Okay, so I have a classic "standard" barbell (not olympic, you know, the classic barbell with the "screws" that lock the weight etc) like this: The thing is, my older brother bought it like 8 years ago, we don't know it's durability ( I mean, max weight that someone can use SAFELY ) and the store we bought it from has closed. So, I'm looking for a way to test and evaluate it's durability. We bought it with 70 kg of plates, now I'm planning to get 30-50 more, but I wanna make sure I will be safe and, well, I just wanna know how much weight my bar can keep! I don't want a barbell getting broken in half while I press/lift it Any help is appreciated, thanks
i don't think there's really any way to check, so in the absence of one i'd say do deadllifts and have someone take film you so you can check each rep to see at which weight it starts to bend, and to maybe not go a whole lot heavier than that.
Thanks for the input Fish! Yeah I thought of that too, I'm looking for another way but I am aware that there may be no other way. Also, I have measured the bar , it must be 170 cm tall -approximately- ( it reaches my nose and I'm 175-176 cm ) and weighs approximately 8 kg, I measured the weight with a classic scale.
Steel doesn't snap in half. Maybe if you lived where pseudo does and left it outside to freeze solid, but having a bar snap, leaving shards of fragmented metal in your eyes is certainly not going to happen. I wouldn't let that be a main concern. Growing up I had my father's old weight set and the thing was 20 years old before I even started using it. I used to deadlift around 400lbs in the yard with it and it would bend a little but not much else. I doubt the bar is made out of some strange alloy in the dungeon basement of a sweatshop producing dangerous products, so you probably don't need to worry about it. When you get up to lifting serious weight in the 400+ poundage on a regular basis (repping it, not maxing) in various lifts it's probably time to look into a more sturdy bar. If you're not at that point I wouldn't worry about it. One of my favorite bars to bench press with in the high school gym was a bent bar
Just noticed you have a standard bar. There's not enough room for standard weights that can fit on that bar to make it bend . Upgrade yourself!
Thanks for the input Ero, useful comments and a nice story Well, I am trying to upgrade myself, that's why I'm gonna get some more poundage to lift
If you plan on really working on some serious goals you should definitely make the transition to olympic weights vs. buying the 'standard' sets if you can find it. The equipment is more durable and you have a lot more options with weights like rubber weights for the olympic lifts. The standard bars only go so far with poundage and they're not designed for long term use with serious weightlifting goals. If you don't intend to get up into x2 or x3 body weight goals I wouldn't worry about it. If it's just general strength goals than you're probably fine with the standard equipment.
I don't know anything about lifting but I can tell you "steel" can snap! Not all "steel" is the same and most of the consumer products I see showing up in the States using PRC's "steel" - from nail clippers to can openers to ...barbells -are made of such inferior materials, the cheapest alloys, bad manufacturing standards, tolerance specs that are sick jokes, etc., etc that its deeply troubling if one plays it forward. Metal bends until its elasticity point is reached, the limit beyond which metal fatigue and failure occur. Its unlikely that the OPs barbell will break but the wide gap in quality of materials ( even amongst poor quality manufacturers) is so great that is possible. Should it fail, it would do so without warning and it would be cataclysmic (i.e. a total failure - ever known of a bridge to fail "a little" or an aircraft wing or fuselage to crack "just a little"?) Of course the forces involved, the magnitude of stresses and the like are on a very different scale, but the same principles are involved I've heard of barbells snapping - never seen it. The actual limits are supposed to be 3 times the rating but I can tell you, NO ONE IS DOING ANY CHECKING before goods are put on shelves - the powers that be are too engaged in regulating the few domestic manufacturing concerns that are still around into extinction to bother with it. Anyroads, more likely to have issues with the collars breaking and the cheaply done "chrome" will begin chipping at the knurls and turning to splinters long before the bar itself fractures. Fusen is correct - assume 100kg rating -
