For fitness enthusiasts living in apartments or compact spaces, the perennial challenge has always been the same: how do you replicate a full commercial gym experience without the square footage or the commute? In his latest YouTube video, Ulisses Jr., internationally recognized bodybuilder, Musclemania World Pro Champion, and founder of the Ulisses World channel, puts the Speediance Gym Monster 2 through a comprehensive real-world evaluation to answer precisely that question.
Drawing on more than 24 years of competitive and professional training experience, Ulisses assesses the Gym Monster 2 not merely as a piece of equipment, but as a complete training ecosystem, one designed to serve apartment dwellers, busy professionals, and anyone seeking gym-quality results within a space-efficient footprint. The video blends hands-on demonstration with honest performance analysis, making it a valuable resource for both beginner and intermediate fitness enthusiasts considering a serious home gym investment.
Ulisses Jr. and the Ulisses World Channel
Ulisses Jr. began his fitness journey in his late teens as a self-described “skinny kid” seeking to improve his athletic performance in soccer and track. What started as a practical goal evolved into a decorated competitive career spanning more than 13 years, during which he earned over 10 bodybuilding titles, including multiple Musclemania World Pro Championships, and appeared in more than 50 fitness publications including Men’s Health, Muscle & Fitness, and FLEX Magazine.
Beyond competition, Ulisses served as Director of Personal Training at Reebok Sports Club in London, where he trained a wide range of clients including celebrities, cementing his reputation as one of the world’s most respected body composition coaches. Today, his Ulisses World YouTube channel with over 600,000 subscribers and more than 315 videos extends that coaching mission digitally, offering structured workout programming, nutrition guidance, and physique-building strategies through his I Am Dedicated platform. It is this depth of credential that lends particular weight to his equipment evaluations.
Training Without a Commercial Gym
Ulisses opens the review by contextualizing the central challenge that the Speediance Gym Monster 2 is designed to solve. For millions of fitness-minded individuals, particularly those living in urban apartments, traveling frequently, or working demanding schedules, access to a fully equipped commercial gym is either impractical or impossible. The traditional alternatives, such as resistance bands, adjustable dumbbells, or basic cable machines, often fail to provide the exercise variety, progressive overload capacity, or structural integrity required for serious, long-term physique development.
The Gym Monster 2 is positioned as a direct answer to this gap: a freestanding, all-in-one smart training system that consolidates the functionality of a squat rack, cable pulley station, Smith-style trainer, and rowing setup into a single unit with a folded footprint of just 73 × 28 × 15 inches, compact enough to fit in a bedroom or living room, yet capable of supporting a full-body resistance training program. Ulisses frames this value proposition clearly for his audience of apartment dwellers and home gym users seeking a credible upgrade from consumer-grade equipment.
Build Quality and Physical Design
Ulisses begins his hands-on assessment with the machine’s physical construction. The Gym Monster 2 features a heavy-duty steel frame with a matte black finish, and at approximately 172 pounds, the unit is substantially bottom-heavy, a deliberate engineering choice that contributes to stability during high-resistance exercises. Ulisses tests this directly, noting that the base remains firm and does not wobble or shift even under load.
The machine’sfreestanding design is one of its most practically significant attributes. The Gym Monster 2 requires no professional installation and can be repositioned within a room using two integrated wheels on the front edge of the base, a feature Ulisses highlights as particularly valuable for renters or those who reconfigure their training space regularly. The folding mat, which expands the machine’s active footprint to 28 × 48 inches, locks securely into position during use and folds flat against the frame when not in use.
The cable system runs through adjustable pulley brackets that slide along rails on both the frame and the mat, offering 11 distinct cable height settings. This range of positioning unlocks a broad spectrum of exercise angles, from low cable rows and ankle-strap leg work to overhead tricep extensions and high cable flyes, giving the machine genuine versatility across all major muscle groups.
