Difference between these types of rubber weight discs... [Archive]

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Nagamooto

10-27-2010, 03:00 PM

Is there a big quality difference between:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2-x-25kg-Olympic-Bumper-Plate-Black-NEW-strongman-/230480060275?pt=UK_Strength_Training&hash=item35a9ae9f73

and

http://www.sshealthfoods.com/pages.php?page=lt.gymequipment&details=1647

?

The ebay ones are Bumper plates, but the others say they are rubber coated metal discs -does this mean they are cast iron with rubber casings? How do the bumpers differ (excuse my ignorance) -surely they must consist of some dense/heavy metal encased by the rubber?

CFF

10-27-2010, 03:52 PM

Nagamooto

10-27-2010, 04:35 PM

One is steel coated by rubber, the other is all rubber (No metal except the collar). By the way, you pay more on ebay.

thanks for the info. I live in the UK so everything is expensive!

Would it be an option just to buy say a pair of 20kg proper bumper plates and the other smaller ones as just rubber coated or regular ones, or is there no point to this? Are rubber coated ones not very good if dropped?

oldline70

10-27-2010, 05:21 PM

thanks for the info. I live in the UK so everything is expensive!

Would it be an option just to buy say a pair of 20kg proper bumper plates and the other smaller ones as just rubber coated or regular ones, or is there no point to this? Are rubber coated ones not very good if dropped?

I'm sure others will chime in here, but in general, ruber coated plates are very different from solid rubber plates and the purpose of them is different. Rubber coated plates are sold more for aesthetic reasons and to reduce the clanking noise that some people don't want when moving the plates around, plus they just look cooler (thus cost more usually). As such even though they're rubber-coated, they aren't really meant to be dropped and over time will likely wear through the rubber coating if abused in that way long enough.

Bumper plates, on the other hand, are solid rubber and ARE meant to be dropped from height like you'd have in an Olympic lifting routine.

If you want to be able to do Olympic lifting and drop the plates on a regular basis, then, your best bet would be to get bumper plates which are designed for that purpose.

CFF

10-27-2010, 07:04 PM

Nagamooto

10-28-2010, 01:37 AM

To mix and match when dead lifting it is fine, but pointless with Olympic lifting if you drop the bar at all. If you do not, then it does not matter if you have bumpers or not. Wish I could help with getting you plates, but over seas shipping is expensive. I will still check if you would like.

Thank you to both Oldline70 and yourself for the helpful replies.

Rubber Bumper Plates are probably out of the question for me then due to price (I've already invested about £900 (approx $1400) in my home gym and have a very limited budget now!

My best bet would be regular olympic plates I suppose, but from the searching I have done so far, I've found the sshealthfoods website rubber plates to be as cheap as regular olympic plates here in the UK, but if you know of a better solution for me I'd appreciate knowing.

I'm on the Starting Strength Program and am perhaps to eventually move on to Olympic Lifting, but I'm sure this is some way off in the future for me!

thanks.

Essexlad

10-28-2010, 03:38 AM

Thank you to both Oldline70 and yourself for the helpful replies.

Rubber Bumper Plates are probably out of the question for me then due to price (I've already invested about £900 (approx $1400) in my home gym and have a very limited budget now!

My best bet would be regular olympic plates I suppose, but from the searching I have done so far, I've found the sshealthfoods website rubber plates to be as cheap as regular olympic plates here in the UK, but if you know of a better solution for me I'd appreciate knowing.

I'm on the Starting Strength Program and am perhaps to eventually move on to Olympic Lifting, but I'm sure this is some way off in the future for me!

thanks.

If you're doing SS just get regular iron or rubber coated iron. Whichever is cheapest or you prefer. You'll only be power cleaning for quite a while, and it's easy enough to drop them to your thighs from the rack position and lower to the floor from there. It's not ideal and you might get a couple of bruises, but it's still perfectly acceptable. It's how every lift used to be lowered before bumpers came along.

Then if/when you decide to move over to full competition lifts, treat yourself to a full set of bumpers.

Nagamooto

10-28-2010, 04:28 AM

If you're doing SS just get regular iron or rubber coated iron. Whichever is cheapest or you prefer. You'll only be power cleaning for quite a while, and it's easy enough to drop them to your thighs from the rack position and lower to the floor from there. It's not ideal and you might get a couple of bruises, but it's still perfectly acceptable. It's how every lift used to be lowered before bumpers came along.

Then if/when you decide to move over to full competition lifts, treat yourself to a full set of bumpers.

Thanks once again Essexlad -I'll go for the SS rubber coated ones as they are just as cheap as their regular iron ones (I think they're on special offer).

I'm selling a couple of skateboards, a Ripstik Casterboard, collector's yoyo and my standard barbell and 4x10kg plates on ebay to raise about £180 for my olympic barbell and weights. (if they all sell by Friday on ebay!). I'm keeping my lighter standard weight plates for my dumbells and EZ curl bar (I've got 4x5kg, 4x2.5kg and 8x1.25kg).

I'm going for the black IRONMAN 7 FOOT OLYMPIC BAR 1000LB CAPACITY from SS as we concluded from my last thread on the barbells and then I'm still not 100% about what weight of weight plates.

I'm thinking:
2x25kg (these are only £2 more than their 20kg ones)
2x15kg
4x5kg
2x2.5kg
2x1.25kg

This makes a max of 127.5kg of weight (incl. the 20kg bar) and I will then have all combinations from 22.5 to 117.5kg in 2.5kg increments and then the 127.5kg max too!

