Chuck Miller

Best Olympic Plate Choices and Buying Guide

We’ve likely all heard the sage advice to choose the right tool for the right job. When it comes to tools for fixing things, I’m embarrassingly clueless and am the wrong guy to send digging through the toolbox for that obscurely named wrench. When it comes to weight room tools, like Olympic weight plates, I’m much more in my element. 

A weight plate is a weight plate though, right? There’s not much difference, and any old plate will do as long as we put standard plates on standard bars and Olympic plates on Olympic bars, correct?

Um, no, not even close. There’s a great deal of variation in Olympic weight plates, including a wide range in both function and price. Let’s take a closer look and sort through some of the confusion.

Old-school, deep dish Olympic plates are my personal favorite for general resistance training, bodybuilding, and powerlifting. They’re what I grew up using, and nothing really beats the clang of iron on iron when Iplumrocket

Barbell Sets for Resistance Training - The Gold Standard For Maximizing Muscle Size and Strength Gains!

Bob Hoffman, through his York Barbell empire, is probably more responsible for the growth in sales of barbell sets in the United States than any other person. Having purchased his own set in 1923 from the Milo Barbell Company and increasing his physique from under 180 pounds to a muscular 240, Hoffman was hooked on the miracle of weight training.

Already successful in the oil burner business, he used his shrewd business acumen to begin manufacturing his own barbell sets for resistance training in the late 1920s. Though growth was temporarily interrupted during World War II as resources were diverted in an all-hands-on-deck campaign against Nazi Germany, the post-war 1950s and 1960s saw a meteoric rise in sales of barbell sets that coincided with America’s dominance of international Olympic weightlifting via the Hoffman-led York Barbell Club.

Although America’s glory days of Olympic weightliftingplumrocket

Strength Training Equipment Selection and Uses For Residential and Commercial Applications

Having worked in strength and conditioning for two years at the Division 1 level, I can say with certainty that top-level competitive athletes spend the majority of their time focusing on compound movements that can be performed with basic strength training equipment. Free weight compound lifts are the gold standard in strength training because, unlike fitness fads that come and go, they produce incredible results. They may be primitive, but they’re never outdated.

If you want to put on a lot of muscle mass and become much stronger for your chosen sport, your best bet is to focus on squats, bench presses, power cleans, deadlifts, overhead presses, chins, and rows. And if those lifts form the core of your training program, you’re going to need durable barbells, barbell collars, weight plates, power racks, weight benches, weightlifting platforms, and rubber gym flooring. 

Being a premier strengthplumrocket

Integrating selectorized gym equipment into your free weight workout for maximum versatility and results.

While the basic barbell lifts still form the foundation of my training program, I’ve grown to appreciate some of the many benefits of selectorized gym equipment as I’ve pushed past age 50. Their gentler impact on joints is perhaps the biggest advantage the judicious use of cable machines in one’s training program offers to the aging trainee, or to anyone looking to get a good workout without getting beat up. 

A few other benefits of selectorized gym equipment and cable machines include easy and quick weight changes (including drop sets), constant tension throughout raising and lowering the resistance, muscle group isolation, the variety of exercises that can be performed with different cable attachments, and the ability to train alone in safety without a spotter. Combination machines also offer cost and space savings, making them affordable not just for big-box commercial gyms butplumrocket

Best Squat Rack For Home Gym, Garage Gym and Commercial Gyms

A squat rack, or half rack as they’re also called, is an extremely useful piece of strength equipment occupying a relatively small footprint yet offering the versatility to perform many different weight training movements. Half racks have either two posts if they’re not equipped with rear weight plate storage or four posts if they are. Either way, they feature an open design with safeties attached to the front set of posts and protruding outward.

Power cages, by contrast, are fully enclosed and have four posts if they’re not equipped with rear plate storage or six posts if they are. The safeties are inside the posts and attach to them in both the front and back.

