Man, I was just looking at this 5ft barbell thing and let me tell ya, it’s a bit of a wild ride figuring out what’s up with these things. I figured I’d share my little adventure with you guys.
So, I started digging around, trying to figure out how much weight these shorty barbells can handle. Turns out, it’s all over the place! I found out that a decent, chrome-plated 5ft barbell can supposedly hold up to a whopping 600 lbs. I mean, who’s lifting that much, right? But then, I stumbled upon some cheaper ones that can only take around 130 lbs. Not exactly gonna get you jacked, but maybe good for, like, a light pump or something, those endurance workouts.
Now, get this – I learned there are these longer bars, the straight ones, that go from like 4ft all the way up to 7ft. Those are the big boys you see on the squat racks at the gym. I guess the 5ft ones are more for, I don’t know, smaller spaces or something?
Confusing as hell
Then came the real headache. I was trying to figure out how to tell the difference between the 20kg and 15kg bars, ’cause, surprise, surprise, they don’t exactly write the weight on ’em. After staring at a bunch of pictures and reading some forums, I think I cracked the code. Apparently, the 20kg ones are thicker, and the 15kg ones are a bit shorter. You kinda need to see them side-by-side to really tell, though. I guess the 20kg is the Olympic one or something like that, no idea what it means though.
Honestly, the whole thing felt like a bit of a mess. It seems like every gym just has a random collection of bars, and you’re just supposed to magically know what’s what. I even saw some people saying that some gyms only have the Olympic ones, while the bigger gyms have all sorts of crazy bars.
Anyway, that’s my little barbell story. If you’re thinking about getting one of these 5ft things, just be prepared to do some detective work to figure out what you’re actually getting. It’s not as simple as it looks!
- Started researching barbell weights.
- Found out about weight differences.
- Stumbled upon cheaper, lower-capacity bars.
- Learned about longer, straight barbells.
- Was trying to differentiate between bar weights.
- Cracked the code on identifying 20kg and 15kg bars.
- Felt confused by the lack of standardization.
- Saw information about different gym setups.
Hope that helps someone out there. It took a lot of work to put all this together, I tell you that. Catch you all later.