Digital Resistance Technology and Smart Training Features
At the technological core of the Gym Monster 2 is its electromagnetic resistance system, powered by dual 800W PMSM (permanent magnet synchronous) motors. Unlike conventional home gym machines that rely on weight stacks, plates, or elastic bands, the Gym Monster 2 generates resistance digitally, enabling instantaneous, precise weight adjustments without any physical plate changes. Ulisses emphasizes that this mechanism produces smooth, consistent tension throughout the full range of motion, a quality that closely mirrors the feel of a commercial cable machine.
An upgraded internal cooling system, a notable improvement over the original Gym Monster, keeps the motors operating quietly and efficiently even during extended sessions or back-to-back use by multiple users. This thermal management upgrade directly contributes to the machine’s long-term reliability and motor longevity.
The primary interface is a 21.5-inch 1080p touchscreen mounted on an adjustable arm at the top of the frame. The display is sharp, responsive, and swivel-capable, a detail Ulisses finds particularly useful for monitoring form during exercises such as the bench press. The screen provides access to the machine’s full workout library, custom programming tools, and real-time performance metrics.
Complementing the touchscreen is the Bluetooth control ring, a compact wearable device that allows users to adjust resistance levels on the fly with a simple turn of the wheel, without interrupting a set or reaching for the screen. Ulisses demonstrates this feature during active exercise, noting that the ability to modify weight mid-workout without extending rest periods is a meaningful quality-of-life improvement for serious training sessions.
The machine also features an upgraded 2.1 audio system comprising dual 5-watt speakers and a 20-watt subwoofer, delivering stereo sound with sufficient depth for music playback during training. Apple Music integration is available natively, with Spotify integration reported to be in development.
Full-Body Training in One Machine
One of the most substantive portions of the review involves Ulisses demonstrating the machine’s exercise range across all primary muscle groups. The Gym Monster 2 supports movements targeting the chest, back, shoulders, arms, core, and legs, with cable attachment points configurable at multiple heights to accommodate pressing, pulling, rowing, and isolation movements. The included accessory kit, which varies by bundle, encompasses handles, a tricep rope, ankle straps, an adjustable barbell with barbell hooks, extension straps, and an angle adapter.
The machine’s workout library contains nearly 500 fully guided, class-style workout programs, all accessible without a subscription fee. Users may also construct fully custom workouts by selecting individual exercises, setting target weights, reps, and sets, or simply engage the machine in manual mode for freestyle training.
Ulisses pays particular attention to the machine’s suitability for progressive overload, the foundational principle of long-term muscle development, noting that the digital resistance system allows for incremental weight increases with a precision that traditional plate-loaded or band-based systems cannot match. For users following structured programming, this granularity is a material advantage.
Pricing, Bundle Options, and Value Proposition
The Speediance Gym Monster 2 is available in four configurations to accommodate different training needs and budgets:
● Basic: $3,749. Includes the machine, Bluetooth ring, adjustable barbell, handles, ankle straps, tricep rope, and extension straps.
● Works: $3,949. Adds a flat bench to the Basic package.
● Works Plus: $4,099. Upgrades the bench to a fully adjustable multi-angle version.
● Family Plus: $4,499. Includes all Works Plus components plus a dedicated rowing bench.
For viewers of the Ulisses World channel, Ulisses provides an exclusive discount code YULI, applicable at checkout on the Speediance website. Relative to comparable smart gym systems, the Gym Monster 2’s pricing positions it as a mid-to-premium investment that eliminates the need for ongoing subscription fees, a factor Ulisses highlights as a long-term cost advantage for committed home gym users.
A Credible All-in-One Solution for Serious Home Training
Ulisses concludes his review with a clear endorsement of the Speediance Gym Monster 2 as a legitimate, high-performance solution for apartment-based and home training environments. His assessment is grounded in the machine’s combination of structural build quality, digital resistance precision, exercise versatility, guided workout content, and space-efficient design, attributes that collectively address the most common limitations of home gym setups.
For individuals who train with intention, following structured programming, prioritizing progressive overload, and seeking a machine capable of supporting long-term physique development, the Gym Monster 2 represents a compelling alternative to commercial gym membership.
