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Episode 44: Barbells - Where to Start? Our Easy Equipment Guide.
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Welcome to Episode 44 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah and Laurel talk all about their favorite strength training equipment: the barbell! Why do so many people (including Sarah until very recently) have such a mental block around creating a barbell set up at home?
We also discuss:
- How you will need to move to barbells if you want to continue to strength training for injury prevention, bone density, and lean muscle mass
- How barbells are not an “advanced” training equipment but in fact easier to use than kettlebells
- How a home barbell set up can be cheaper than you think
- How a home barbell set up can be more space saving than you think
- What you need to get and why
- Online and local purchasing options to save money
Sign up for the Movement Logic Mailing List and receive our Free Barbell Equipment Guide!
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Transcript
Introduction to Movement Logic Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
This guide has everything. Words. Pictures. Hyperlinks. Pages. Aesthetically beautiful. Laurel made it mostly.
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up to date and cutting edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
00:00:46
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast. I'm Dr. Sarah Kort, physical therapist, and I'm here with my co-host, Laurel Beaversdorf, strength coach, and yoga teacher.
Mental Blocks in Barbell Investment
00:00:54
Speaker
This episode is all about equipment for weightlifting and specifically barbells. Why do so many of us, including me up until very recently, have such a mental block, not just around using them, but in investing in a barbell setup in our own home? Is it the cost? Is it the space?
00:01:14
Speaker
Is it both? Is it something else? Well, maybe it's the tyranny of choice, you know, not knowing what to get. Given all the options, all the competing advice, it can be enough to prevent you from getting started. It was for me for a long time. And this is especially true if you're new to barbelling, which I believe our audience is predominantly. And if you don't have familiarity with the lingo, with even what the pieces of the equipment are called,
00:01:43
Speaker
not a clear concept of even what a barbell involves in terms of equipment. It can be really daunting. And when I'm daunted, I often just don't do anything. Yeah. I also didn't know that barbelling was a verb. Talk about lingo that we don't know. There you go.
Why Women Should Lift Weights
00:01:59
Speaker
In this episode, we're going to narrow down your search significantly and steer you toward equipment that you will purchase once and one time only in your lifetime that will not break the bank and that will meet all of your needs while possibly adding years of high quality living to your life. Wow.
00:02:20
Speaker
That sounds amazing. We're also going to dive into all of the excellent and not expensive reasons why barbells are something that you're not only going to want to make the jump to, after a certain point, you're going to need to make the jump to. Yeah. And one more thing, too. You're listening to this episode. Say you already have barbells, plates, equipment like that for lifting barbells at home.
00:02:41
Speaker
Definitely this episode is not meant to convince you that what you have is not good enough and now you need to throw it all away and go out and get new stuff, not at all. Stick with what you have for as long as it serves you and then come back to this episode if you're ready for future purchases down the road. That sounds very sensible.
00:02:56
Speaker
So before we get into this, I want to talk a little bit about why would anyone want to be weightlifting? And there's lots and lots of really good reasons. I find myself now more and more spending more time and encouraging the women that I work with.
00:03:13
Speaker
Because they're possibly less inclined and if you're if you're not sure about that you should go back to the beginning of the season and listen to our episode called pink dumbbells and the shrinking female body. Which is a lot about how women in particular but not exclusively women are discouraged for a variety of reasons into lifting things that are heavier than than five or ten pounds.
00:03:33
Speaker
So my concerns really do extend mostly towards women because they're discouraged from lifting weights when in fact it's one of the best things that they could possibly do,
Barbells vs. Kettlebells
00:03:43
Speaker
not just lifting weights but lifting heavy. It is preventative against osteoporosis, osteopenia. And if you are perimenopausal, if you are just recently postmenopausal, frankly if you're 30 years old and not even thinking about it,
00:03:58
Speaker
Think about it now and let's get the work done before it becomes a lot harder to do. Amen. So Laurel, I wanted to ask you because for a long time I was just throwing kettlebells around and I was like, this is enough. But there is an actual reason why after a certain point you are going to want to transition to barbells that's not got anything to do with space or cost particularly.
