How to Choose a Barbell vintage gym barbell

“How on earth can you break a barbell?”

That was the question I was asking myself standing in my driveway with, well, a broken barbell…

Years ago, when I purchased my first barbell I didn’t put much thought into type or quality. They are just barbells…right? That thinking (or lack thereof) led to my first barbell breaking within 24 hours of purchase.

Well, with broken barbell in hand I decided it was time to uncover some of the basics as to what makes a good, durable barbell. What I found was that they can range from $200 to $2,000, and they are a little more complicated than your average sporting goods store would have you believe. A barbell serves as the foundation of true strength training. You can get by without a lot of things, but you cannot get by without a barbell.

Buying the right bar will help you to avoid big issues — they can warp, bend, rust, and break. The most common bar mishaps are bending from missed lifts, and sleeves popping off from, more or less, cheap manufacturing. Today, I want to make you an informed consumer of the barbell.

Before you can truly make an informed decision you need to know exactly what a barbell consists of — its “anatomy.”

A commonly used barbell has a 28-29 mm diameter shaft for men and 25 mm for women. Barbells come in all shapes and sizes, but the standard length is 7.2 ft for men and ~6.5 ft for women. They weigh ~44 pounds for men (20 kg) and ~33 pounds for women (15kg).

First, you have the bar itself, or shaft. It’s put through a machining process to get it to the right length and diameter. On the shaft, you have what is called knurling. Knurling is simply the rough, cross-hatched pattern you see on a barbell. Knurl is very important and is mainly for grip. It is machine-pressed and can be extremely rough, or smooth, depending on the manufacturer. It is important to feel the bar to get an idea of what you like (unless you buy online — in that case, look at reviews), but most top-end bar manufacturers have a good knurl. Where knurling can differ, even on top-end bars, is where the knurl does and does not exist. Some bars have knurling that extends all the way to the sleeves, and some bars have a gap of no knurling where the bar meets the sleeves. Sometimes bars will have center knurling and sometimes they won’t. You have to decide what you want and what you are most comfortable with.

If, say, you like Olympic lifting and you prefer a wide snatch grip, I suggest getting a bar with knurling that extends to the sleeves (if that sentence made no sense, then don’t worry about knurling going to the sleeves).

If you are often shirtless or do high-rep front squats and presses (CrossFit anyone?), you may want to go with no center knurling. If you regularly squat heavy weights and need the bar to grip the back, get the center knurling.

Furthermore, the markings on the knurl indicate which type of bar you are using. I recommend a dual marked bar for general purpose use. However, the outermost marking indicates an Olympic lifting bar and the inner marking indicates a powerlifting bar, and we’ll talk more about those in a minute.

It comes down to how it meets your needs and style of fitness.

Next, we have the sleeves.

The sleeves are simply where you put the weights. They are created from drawn-overmandrel (DOM) tubing, a machine process that makes the sleeves straight and strong. The biggest thing you are looking for in the sleeves is the rotation, or how the sleeves spin on the shaft. Unless you are extremely picky, or a professional lifter, the difference in bearings or bushings aren’t that important. Bushings are a low friction material placed between the shaft and the sleeve — they are more affordable, and they are what you will find on most bars. Needle bearings spin more smoothly, and are actual bearings between the shaft and the sleeve. Generally, bearings are on the high end bars. Bushings will save you a lot of money, and work perfectly fine, without having to go high-end. But, if you want the premium, then go bearings. Bearings are better — you aren’t paying more without reason — but the difference would only be noticed at the professional and elite levels.

Sleeves are also connected by bolts or snap rings. I will make this one very easy for you. Snap rings only! Stay away from bolts on a bar! Bolts = broken in 24 hours.

Also, know barbells come in many finishes — chrome, zinc, black oxide, unfinished, and even stainless steel — but also know that the finish is primarily an aesthetic preference. Stainless steel does provide an advantage because it is rust and corrosion free, forever.

Barbell Strength

At this point, you already know more than your average gym-goer, but let’s make you a true barbell connoisseur.

The strength of a barbell is very important. You need to know the terms I am about to go over because when you shop for a barbell, this is the information manufacturers will give you. If you have no idea what the numbers are referring to, how do you know what to buy?

Bar strength is reported in three areas: tensile strength, yield strength, and test.

Tensile strength is the maximum load your bar can support without fracturing or breaking. So high tensile strength = good bar. This will be your primary determining factor.

Yield strength is basically how much weight the bar can handle before it will become deformed — that is, it won’t return to perfect straightness. Breaking and deformation are very different. Unfortunately, you will be hard-pressed to find a manufacturer that provides yield strength information.

There is also test, which means the bar has been loaded and tested with weights at which there was no bending or breaking, so the higher, the better. It’s best if you can find a manufacturer that will give you a tensile strength rating, which is reported in pounds per square inch (PSI).

