USAWA

I weighed all of my plates that were at least 10 pounds when I returned from the 1986 Masters in Olympic lifting because the weights felt lighter than expected. I also discovered that most of my plates were heavy, as only one of my 75-pound plates actually weighed 75. The others weighed 76.5, 77, and 77.5. My 25-pound plates ranged from 24.5 to 27. One 10-pound plate weighed 11 pounds.

The 75-pound plates were York weights. Apparently these barbell plate manufacturers never heard of quality control methods!

Tom Ryan wrote:

I weighed all of my plates that were at least 10 pounds when I returned from the 1986 Masters in Olympic lifting because the weights felt lighter than expected. I also discovered that most of my plates were heavy, as only one of my 75-pound plates actually weighed 75. The others weighed 76.5, 77, and 77.5. My 25-pound plates ranged from 24.5 to 27. One 10-pound plate weighed 11 pounds.

The 75-pound plates are York weights. Apparently these barbell plate manufacturers never heard of quality control methods!

Years ago Thom and I talked about this issue which lead to me to weigh all my plates. I was very surprised as most all of them (which included the milled plates) were off. Some over a pound one way or the other. Because of this I invested in a set of Certified Ivanko competition plates which are within 10G of accuracy. I weighed them as well and they were spot on! So I have Thom to thank for this big investment!

But weight is weight – and even with inaccurate plates if their weight is known and they are loaded appropriately there’s not an issue.

Inaccurate plates really show up in the chain lifts with bar tilt. 5 pounds more on one side will mess up your balance. I was first aware of this lifting at Clark’s Gym years ago doing the heavy lifts. But Ole Clark had a way of dealing with it – he would simply put a 5# “balance plate” extra on the one end to even out the load!

I keep forgetting to post that we have a Seca scale “with an accuracy greater than ± 0.15 %”. This is what we are using for meets done in Colorado to include Postals.

We weighed and compared results with a Sunbeam digital bathroom floor scale and it was very accurate.

Most of my old 1″ hole plates weighed heavy. The most inaccurate standard plate that I have is a BFCO 10 lb that weighed in at 9.4 lbs.

I’m too much of a meathead to actually care how much a bar or plates exactly weigh…just load it up. But that Seca scale has a fantastic feature that helps my brain not use glycogen my muscles need…you can step on that scale, hit the TARE button, step off the scale, grab a plate and step back on the scale, and it tells you how much that plate weighs down to a 10th of a pound or kg. Cool, eh?

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by dwagman.