00:04:24
Speaker
Listen, if you're trying to build bone, then barbells are going to probably be a requirement. Bone needs high forces for that cell signaling that your body enacts to build more bone. If the forces aren't high enough, it's not gonna happen. You can build muscle, sure, you can get stronger, sure, but you're not gonna build bone. So if you wanna build bone, it's a barbell because the barbell can be loaded up
00:04:54
Speaker
much, much heavier than a single kettlebell or even two kettlebells. I have 175 pound kettlebell. I think they go up to 200 pounds.
00:05:04
Speaker
They are freaking expensive. So there's the practicality of that. But in addition, and this is something people don't realize because a lot of times we look at barbells and we go, that's for advanced lifters. That's for guys. That's for strong people. A barbell could start as low as 15 pounds. It can be loaded up to as high as, gosh, thousands of pounds if you go on YouTube.
Setting Up a Home Gym with Barbells
00:05:27
Speaker
The strongest people in the world are lifting a lot of weight. There's so much versatility in terms of how much you can put on
00:05:34
Speaker
Right? And how low you can go but also how high you can go. And barbells are much more stable than dumbbells and kettlebells. Much more stable actually than kettlebells. Even to pick up a kettlebell, hold it in the rack position requires a lot of time spent learning how to do that without it hurting your wrists.
00:05:55
Speaker
And getting the kettlebell to the rack position, especially if you're trying to lift heavy requires now that you can suddenly do a really good clean, which is a actual power lifting move more so than in heavy strength training move. It adds a layer of complexity.
00:06:10
Speaker
and actually adds a limit on how strong you can get because of that layer of complexity. But objectively speaking, we can squat as humans a lot more than we can clean. So if you're only using kettlebells, if you're only using dumbbells,
00:06:26
Speaker
you're not going to be able to progress your squat. One of the best exercises for bone density, maintaining bone density, as well as building strength, super functional strength that's going to do you well for your entire life, you're just not going to be able to work on that because you first have to get the kettlebell into the rack position. When you're working with barbells, there's something called a rack. We're going to talk about where you set the empty barbell into the J hooks, you load the plates onto the barbell,
00:06:52
Speaker
and you start with the barbell at shoulder height. You don't have to get it there. Additionally, because there's a central handle with a balanced load, kind of like a dumbbell. Okay, so kettlebell is offset.
00:07:08
Speaker
And so that adds to its complexity. A dumbbell is balanced, right? A barbell is obviously able to be much heavier than a dumbbell. Because of that central handle that you're holding onto, you're moving one weight, you're not moving two, and you're moving a weight from a very sturdy place.
00:07:25
Speaker
stability becomes less of a limit. It's actually easier, I'm not gonna say for everybody, but for a lot of folks, it's easier to bench press a barbell than it is to bench press two dumbbells. It's a hell of a lot easier to bench press a barbell than it is to bench press two kettlebells.
00:07:43
Speaker
And yes, in a deadlift, my hands are holding the bar, but the work, the majority of the work is my lower body. And that is always going to be, I'm always gonna have a stronger lower body than upper body. Especially women. Especially women. And if I don't translate to a piece of equipment that lets me load my lower body enough, because the thing about bone density is not just lifting weight, but lifting heavy.
00:08:11
Speaker
We're talking a weight that you couldn't probably lift eight times. You would really, really have to work super hard to lift it eight times, and you would stop at six or stop at five, actually. You wouldn't go to failure. That's why, in a nutshell, you want to get to barbells. You want to build bone density? Probably invest in barbells. That's going to be the smart financial decision. And you actually want to make this simpler? Barbells are not complicated at all. They're really not.
00:08:38
Speaker
So we're going to talk about a couple of things that are probably more mental roadblocks than real roadblocks, let's say. And so one of the biggest ones I think for people is this idea of having enough space. And honestly, for me, that was a really big one. I wasn't worried about how much it was going to cost. I was like, I do not have room in my place for some sort of giant setup.
00:09:03
Speaker
Then I learned that I don't need a giant setup. I did a post on Instagram a little
Benefits of Adjustable Racks
00:09:08
Speaker
while ago showing the setup that I have at home, and I got a whole ton of people saying, oh wow, that's actually totally doable for me. We'll link that in the show notes. As you know, we've created an equipment guide. If you haven't gotten it already, you may want to get a hold of that equipment guide, which you get if you sign up for our mailing list. This guide is beautiful. It is pictures hyperlinked.