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Now you know the terminology, but what is a “good” rating? Here is a starting point for the most important factor — tensile strength ratings:

  • <150,000 PSI = Ehh
  • 150,000-175,000 PSI = Good
  • 175,000-200,000 PSI = Better
  • >200,000 PSI = Best

A bar in the good range is perfectly acceptable and will last a very long time. Considering cost and quality, most people do not need more than the “good” level bar.

If you are getting into sport weightlifting, there are differences in Olympic lifting bars and powerlifting bars:

  • Olympic weightlifting bars have more of a whip, or spring, to accommodate the sport.
  • Powerlifting bars are very stiff, as powerlifters prefer no surprises or major fluctuations during a big lift.

Barbell Plates

Next, you have to think about plates. Unless you plan on competing at the professional level, plate quality is not as vital as the quality of your barbell.

Price can vary greatly with plates. You can get 300 lb. of iron at a garage sale for $30 or you can spend $3,000+ on a couple hundred pounds of certified competition bumper plates.

The most frequently asked question is whether to purchase bumper plates or iron (metal) plates, and that depends on the type of lifting you plan to do. If you like powerlifting (squat, bench press, and deadlift), then you will be just fine with iron plates. If you are dropping the bar frequently during CrossFit workouts or practicing the snatch and clean and jerk in Olympic weightlifting, you’ll need bumpers.

Personally, I prefer a blend of iron and bumper plates in my arsenal, and I’ll explain why and some considerations in just a minute. First, let’s talk bumper plates.

When it comes to bumper plates, what you are paying for is the thickness of the plate and how much they bounce when dropped.

Here is a quick breakdown of their categories:

  • Black bumpers ($): Thick with a big bounce
  • Colored bumpers ($$): Thick with less bounce
  • Olympic training bumpers ($$$): Thin and dead bounce
  • Competition bumpers ($$$$$$$): Thin and dead bounce + certified weight to the gram

They all should be 450mm disks with a 50mm opening. Economy black bumper plates are going to be good enough for 95% of people; 4.9% will want/need colored bumpers or Olympic training bumpers, and .1% will need certified Olympic competition bumpers. Colored plates generally follow a color coding, and some companies do follow the color code of the International Weightlifting Federation, but not all do. The official color coding can be found at the IWF website.

I like to have around 300 lb. of cheap iron plates along with another couple hundred pounds of black bumpers. I use the bumpers for when I am going to be dropping the weight, and I use a combination of iron and bumpers if I am doing a heavy back squat.

You’ll be hard pressed to find bumper plates at a garage sale, so you will need to order them online, but iron plates are a completely different story.

For iron, here’s where you use the power of Craigslist to find a lot of weight for pennies on the dollar. People are constantly moving, giving up on at-home fitness, and letting plates sit in their garage and rust. That’s a win for us! The easiest way to shop for plates is to put it on autopilot using a combination of Craigslist and IFTTT; you can read about how that works here. Basically, you set up a program that will notify you when plates come up for sale in your price range.

Conclusion

Most people are looking for a general, high-quality bar, and there are plenty out there that are suitable for all training and that will last for a long time. So, unless you are planning on becoming an Olympian, I would stay away from the “Cadillac” bars. You can get a good barbell that will meet all of your needs for around $250, and the near-perfect bar for around $500.

That can seem like a lot of money for a barbell, but it is the heart of your training, and you will be using it day-in and day-out. Don’t get a bar that will bend or fail while you are using it.

Get a bar that will last a lifetime. It is an investment in your fitness and your health!

And that, gentlemen is all you need know about plates, weights, and barbells.

Now, let’s start your story differently than mine.

“How on earth can this barbell withstand this abuse?”

That will be the question you are asking yourself while standing in your driveway with, well, an amazing barbell.

Hiring the Nutrition-Fitness Hybrid Pro

What are consumers looking for when they come to your gym or studio? Sure, they want great workouts and access to the latest equipment in a welcoming, fun environment. But above all, they really want to attain their health and fitness goals.

At our gym—One on One Fitness in State College, Pennsylvania—we’ve learned that lasting, consistent client success depends on intelligent nutrition and habit-change strategies. Thus, we’ve pivoted from workouts to wellness to help clients succeed—and to differentiate our business. We focus on three areas: fitness, nutrition and lifestyle habits.

We’re making this happen with a new job title: the nutrition–fitness hybrid pro. We recruit registered dietitians who love fitness, and then we train them to be fitness professionals.

It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity for the right people. These RDs interact with clients in ways that they wouldn’t normally, as clinical dietitians. Moreover, they help clients in ways that a dietitian or personal trainer, individually, could not.

“I became an RD because I have a passion for helping others,” says Haley Golich, RDN, LDN, a recent addition to our team at One on One. “The nutrition–fitness hybrid position enables me to promote healthy living, help clients set and achieve health goals, and contribute to the prevention of chronic disease. It is the ongoing interaction with clients that intrigued me the most.”

