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Weight Plates

Take your Weight Lifting to the Next Level with your Weight Plates

Best Home Gym Equipment has a myriad of reliable weight plates for each of your exercise routines. Weight plates are primary barbell accessories. They are on every gym and workout studios you enter. These round discs can make your workout experience easy breezy. With complete control of the exact amount of weight you place on your barbell, it’s not a pain regulating your weight training. You can even jumpstart your weight training by using just the weight plates of your choice.


Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I Use Weight Plates?
Most people think of weight plates as barbell accessories for weight training. But the simple weight plate can do more than that for you. Weight plates on their own can be as flexible as your gigantic smith machine. Want to bet? You can use these round discs to accompany your routine to build endurance, boost strength, improve your balance, and many more. Here are some of the exercises where you can employ your weight plates.

  • Plank Plate Switch
  • Plate Push-Ups
  • Front Shoulder Raise
  • Lateral Raise
  • Halo
  • Chest Squeeze Press
  • Squat Press
  • Squat Reach
  • Side Bend
  • Overhead Press

Don’t limit using weight plates for these routines. There are still plenty of exercises in which you could combine your weight plates. Just open up your innovativeness, and you can discover the great versatility these plates have.

Are there any Kinds of Weight Plates aside from the cast-iron ones?
Yes, there are three general types of weight plates. They are further classified based on the routines you do. You mostly see cast-iron weight plates at workout studios and gyms. Weight plates are a staple gym equipment, a gym without weight plates is not worth joining.

Olympic Plates

Olympic plates are the standard weight plates for the fitness industry. They fit with the 2” diameter bars of Olympic barbells and most bars in the gym. Olympic plates can either be competition plates, bumper, training, or technique plates.

 Competition plates are the most regulated of these as they are carefully weighed and should have the prescribed dimensions. They also need certificates to show for it. As they are used in competitions, competition plates need to follow prescribed standards.

Training plates are not like that. They have varying depths and don’t need certificates to authenticate dimensions and weight. 

Bumper plates are a modification of the traditional competition plates. They are also well-regulated and are made of rubber with a steel collar in the middle. They are used in Olympic weightlifting competitions since the rubber material offers more safety than cast-iron competition plates.

Standard Plates

These are your traditional cast-iron plates and are a lot cheaper than the Olympic ones. These plates have a smaller centre hole diameter at 1”. They are mostly used for home gyms with standard sizes from 0.50kg to 25kg. Since standard weight plates are usually iron-made, a material prone to corrosion, they are now mostly coated with either rubber or urethane. Standard weight plates also have varying shapes. You may have seen circular and 8 or 12 sided cast-iron plates available in your local gym.

Studio Plates

Studio weight plates are specific to group exercises where participants are not required to work on too heavy loads. These weight discs are normally rubber-coated, smaller in size, with brightly-coloured handles. They have 30mm diameter centre holes and can be identified quickly in the corner of studios. These are the kind of plates you would like to have if you want to use weight plates as standalone equipment for your home gym workout.

How should I Choose the Right Home Gym Weight Plates?
Don’t forget that you have two barbell accessories: the barbell bar and weight plates. So before choosing your weight plates, make sure that you have already decided on your choice of barbell bar size. If you’re not yet ready for weight training or are using the weight plates as standalone gym equipment, then dive right into choosing your weight plates.

Safety

A vital factor to consider in shopping for a weight plate is its safety, not just for you but for the people you live with as well. Rubber coated or rubber made weight plates are the safest. But if you’re already in the advanced stages of your weight training, then you can purchase the less expensive cast-iron weights. Other than that, if you can’t guarantee that you can handle the load safely, or are a beginner in weight training, might as well choose the safest bet.

Compatibility

This is why you have to choose your barbell bar first before you go on a shopping spree for your weight plates. Weight plates have specific central hole diameters, usually at 2” or 1” for weight training barbells. So always make sure that your barbells and weight plates are compatible or you’ll end up buying plates that cannot be as flexible as it should be.

Durability

As most gym junkies know, barbells are always dropped on the floor, and therefore are susceptible to dents, cracking, or even bending. So you should always check the manufacturer’s credibility of your chosen weight plates in producing high-quality discs.

Bounce

The bounce description of each type of weight plate is always on the specifications of the equipment. Or to have some insight, read the reviews of previous customers. Weight plates need to bounce to release the force due to being dropped. A bouncing weight plate is a good thing as long as it’s only at a maximum of 2’ height and in a vertical motion, not like a trajectory. The bouncing effect shouldn’t hit any part of your body or others.

Barbell accessories such as weight discs have plenty of variations in the market, and it would sometimes be confusing on which plate to purchase. These guidelines can help you choose the right weight plates for your home gym.

Why is Dropping the Barbell Necessary when Weightlifting?
So why drop the equipment and not just lower it slowly? Dropping the barbell is a safety mechanism designed and prescribed by fitness experts and even Olympic weight lifting coaches. According to them, it is safer just to drop the weights if it is too risky to lower it safely. Lifting is relatively easy compared to lowering it down. At lifting mode, weight lifters are in their proper form and can manage to control the weight of the barbell without them being overwhelmed. Still, as you drop the equipment, proper form and stance cannot be ensured and can cause you to topple over the equipment if you lower it too quickly. And so dropping the barbell is the safest way to get rid of it. But it should be emphasized that dropping the barbell should only be done when necessary. You are not to drop it at every rep.

What is a Bumper Plate? And Why is it so Popular?
A bumper plate is a kind of Olympic weight plate that’s made of dense rubber and used for weight lifting competitions. It’s officially used in Olympics weight lifting competition and preferred by most gym studios as well as weight lifters for safety and durability reasons. Since bumper plates are made of rubber, they are very safe when the barbell needs to be dropped and is not easily chipped or cracked, in the case of iron cast weight plates. As its popularity rose among weight lifting enthusiasts and gym workouts, various types of it were born.

Competition Bumper Weight Plates

These rubber made weight plates are used in competitions and as such have very stringent calibration requirements. Official competition rules need these kinds of plates to be as accurate between +0.1% to -0.05%. This means that a 25kg plate should only have a 25g margin of error. The upside of this is, you can be sure that what you’re lifting weighs as it says in the weight inscription. The downside, you could lose your pants with is the price.

Training Bumper Weight Plates

If you want plates that are more affordable than competition plates but still have the similar high-quality specifications of Olympic competition plates, this is the right plate for you. Training bumper plates do not undergo strict regulations but are still accurately dimensioned and weighed. They can vary in depth but with similar cross-section or diameters. Their quality is more than enough for commercial gyms or Crossfit box training.

Technique Bumper Weight Plates

Technique plates are the right kind of weight plates for beginners in weight lifting. They only come in lightweight loads and are made out of a single piece of rubber. They also don’t have metal rings around its central hole. Fitness studios and gyms only have a handful of technique plates and are produced in 2.5kg and 5kg weights.

 

 

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