00:09:30
Speaker
to products on the internet that you can then use to either purchase that product or get ideas for maybe cheaper options elsewhere. This guide has everything. Words, pictures, hyperlinks, pages, aesthetically beautiful. Laurel made it mostly. Okay, now this concept of space being an issue for some people, a little bit restored.
00:09:54
Speaker
This is not an issue because you have, you know, an enormous basement, or a garage that you can convert, or some other—you live in Texas where there's room for—I don't know, that's not necessarily true, but for some people space is really an issue, and for some people it's not. Yeah, I mean, I lived in New York City, so I understand this idea of not having a lot of space.
00:10:13
Speaker
But even if you have all the space in the world, there's actually nothing worse than spending a whole bunch of money on equipment that you end up not using because you didn't do enough research or you listened to the wrong source or whatever you bought. It ended up not really being useful to you. Yeah. So I started a lifting program before I had a barbell at home.
00:10:37
Speaker
And the reason I was able to do that is I work at a physical therapy clinic and there was an entire, there's an entire gym. So I was like, I don't need to have a rack at home. I've got it at work. And Laura was like, all right, fine. And then I very quickly realized that it was an absolute pain in the butt.
00:10:52
Speaker
because either it was a day when I was at the clinic and I would have to figure out, okay, when do I have an hour free and is nobody else using the gym at that time? And it didn't always work out that way. Or it would be like the weekend and I would have to text the clinic owner and be like, is the cleaning lady there? So it was just kind of annoying for everybody involved.
00:11:10
Speaker
And so what happened was our friend Laurel sent me a link to something called an adjustable rack. And she was like, this looks like it might work for you. I sent you several options, too. OK, fine. She sent me several options of adjustable racks. And I was like, OK, fine.
00:11:31
Speaker
I didn't say okay fine like that but what I realized was that I actually had space for this adjustable rack and so what it looks like is instead of you know what I always imagine that you need for barbell is that like that cage is it called a cage?
00:11:46
Speaker
Okay, so that big thing, right? And I was like, I certainly don't have room for that. But as it turns out, you can get these, so it's two stands, it's basically like an upside down T. And the stands have the J hook, which is something that you put the bar onto, and it's got another hook at a lower level. And because it's two separate pieces, and they're not very big, the footprint is maybe like two feet by two feet for each one.
00:12:08
Speaker
I can then stick them in the closet when I'm not using them. And I can take my barbell itself and I lean it up in a corner, so that doesn't take any room. And then the plates that I use, I just throw them in the closet. And so that's how I do it. I have the rack in the closet, I have the plates in the closet, and I have the barbell up against the wall.
00:12:28
Speaker
nice and this is completely unrelated to space but one of the things that i realized was that i actually really enjoy not having to change the height of the placement of the hook which i had every time i had to go in the gym at work i had to be like okay wait wait did i have it at 18 or 21 and like what are those numbers it's not i was like is this feet and i'm like no it doesn't relate to anything it's just random numbers and having it at home
00:12:51
Speaker
It's exactly where I need it to be, so it actually saves a lot of time. I take it out of the closet, I put the bar on it, and then we're done. Additionally, it can be handy to load plates on the barbell. Yeah, I saw you in a video with your barbell racked, putting plates on it for a deadlift. Yeah, it's way easier. Yeah, way easier. Then struggling to pick up one end, and then you gotta go to the other end, and then it's wobbling all over the place. It's kind of a pain. Yeah, but the most important thing is that you're not actually going to be able to build bone. Let's be honest, after a point,
00:13:21
Speaker
after which you've adapted and gotten to a certain level of strength. Regardless of whether you believe this now or not, you are capable of lifting much heavier weight. If you're just starting out, even if you've been strength training for one year, that's actually not a long time. You are capable, whether you realize it or not, you can quadruple, quintuple your strength, and you can especially do that in something like a squat where the weights can get into the three figures.
00:13:51
Speaker
Don't sell yourself short. Think ahead. And Iraq is going to be necessary potentially.
00:13:58
Speaker
to accompany your growth in strength. I also wanna add one of the things that you highlighted to me, Laurel, when I started lifting was that I was going to see large improvements very quickly, which I knew to be true, but I somehow, I don't know, you don't even know something, but you were like, oh, but whatever, is that really gonna happen to me? And in the space of a couple of months, I have increased my deadlift by 30 pounds. So that's really fast.