Advantages to This Professional Model

We employ four RDs and are recruiting more. Here’s what we’ve observed since implementing this strategy:

Our Pool of Hiring Candidates Is Wider

Hiring/recruiting quality fitness professionals can be a significant challenge because it’s so hard to find that “gem” of a personal trainer who is competent, professional and (of course) looking for work. The nutrition–fitness hybrid position lets us recruit outside the pool of personal trainers and kinesiology students.

“When I went off to college, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to study kinesiology or nutrition,” says Bethany Paszkowski, RDN, LDN, another member of our team. “They both interested me, and both would allow me to achieve my longer-term goal of helping people. This position is perfect for me.”

RDs Have Advanced Skills

When hiring an RD, you’re getting someone who is dynamic, smart and organized. Five years of vigorous education forces a person to develop many of the professional skills required to succeed in this role. Although RDs don’t have a degree in kinesiology, they quickly develop an intellectual understanding of the science and prove that they can consistently apply it in a fitness setting. Bottom line: You’re not hiring a “project.”

RDs Enjoy Career Satisfaction

This position has a strong allure for the right kind of RD. After all, RDs rarely encounter so much diversity in their tasks and such a committed client base in clinical or community nutrition jobs. “I’ve worked as a registered dietitian in both the public health and clinical settings. These settings can be challenging to impact change,” says Golich. “By combining nutrition counseling along with fitness consulting, I am able to impact clients in a comprehensive way to elicit the most positive change.”

It’s Easier to Turn RDs Into Trainers Than Vice Versa

Teaching RDs about fitness is a time-consuming but straightforward process. Conversely, dietetics is a complicated, multifaceted subject that will soon require a master’s-level education. Thus, the model works only if you start by hiring RDs. Turning trainers into RDs is rarely achievable.

The Investment Will Pay Off

RDs are used to making a healthy salary, so you will have to pay them competitively. You will have difficulty competing against the pay of a clinical setting. However, we don’t try. Instead, we attract people strongly motivated to engage in our holistic wellness opportunity. We provide a 5-week training program whose value is clear to the people we hire. They recognize that our team will teach them a trade and that we’ve made an investment in them—knowing we won’t see a return until well after they start.

How the Nutrition–Fitness Model Improves Your Business

In a competitive marketplace, fitness businesses have to differentiate themselves and generate new sources of revenue. In our market, a lot of gyms and clubs are doing the same things: offering different spins/pricing on group training and selling supplements. Although many businesses succeed tremendously on this path, we think the competition will only get stiffer.

We believe that creating a one-stop shop focusing on fitness, nutrition and habit change is a win-win that helps our business while giving our clients the best opportunity to succeed. We hired our first full-time RD in 2015, and our nutrition program became profitable after about a year, mainly through individual counseling sessions.

Some of the most significant benefits are intangible. Having RDs on staff clearly differentiates us from our competitors and solidifies our position as leaders in our field. RDs also get nutrition clients interested in fitness, educate our community and contribute to our social media updates.

15 ways how to grow your Startup

Hi everyone! So you arrive at the point where you think and realize on taking your precious startup on the next level? And have you ever been curious what it takes to grow your startup? Here are the top 15 guiding principles on growing you startup. I made it plain and simple for you so most of readers can relate.

Most of entrepreneurs, startuppers and founders get overwhelmed easily with stuff when it comes to just starting a startup, there’s a lot of things to learn or to know, just imagine when you have to scale it. Well you don’t have to be no more, atleast when you want to grow your startup to bigger scale or markets.

Startups and companies like AirBnB, Uber, Glances (AR Facial Recognition startup), Away (startup for selling high end luggages), Warby Parker (startup for prescription glasses) or even SpaceX has proven to follow atleast 10 of these.

Below are 15 simple key principles that are results of my research analysis about successful startups and companies up to this date and these principles are fitting and applies to the upcoming year 2018.

  1. Pick good co-founders — Also pick a great and talented diverse team
  2. Launch fast, learn fast and move fast — MVP
  3. Let your idea evolve
  4. Understand your users — Every user is an evangelist of your product
  5. Make your users love you
  6. Offer good customer service — i mean really really good, this is something you can be much better with than fully-grown companies
  7. You make what you measure
  8. Spend as little as possible — remember money can either something or everything.
  9. Avoid distractions
  10. Don’t get demoralized — believe in you, your team and on your vision no matter what!
  11. Don’t give up — Obstacles on your startup are requirements for your achievements
  12. Deals fall through — Never stop trying and always be bold
  13. Engage through social media — must have!
  14. Get a very talented and open-minded design team
  15. Keep moving forward

One last thing…

Word of mouth marketing — the most valuable form of marketing , you can’t buy it. You can only deliver it. Aside from the product you are offering, if for example you’re deciding about merch pieces, t-shirts or hats or stickers, they have to be weill designed and cool enough for somebody to want to buy it or the wear it, walk around advertising the brand of your startup.