With the additional attachment points for the safeties, a power cage is the preferred choice to support maximum poundages for top-level powerlifting competitors, but a heavy-duty squat rack is no slouch either, with some commercial squat racks rated to 700+plumrocket

Weight Bench Buying Guide - Residential and Commercial 

If I’m ranking must-have pieces of gym equipment, a reliable weight bench is certainly in my top tier, along with an Olympic bar, weight plates, and a set of squat stands. With these four pieces of equipment tucked into a 10’ x 10’ space, you can transform your physique and strength to astonishing levels.

Let’s take a look first at a few differences between the two main categories of weight benches for sale: flat and adjustable.

Because of the simple design and lack of moving parts, flat weight benches are usually more affordable and lighter than adjustable weight benches. They’re also a particularly convenient apparatus for performing the barbell bench press in a power cage or squat rack because you can lay flat without having to worry about positioning yourself around any gap between the back and seat pads.

However, if you’re looking for maximum versatility, an adjustable bench is the way to go, as the ability to set the backplumrocket

Best Power Cage Buying Info For Garage and Commercial Gyms

Technically, the term power cage refers to the four-post enclosed version, whereas the term “squat rack” is used to describe a half rack that’s open on one side and usually has only two posts. To complicate matters even further, a power cage has six posts if it’s equipped with rear weight plate storage and a similarly outfitted squat rack has four posts. If you’re unsure of the difference, just remember that you lift inside the uprights of power cages and outside them when using squat racks / half racks.

Though you can perform most of the same exercises safely with either, the enclosed design and extra support posts of a heavy-duty power cage is a considerable benefit and makes it preferable to a squat rack for your heaviest lifts. When squatting, for example, you can descend to the depth you want with complete peace of mind that a missed lift can simply be brought to rest on the safety bars.

Both the j-cups that hold theplumrocket

Why Choose IRON COMPANY for Gym Equipment in Dallas-Fort Worth?

If you’re looking to buy gym equipment in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, IRON COMPANY has been a trusted name since 1997 and offers our customers the widest selection of first-class gym equipment on the market. Our expertise and superior service have allowed us to foster long-term relationships with a large and diverse client base that includes small home and garage gyms, CrossFit boxes and other commercial gym facilities, and institutional clients like high schools and colleges. As a GSA contract holder, IRON COMPANY also has a working relationship with most the military bases and defense departments in North Texas and surrounding areas as well.

Save on Shipping with Local Warehouse Pick-Up in DFW

Apart from the convenience and satisfaction you may feel from supporting a small local business, buying locally offers both timeliness and significant cost savings. You can have your order within 24-48 hours of placing it and eliminateplumrocket

Buying Weight Plates? Arm yourself with the latest comparisons, specs and info first!

When I began weight training in the mid-1980s, we didn’t have nearly as many choices in any facet of life. We all listened to the same FM radio stations, watched the same network television programs, and shopped at the same stores.  

Those of us who lifted as a hobby or for sports performance even used the same Olympic weight plates. With perhaps a few obscure exceptions, you could opt for the cheaper Standard barbell plates imported from China, or you could go with the more prestigious, USA-made weight plates by York Barbell. 

Either option proved functional, though the Standard barbell plates didn’t look as nice and might weigh light or heavy by as much as a staggering two pounds each. Loading four or more per side on an Olympic barbell for heavy squats could result in a pretty significant ten-pound (or more) misload.

Ah, the good ole days. Though I remember the clang of my first mismatchedplumrocket

When I started training in the late 1980s, any sort of leg day warm-up was an afterthought. You’d walk in, throw your gym bag in a corner, slap a couple of 45-pound weight plates on the squat bar, and start squatting. Those first few progressively heavier sets were the entire warm-up.

Ahh, the advantages and stupidity of youth. As the years and mileage began to catch up with me in my thirties, I understood the value of preparation and began a bit of a search for the best leg day warm-up I could find. 

At first, pre-workout stretches were part of my routine, but I soon found them to be counterproductive, creating a feeling of “looseness” that didn’t serve me well in trying to maintain tension for better stability during lifting. My thinking shifted to an emphasis on dynamic movements that would better prepare me to move my body in the coordinated fashion required for compound weight training exercises.

My goals were to increase core temperature, break a slight sweat, and mobilize theplumrocket