00:14:26
Speaker
And that's a lot of weight, and if I was like doing it with a single kettlebell, well now I gotta go out there and buy another single kettlebell, because now I just have a row full of redundant kettlebells, so it's kinda useless. Yeah. In that way. So I talked about my adjustable rack, but are there other things, other kinds of racks that are out there? Yeah, so I've got- The torture rack? No, it's not that kind of rack. I've got the cage. I've got a short rack, because I'm in my basement that has a low ceiling, but you can get
00:14:51
Speaker
A rack that I think goes up to eight or whatever feet. Mine I think is six and a half. The footprint five by five, five by four, somewhere in there. You can also get a rack that mounts onto the wall, which if you're getting that, you want to make sure you hire somebody or you know how to install that safely. For sure, safety needs to be the priority there because theoretically you're putting
00:15:13
Speaker
potentially three-figure weights onto that. Probably your landlord would not be super understanding if it ripped half of the wall out of the wall. Or the person that lives in your house with you that bought it with you. So the other thing is that you are going to want to buy a bench for a lot of different exercises and as that might be something that presents some space concerns,
00:15:32
Speaker
A bench is roughly about five feet long and especially, you know, you don't necessarily have to get an adjustable bench. It's one of the ones that lifts halfway up. That's going to take up more space because it's got more moving parts. Just a regular flat bench is about five feet long. I thought, you know, you could move it to the side and cover it in a nice tapestry. And then Laurel said that sounds like I'm in college and maybe says a lot about my home decorating ideas.
00:15:57
Speaker
Anyway, you can do whatever you want with it. You could probably also put it on end in your closet if you don't want it out. And then with plates, you know, I just kind of toss them in the closet. I mean, I don't toss them. They're heavy. I put them in the closet. I lean them up against the wall. But if you want to save space, you can buy
00:16:14
Speaker
a plate rack, something to hold your plates, that is more vertical that then has a smaller footprint that way. The other thing about having the weights up on a rack is then you don't have to go through a bunch of weights looking for the one you need. They're also higher already, so it's just a little easier that way. But that's not a requirement. I don't have that, and you don't have to. No.
00:16:35
Speaker
We're going to talk now about cost, which can be another barrier for people.
Choosing the Right Barbell
00:16:39
Speaker
And the thing is, the big spoiler here is like it's not as expensive as you might think. And especially compared to the cost of joining a gym, it will pay for itself pretty quickly or compared to the cost of buying dumbbell after dumbbell or kettlebell after kettle. Now, if you want to, you can spend a lot of money on your setup. You can get some really fancy dancy matching this and that and whatever. But if you're not a gym owner,
00:17:05
Speaker
where your equipment is going to take a beating and you're not a competitive lifter, you really don't need to. Yes. You can if you want though. Right. Like Rogue Fitness is a really famous equipment name, but it's designed for commercial use, right? It's designed for CrossFit gyms. Yeah. Over and over and over and over again in the space of one day, right? So that's not something that you need. Okay.
00:17:29
Speaker
The rack, the portable rack that I got, I got it on Amazon. I got it for about $80. And the reason I picked it was because Laurel and I went in and read a bunch of the reviews of the various portable adjustable racks that are out there and I chose the one that had the best reviews and was also not crazily expensive to me. That is how I shop on Amazon to a tee. I think it's the only way to shop on Amazon. And the assembling it is basically like assembling a piece of IKEA furniture
00:17:55
Speaker
You know, you will at some point get a little bit annoyed. That's generally my experience with IKEA. But in the end, you're going to be able to do it. And if you're super, I mean, I'm pretty handy. If you're like, I am not handy, then you get a friend or a task rabbit or an actual rabbit. Yeah, I assembled my cage and I only had to call the company once. That's impressive. So that's the rack. Now, the next thing we're going to talk about is what bar to get now.
00:18:21
Speaker
This is the part where you can go absolutely cross-eyed. Yes, 100%. So here's what we're gonna say, straight off the bat, or even straight off the bar. The bar you should get is an Olympic weightlifting bar. Now, Laurel, can you tell us what that is and why we are recommending it? Sure. So the Olympic weightlifting bar is what is called a straight bar. There are two other types of bars you might see. One is called a hex bar.
00:18:46
Speaker
or a trap bar, that's one you kind of stand inside of. Don't get that. That's not going to let you do all the things. Get that later if you want it.
