around your waist and then it has a front-mounted secondary seat belt buckle. So you have one to tension it to your waist. You have the front-mounted one, which just has a little mounting point at the end.

Then goes into the carabiner, which is permanently mounted here at the base. You know, pull all the slack out so you have the longest amount here. Clip it in and then when you're ready to kind of set the height, you get all the way down into position. Pull basically this down.

Now you are starting at the lowest point of this movement. For those of you who are familiar with Belt Squats and Belt Squat platforms, you'll know it is a little bit unflattering and also kind of tricky to get into these things. The other main thing about the SquatBock Pro is this handle. So you can actually use this for stability, which is nice. It's actually adjustable height. It's got a threaded pop pin, which allows you to kind of tension it once you pick the height you want. So you have a couple of different height options to choose from, whether you prefer to just grip a little bit lower and kind of lean over, depending on your body proportions and do something like this, or you like it a little bit higher to be able to actually like pull yourself up from, maybe even sit back a little bit and do more of like a pendulum squat style.

You can basically use the handles rather than just kind of getting pulled down into a set position every time to kind of change the motion to what feels the most comfortable for you, as far as your body proportions, biomechanics, et cetera. I'm 6'2". I'm kind of lanky. I have never been a high bar squatter. I've always been a low bar squatter strictly because it's really hard for me to keep my torso really upright due to my tibia and femur proportions. It's really hard for me to like squat very much straight up. This handle, you know, helps a little bit, but I prefer the more pendulum squat.

It feels the most comfortable for me where I'm kind of like sitting back into the movement. The box itself is pretty thick steel. You load it. It's got two weight horns on each side, which can load up to, they say three plates. As you see, I can get three, maybe like three and a small plate on the outside. And these are like very generic import Walmart brand weight plates. If you have thin plates, like something from weighted out or some calibrated plates, you can put even more on. They say 70% of your body weight is enough for you standing on here and then the force of friction on the ground to stop this thing from sliding. Without weight on the weight horns, when you go to lift more than 70% of your body weight will probably create some sort of pulling effects here where I will get pulled towards the cable pulling point. All right, so don't try this at home. So you'll see as soon as I shift my weight a little bit off here.

We're walking forwards towards the front and this is why you end up loading it with plates. Now they tell you this just to be clear. They tell you this. I'm just demonstrating why they tell you this. So this is not an issue with body core.

This is not their fault. This is literally just a physics problem of how much gravitational downward force do you have on the machine? The thing versus how much you're pulling. The pro version here has weight horns exactly for that reason. You can load up again up to six plates on the outside, which ends up being 270 pounds plus the 70% weight. So for me, that's 270 plus around 130. So that means the most I could do without this thing sliding forward would be about 400 pounds. Now that's definitely more than I can belt squat for reps. More importantly, when you start to get to those weights, it becomes really hard to actually load a cable system with 400 pounds because most cable systems, unless you have like a dedicated lap hold down low row are at two to one ratio. So then you have to get something like I have here, which is this bare steel weight adder pin, which allows me to add weight plates in addition to the stack. So it's still hard to just find enough weight to load this in order to max it out.

Everything is very secure. Once you properly load this, according to the specs, they tell you 70% of your body weight plus whatever the weight plates are to accommodate more than you've loaded on the cable handle height to whichever you'd like. I like somewhere in the middle with this, I'd say it's definitely a full range of motion for me. But I would actually prefer if somehow the pulley pulling point were even a little bit lower. But again, their whole goal here is like a very functional yet accommodating belt squat solution. You can do with an extremely heavy linear cable driven belt squats with everything you already have in your gym and not have to pay that much more money.

So because it has this really grip grip tape here, you know, your feet aren't going to slide where you're doing belt squats, then you can use it for things like calf raises, where you put, you know, the tips of your toes here, you can take off some of the weight, do things like bicep curls or cable driven deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, face pulls, upright rows, you name it. Now the benefit to this versus using something like a cable system is this, you can actually get the pulling point directly underneath you and directly under your body. So for me to do this, you know, have it sit underneath me is really hard, if not impossible, with most cable systems, I'm still pulling away from the rack and up. Same thing with belt squats, you end up having, you know, you get pulled forward a little bit because that is not a vertical strictly vertical pulling point. And that's what's nice about having this pulley is you can have it directly underneath you for belt squats or other things, all without really breaking the bank. Now this one versus the standard squat box, the standard is $350. This one's $595 with free shipping. This biggest difference is going to be the size.

The dimensions of this are 36 inches long, 18 inches deep and 12 inches tall. So it's wide enough for the widest squatters. But the main difference is this one has weight horns, meaning you can load it with more than just your body weight.

So this over the squat box is basically made for people that actually want to lift more than 70% of their body weight, which I assume is most people in a home gym setting. The regular one doesn't have the stability handle. The pro comes with extra extensions and attachments. And they actually have a resistance band kit if you want to use it for off cable or off rack use as well.

It does come with the curl bar, a couple of different short cable and medium cable cable extensions. One thing with their included belt squat belt, it was nice of them to include this. However, if you do literally any weight over, I found over like 90 pounds, there's not a whole lot of padding here. It's, you know, the some sort of nylon braided nylon or whatever material that is. This just digs really into a lot of uncomfortable places in your stomach.

So quickly I have opted to not use this. I think this one's great for maybe lightweight. This is my Spud Inc belt squat belt with a Abmat belt squat cover.

It's basically like a thick like neoprene sleeve to go over it to make it more comfortable. So this is what people actually use for belt squats. I still don't even find this the most comfortable. And I think people in general are always searching for a good belt squat belt. But nevertheless, this thing at least allows you to go heavy a little more comfortably without like pinching your skin and your love handles and everything like that. So overall, something like this for a little bit less than $600 basically provides you the ability to have a dedicated belt squat station platform machine.

Any other belt squat, whether it's a lever arm or something like that, unless you buy a dedicated machine, you will not have something to hold on to, which then makes it really hard to actually isolate and perform the movement you're looking to perform because you're half worried about your balance or you're falling over or something like that. So the fact it's integrated, the fact that it's adjustable heights is really nice. You get a dedicated machine for about $600. And it can do a lot of other things than that because it's that directly underneath your center pulling point instead of off a machine kind of angled. This thing is actually a really good value and a really good versatile option to have heavy compound leg movements without taking up a ton of space like a dedicated leg press, hack squat or other type of machine. So guys, that's it for today's review. Of the Body Core SquatBox Pro. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below.

I'll be happy to answer or at least try. This is Michael from the Jungle Gym Rebus. We'll see you next time. Take it easy. Peace.