How to use it
- Pick kilos or pounds. Use the unit your plates are marked in, not the one you think in. Switching converts the target and resets the bar and plates to that system.
- Set the bar. A 20 kg or 45 lb bar is the default. Pick a lighter bar, or "No bar" for a sled, a landmine or a plate-loaded machine.
- Tell it what you have. Tap a plate to switch it off if your gym doesn't have it, or switch on 0.5 kg change plates if it does. The answer only ever uses plates you own.
- Enter the total. The plates for one side appear straight away, heaviest first, in the order they go on. If the number can't be made, you get the nearest loads either side to pick from.
The link in your address bar updates as you go, so a coach can set up the bar once and send it to the whole class.
How much does the bar weigh?
The bar is part of the weight, and it is the number people most often forget. The common ones:
- 20 kg. The men's Olympic bar, 2.2 m long with a 28 mm grip. The default in most gyms.
- 15 kg. The women's Olympic bar, shorter at 2.01 m with a thinner 25 mm grip. In pound gyms it is sold as 33 lb or 35 lb.
- 45 lb. The standard bar in American gyms. It is really 20.4 kg, which is why a "225" in a pound gym is a little heavier than 100 kg.
- 10 kg and 15 lb. Technique and training bars, usually aluminium, used for learning the lifts and for lighter athletes.
Speciality bars vary a lot. Trap bars run from about 20 to 30 kg, safety squat bars from 25 to 32 kg, and a fixed EZ curl bar can be anything. Weigh one on a scale once and you'll know for good.
Loading a bar properly
Work out one side, then do the same on the other. The sum is simple: take the bar and collars off the total and halve what is left. 100 kg on a 20 kg bar is 80 kg of plates, so 40 kg a side.
- Heaviest plates on first. They sit against the inside collar of the sleeve, with the lighter plates outside them.
- Bumpers before change plates. Thin metal plates go on the outside so the bar lands on the rubber when you drop it.
- Alternate sides. Put a plate on one side, then the other. A bar loaded all on one side can tip off the rack.
- Fewest plates wins. 25 plus 15 beats 20 plus 10 plus 10. There is less to carry, less to strip and more room on the sleeve.
Loading for a percentage? Work out the number first with the 1RM calculator, which rounds every percentage to a weight you can actually build, then bring it here.
Kilo and pound plates
Competition plates follow a colour code, so you can read a loaded bar from across the room:
- Red is 25 kg, and 2.5 kg in the small change plates.
- Blue is 20 kg, and 2 kg.
- Yellow is 15 kg, and 1.5 kg.
- Green is 10 kg, and 1 kg.
- White is 5 kg, and 0.5 kg.
Pound plates have no official colour code. Plenty are plain black, but coloured pound bumpers usually borrow the kilo colour of the nearest plate: blue for 45 lb, yellow for 35, green for 25 and white for 10. The calculator draws them that way. The usual set is 45, 35, 25, 10, 5 and 2.5 lb.
The two systems don't line up. A 45 lb plate is 20.4 kg and a 20 kg plate is 44.1 lb, so a bar loaded with four 45s a side is about 184 kg, not 180. Mixing kilo and pound plates on the same bar makes the total hard to know. If you have to, weigh the odd plate and load by what it really is.
Collars and small jumps
Competition collars weigh 2.5 kg each and count towards the lift, which is why a 20 kg bar with collars is 25 kg before a single plate goes on. Spring clips and plastic lock-jaws weigh so little that gyms ignore them, so leave collars off here unless you use the heavy ones.
Every plate goes on twice, so your smallest plate sets the smallest jump. With 1.25 kg plates the total moves in 2.5 kg steps. Fractional 0.5 kg plates bring that down to 1 kg, which matters on presses and late in a strength block, when a full 2.5 kg jump is too much to add in a week.