00:18:53
Speaker
The other one is a curl bar where there's going to be like a little wavy curl in the middle of it. That's for bicep curls and tricep work. It's really limited in what you're going to be able to do with it. Get a straight bar, get an Olympic weightlifting bar. Why Olympic? Well, it allows for the most versatility. Basically, if you're doing traditional weightlifting, you're probably deadlifting, squatting, benching, overhead pressing. You might be doing some lunges, definitely some rows.
00:19:17
Speaker
Maybe some biceps and triceps and shrugs. You can do all of that with a straight bar. You can also then do, if down the road you're interested, Olympic weightlifting moves. Now it can be really confusing, okay? So there's powerlifting, which Sarah is working on.
00:19:32
Speaker
Powerlifting is not about improving the capacity of power, actually, unfortunately. Powerlifting is about maximum effort, maximum force. It's about getting strong as fuck. There are three moves that powerlifters work on. They work on the deadlift, the squat, and the bench. That's it.
00:19:52
Speaker
Olympic weightlifters, sadly, are working on power, but it's called Olympic. It's so confusing. So what they're probably doing is snatching, cleaning, jerking. The goal is to move a heavy bar as fast as possible. So taking the bar from the floor and whipping it up over their head, that's called a snatch.
00:20:11
Speaker
taking the bar from the floor and whipping it up into the rack position shoulder level, that's called a clean. Taking the bar from their shoulders and bouncing with their legs to push it overhead, that's called a jerk. They're doing these types of velocity specific strength building moves, which are fantastic and enhance dynamic human movement in wonderful ways. They're what a lot of athletes predominantly train with.
00:20:38
Speaker
And if you have any suspicion that you might want to be doing that down the road, you can do that better with an Olympic bar than you can with a powerlifting bar. And you can't do it with certain bars that are straight bars that don't allow
00:20:52
Speaker
the sleeves to rotate. So anyway, to keep it simple, an Olympic weightlifting bar is what you want. Now the sleeves, let me tell you what those are. Those are the ends of the barbell where you put the plates on. The diameter of the sleeve is going to be different than the center of the bar.
00:21:14
Speaker
You wanna get a two inch diameter sleeve. That's what all Olympic barbell sleeves have. If you don't have an Olympic barbell, you don't want one, get two inch sleeves because that's gonna accommodate the plates that you wanna be able to work with for the most amount, again, for the most amount of versatility. Do not get a standard bar. Don't get it. It's called a standard bar. What a milk toast name.
00:21:45
Speaker
Also, what a confusing name. If I'm starting, I'm not going to be like, oh, I'm an Olympian, right? I'd look at it and I'd be like, oh, standard. That's probably what I am. The thing about a standard bar is, look, if you have one, cool, you probably have the plates to match, but the sleeve is a one-inch sleeve, probably, and this is likely not going to work with the most amount of plates that are out there on the market. So you're going to have potentially a hard time finding the right plates for it. So get an Olympic bar for the most amount of versatility.
00:22:14
Speaker
Thank you, because honestly, I didn't know all of this when I started looking for the bar that I use and...
00:22:21
Speaker
I think I just was like, I think it's this one and I got an Olympic bar and that's what I did. The other thing you want to think about is the weight of the bar because they can be different weights. The Olympic bars come in four weights, but there's two main ones that you'll see. There's a 45-pound bar and there's a 35-pound bar.
00:22:45
Speaker
I got a 45-pound bar for a couple of reasons. One was I knew that I was already able to lift more than that. So I was like, well, why am I going to buy the bar that's lighter and then have to buy more plates to get it heavy enough? So I figured I'm going to start with a 45-pound bar.
00:23:02
Speaker
This is also considered a men's bar? It is. There's more than just the weight that's different about it. The length is longer. That's not as actually important as this third difference, which is the diameter of the bar that you're actually holding onto with your hands. It's thicker. It's a couple of millimeters difference, but it actually makes a big difference. So grip is one of the bigger limiters for a move like the deadlift, which is a really important move for building bone density.
00:23:27
Speaker
So, women tend to have smaller hands. Although, Sarah, you're six foot tall. And I got big hands. Your hands are not little. They're not. So, that's another reason why that 45 pound bar is actually potentially more appropriate for you. Yes. But maybe less so for some of our listeners. Exactly. I can actually use both. My husband and I share a bar. It's a men's bar. But for women,
00:23:48
Speaker
Generally speaking the smaller diameter is going to make you stronger in your grip So it's not going to be as big of a limiter so that while you're trying to train the deadlift You're not maxing out your hand strength You're actually able to max out your gluten hamstring strength and your back strength the other thing that can get a little bit confusing is the bars themselves are often measured in kilograms and Not pounds so it's 16 kilograms which is about 35 pounds 20 kilograms is about 45 pounds and
00:24:14
Speaker
And that's confusing if you're a merkin. Yes, we don't like kilograms. I still, I mean, I actually grew up in England and I still find kilograms confusing. I think they're so much better, but I mean, they're way better. I never speak in kilograms, even to my international students, sorry. The other two sizes of bar, the diameter is the important part there potentially, but also the weight might be the important part if you are
00:24:34
Speaker
untrained, you haven't lifted weights and you're thinking 35 pounds would be a lot for me to squat. It would be a lot for me to deadlift. It would be a lot for me to overhead press or bench. You might start actually with a youth bar or a technique bar. You want to make sure though that all of these bars that you're looking at have a 350 pound weight limit. Most of them are going to have much higher than that, but at least 350 pounds because that's going to indicate quality is also going to indicate potentially safety.
00:25:04
Speaker
And don't sell yourself short. You never know. You could be deadlifting that much down the road. You don't know. So if you get these smaller bars that start off at a lower weight, 25 pounds, they go all the way down to 15 pounds. They're also shorter from end to end, so that might be space saving. Make sure that the weight limit is appropriate. I would say a minimum of 350 pounds.
00:25:27
Speaker
Now, I also got lucky in terms of the cost part because I live in Los Angeles and there is a fitness equipment supplier that I'm going to put in the show notes because honestly, right now the name of it is escaping me and I can't tell you what it is, but I'm going to go look it up.
00:25:42
Speaker
And it's a supplier that outfits gyms and CrossFit boxes and home gyms. And so that's where I got my bar and my plates. So if you live in or near a big city, you might want to do a Google search and see if there's something like that near you.
00:25:57
Speaker
It's going to likely be a little bit less expensive than buying online, but you also, what I had to do was go pick up the equipment. That was part of the deal. So you need a car that's big enough. My bar is seven feet. So I, and luckily I drive a big enough car for that. So if you're going to go pick it up, you know, make sure you have a vehicle that's the right size. And then I also think, you know, things like Craigslist, let go, offer up, even the buy nothing Facebook groups are really good places to look for secondhand equipment and, and
00:26:26
Speaker
The other thing that I discovered recently is my credit card all of a sudden now allows me to shop on Amazon with my points. So if I really was like, I don't want to spend cash, but I really am into this idea, you might have something like that that you can do as well. Or there might be some other like shopping that you can do with the points for your credit card.
Selecting Weight Plates
00:26:46
Speaker
The other thing to think about, so if we're talking about the plates specifically now, I personally don't care if they all match. I don't think that matters at all. So when I bought my plates, at each weight level, I just kind of went for the ones that were the cheapest. And so it turned out that some of them were something called bumper plates and some of them weren't.
00:27:06
Speaker
Can you describe what bumper plates are and what they're for? Yeah, bumper plates bump. They bounce. They have more rubber in them. So for Olympic weightlifting, oftentimes if you're working really heavy, you're going to snatch that weight up all the way overhead and then actually drop it or drop it from the shoulder or whatever, because you don't want to waste energy on the eccentric or the lowering phase. You want to save all of your energy to go full send and max out on the concentric. Bumper plates are also great because they're going to be kinder to your floors. So when you set those weights down, there's going to be
00:27:36
Speaker
an elasticity, they're going to bounce rather than crack. Because they're made of rubber though. Yeah, they actually have a lot of rubber and they do bounce. So they may be your preference. If you want to potentially Olympic weight lift down the road and you want to keep your floors looking a little lesser. Although they can sometimes be a little more expensive, is that right? That's probably true. And then the last thing that you're going to need is something called lock collars. And these are cheap. These is like maybe $10 and those
00:28:02
Speaker
So you've got your bar, you've put your plates on, and now you put these things called lock collars on the end and you snap it in place. And that holds the plates on the bar, which you don't want to be worrying about. Yeah, definitely get those. Okay, so now we're talking about plates. What plates should you get? So when I got my setup, I got two and a halfs, fives, tens, 15s, and 25s.
00:28:28
Speaker
And like I said before, I just kind of mixed a match. It was like whichever one of that weight was the cheapest, maybe they're having a sale on it. I just got that. So mine looked very higgledy-piggledy.
00:28:39
Speaker
I would say it is really important to get the small ones, the two and a halfs and the fives, not just because you are maybe newer to lifting with a barbell and you can't lift very heavy, but whenever you're increasing, you want to be able to increase by something like five pounds, which is two times 2.5. Especially upper body. Yes. Because five is going to be a much bigger percentage of weight in the upper body than the lower body. Yeah. So they're always going to be handy no matter how heavy you are lifting.
00:29:09
Speaker
If I take my 45 pound bar and I put all of the weights on it that I bought, I get a total of 155 pounds. Now my most recent deadlift was 100 pounds. So next week you are probably going to need more weights.
00:29:25
Speaker
So maybe not next week, but sooner than later, I'm going to need some more plates. So this is what's cool. When I get to 155, I'm going to buy the next heavy plates, which are 35s, which is a 70 pound
00:29:41
Speaker
potential increase. That's going to keep me busy for a while. Yeah, and it's going to be a lot cheaper than buying a whole new single kettlebell that costs hundreds potentially of dollars. Yeah, and that I can only use when I can lift that much and then I got to go get the next one. Exactly. Yeah, if I put all my plates on, I started with a set. I got a set of plates and it was two 45s, two 25s, two 15s, two 10s.
00:30:06
Speaker
And then I had to actually get the fives and the 2.5 separately. That's something that I've noticed. They're called change plates, by the way, those little ones. So I, when I load it all up, have 250 pounds, I believe, on my 45 pound bar.
00:30:21
Speaker
I'm good for now, but my deadlift max out is creeping up, so eventually I'm gonna get those 35s. Same thing, I think I actually will be done buying plates forever. But who knows? Who knows? But I actually think I will. My husband on the other hand, no. He's already not able to do certain lifts to max out with the plates that we have, so I just like that it's something that's, you know, finally something that's more expensive for men than women.
00:30:47
Speaker
This is a complete aside. And for me personally, one of the most challenging things about the barbell has got nothing at all to do with the space or the cost or the load. It's the math. I was told there would be no math. There is math involved. Let me paint a picture. You've got your bar on the rack. You are like, okay, my bar weighs 45 pounds. Okay. And I am adding
00:31:08
Speaker
this one plate is this 15 on one side and it's 15 on the other side okay and now i'm adding the five and i'm adding a 2.5 so that's now i've got 22.5 on one side and i've got 22.5 on the other side and that adds up to i mean it's even sitting here i can't do it
00:31:24
Speaker
So it's my favorite kind of math. It's my absolutely least favorite kind of math. I do it super fast. Beep, bop, boop. Well, some of us do it super slow. And the thing that also, I end up, I don't know why, I don't trust my math. So I end up doing the math over and over and over again. I'm looking forward to the point where I can take all those little guys off and just shove a big one on and be done with it. A whole biscuit. A whole biscuit. Laurel also educated me that they're called biscuits.
00:31:48
Speaker
And what I should have said, which I didn't, which is you got to risk it if you want the biscuit. All right. Now, this is definitely not a requirement, but it is something else that I would recommend you get, and that is called a landmine attachment.
Additional Equipment Recommendations
00:32:05
Speaker
Is that a bomb? Yes. No. It's the bomb. The landmine attachment, it's going to cost around $20. It's not expensive. And there's two kinds, essentially. There's one that can attach to your rack itself, which if you're like me working with a portable rack, I don't recommend that. That's not going to work. No. So the other option is you stack up some plates, and then one end of the landmine goes into the central hole. And that's the stabilized, like, stuck on the ground end.
00:32:35
Speaker
And then the other end, you put your bar in, and what's in between is a rotating hinge, which means you can now take that bar, that one end of it is on the ground, and you can lift or lower it, you can rotate it, you can move it at angles. I love it. I think it's one of the most fun things to work with. When I have one of the workouts that I do, one of my strength workouts is mostly landmine, and it's my favorite one, because there's so much rotational, oblique,
00:33:05
Speaker
movement that to me on my body feels really really good and it gets you out of that sort of straight up and down sagittal plane although there's a reason why we can lift heaviest in the predominantly sagittal plane which is that we have the best mechanical leverage we're going to be recruiting the largest muscle mass
00:33:21
Speaker
So there's nothing wrong with being sagittal a lot in string training, but it is nice to mix it up. Yeah, and it's just fun, right? And so it gives you a lot of variability. It gives you lots of fun things to do. So hopefully I described it pretty well and you can visualize it. If you can't, just go on YouTube and type in, you know, landmine barbell and you'll see what it is and how people are using it. And it's just a fun playful way to
00:33:47
Speaker
to use your equipment in a, it's a whole new way, a whole new variety of movements that you now have for only about $20 more. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, if we do the math, oh, it's my favorite part, the math. So if I add up everything that I spent, I got my adjustable rack of about $80. The bar I got was $120, which is about the same as what is out there on Amazon.
00:34:10
Speaker
All of the plates and the lock collars were $120, a flat bench on Amazon about $50, the landmine is about $20, so all in all you're looking at roughly $400 for a really sweet setup that has a ton of option, a ton of load, and is going to keep you busy for a while. Yeah, and that's if you get everything all at once. You definitely don't need to do that.
00:34:32
Speaker
No. Really, we were talking about this earlier. The things you really want to get initially is the rack and the bar. Yeah, the rack and the bar. Because maybe you're just like, you know what? I want to practice these moves with just the bar, which is a great idea. Yeah.
00:34:45
Speaker
And you want to take a couple of weeks to just move through the deadlift, the squat, the bench, whatever it is that you want to practice with just that 35 pound bar, just that 25 pound bar, 45 pound bar. And then as you warm up to it, you invest in one or two plates and then you get one or two more and you can build your family slowly. Family planning.
00:35:06
Speaker
Financial planning meets family planning. It makes me think of those stickers that people have on the back of their car with like the dad and the mom and then like one child the next one's like, oh, and then the dog, right? Yeah. You don't need the bench right away. You might be, if you're just starting out and you haven't done a whole lot of strength training, you might be just fine benching from the floor your barbell empty bar or a couple of dumbbells or kettlebells for a while. Yes.
00:35:33
Speaker
Yes, but eventually you're going to need the bench because you're going to need the bench because you're going to be taking that barbell off the hooks and the barbell is going to be too heavy to get over your body from a seated position lying backwards onto the floor. Also, the bench is going to allow your arms to move through a fuller range of motion. You're going to be able to drop your elbows down below the height of your back, lying on the bench, take that bar to your chest,
00:35:59
Speaker
And then from that end range, push that bar upwards. So there's two reasons. One, you're going to be lifting heavier. You're going to need the rack to hold the weight to get started. And two, you're going to want to train full range of motion eventually. And it's a much more straightforward way to do it. There's tons of other wonderful ways to use the bench as well. Like you can get benches that also are hyper extension.
00:36:23
Speaker
machines where you get to work your back muscles. You can get benches where you can do different types of ab work from different inclinations. Bench is where, okay, now suddenly you can start doing tricep dips and like all kinds of fun stuff. Maybe if it's a really sturdy bench, you could do step ups on it. So a bench is a very versatile piece of equipment that will serve you well in a number of different ways. You could even potentially use it for some of your yoga type movements as well in creative ways. Absolutely.
00:36:50
Speaker
All right. Well, I hope that this was super informative and cleared up a lot of questions or doubts or objections even that you might have.
Wrap-up and Resources
00:37:00
Speaker
If you haven't already, go get yourself our barbell equipment guide. And the way you do that, how do you do that, Laurel? Go to the show notes. Yes. Click the link.
00:37:10
Speaker
Okay. Enter your name, first name only, and email address and it will land directly in your inbox. That couldn't be easier. You download it, you keep it, you click on the links, you peruse. Fantastic. Yeah. I love it. Thank you so much for listening.
00:37:26
Speaker
And no to you, you can check our shots for other things as well. Probably. I don't know what they are right now, but there might be something. We have a website that you can go to to get on our mailing list, but you'll get on our mailing list by signing up for the equipment guide. So you don't have to do both, but you could do both. You can also, if you haven't, take a look around our website and say, wow, there's so much good stuff here.
00:37:45
Speaker
And that's MovementLogicTutorials.com. There you go. Thank you so much for joining us on the MovementLogic podcast. It helps us out so much. If you like this episode to subscribe and also to rate and review either on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.