My aim is not to have to load 20 plates or so as I've currently been doing on my standard bar (for 85kg squats and deads etc)! With this combination of plates, I need 4 x 5kg rather than 2 x 5kg because without these I wont have a combination for between 40 and 47.5kg and 90 to 100kg.

The total cost comes to £218 delivered.

Is this a good combination of weight plates?

tbh. I'm a bit concerned the 25kg plates might be too heavy for me to load for squats etc (what do you think?). I usually use 10kg plates max when loading on my standard barbell, but I have loaded up to 20kg plates at the gym I used to go to. I am squatting 87.5kg now, deadlifting 90kg, benching 65kg, overhead pressing 45kg and powercleaning 37.5kg (I'm still learning the technique for the power clean though!), so a 25kg plate shouldn't be too difficult to load should it?

Buccaneer82

10-28-2010, 05:30 AM

Thanks once again Essexlad -I'll go for the SS rubber coated ones as they are just as cheap as their regular iron ones (I think they're on special offer).

I'm selling a couple of skateboards, a Ripstik Casterboard, collector's yoyo and my standard barbell and 4x10kg plates on ebay to raise about £180 for my olympic barbell and weights. (if they all sell by Friday on ebay!). I'm keeping my lighter standard weight plates for my dumbells and EZ curl bar (I've got 4x5kg, 4x2.5kg and 8x1.25kg).

I'm going for the black IRONMAN 7 FOOT OLYMPIC BAR 1000LB CAPACITY from SS as we concluded from my last thread on the barbells and then I'm still not 100% about what weight of weight plates.

I'm thinking:
2x25kg (these are only £2 more than their 20kg ones)
2x15kg
4x5kg
2x2.5kg
2x1.25kg

This makes a max of 127.5kg of weight (incl. the 20kg bar) and I will then have all combinations from 22.5 to 117.5kg in 2.5kg increments and then the 127.5kg max too!

My aim is not to have to load 20 plates or so as I've currently been doing on my standard bar (for 85kg squats and deads etc)! With this combination of plates, I need 4 x 5kg rather than 2 x 5kg because without these I wont have a combination for between 40 and 47.5kg and 90 to 100kg.

The total cost comes to £218 delivered.

Is this a good combination of weight plates?

Sell the ez curl bar and just use a barbell for curls, Mark explains the detriment of ez curl bar on biceps in the book.

Nagamooto

10-28-2010, 05:39 AM

Sell the ez curl bar and just use a barbell for curls, Mark explains the detriment of ez curl bar on biceps in the book.

thanks - I'll read up on this

Essexlad

10-29-2010, 04:33 AM

I'm thinking:
2x25kg (these are only £2 more than their 20kg ones)
2x15kg
4x5kg
2x2.5kg
2x1.25kg

This makes a max of 127.5kg of weight (incl. the 20kg bar) and I will then have all combinations from 22.5 to 117.5kg in 2.5kg increments and then the 127.5kg max too!

My aim is not to have to load 20 plates or so as I've currently been doing on my standard bar (for 85kg squats and deads etc)! With this combination of plates, I need 4 x 5kg rather than 2 x 5kg because without these I wont have a combination for between 40 and 47.5kg and 90 to 100kg.

Looks pretty good. All you'll ever have to add is extra 25Kg plates then. Personally I'd get a 10Kg pair too if budget allows.
I do it a slightly different way, I have;

2x1.25 Kg
2x2.5 Kg
2x5 Kg
2x10 Kg
2x15 Kg (sit on my machines usually, I never need them on the bar)
10x20 Kg

That lets me do any weight in 2.5kg steps, and I also have 2x0.25 Kg and 4x0.50 Kg microplates which lets me go down to 1kg intervals too.
All comes down to whether you use 20 or 25Kg as your largest denomination.

Nagamooto

10-29-2010, 05:00 AM

Looks pretty good. All you'll ever have to add is extra 25Kg plates then. Personally I'd get a 10Kg pair too if budget allows.
I do it a slightly different way, I have;

2x1.25 Kg
2x2.5 Kg
2x5 Kg
2x10 Kg
2x15 Kg (sit on my machines usually, I never need them on the bar)
10x20 Kg

That lets me do any weight in 2.5kg steps, and I also have 2x0.25 Kg and 4x0.50 Kg microplates which lets me go down to 1kg intervals too.
All comes down to whether you use 20 or 25Kg as your largest denomination.

Thanks - I'm thinking of getting some microplates too. I think I'll takr the risk and go for the 25kg ones (hopefully it wont be too difficult to put them on and off/manoeuvre the bar from the rack to the mats for deadlifts etc.)!

IvankoBarbellCo

11-03-2010, 01:08 AM

I'm sure others will chime in here, but in general, ruber coated plates are very different from solid rubber plates and the purpose of them is different. Rubber coated plates are sold more for aesthetic reasons and to reduce the clanking noise that some people don't want when moving the plates around, plus they just look cooler (thus cost more usually). As such even though they're rubber-coated, they aren't really meant to be dropped and over time will likely wear through the rubber coating if abused in that way long enough.

Bumper plates, on the other hand, are solid rubber and ARE meant to be dropped from height like you'd have in an Olympic lifting routine.

If you want to be able to do Olympic lifting and drop the plates on a regular basis, then, your best bet would be to get bumper plates which are designed for that purpose.

As you rightly point out, rubber plates reduce noise, but the big "marketing reason" for rubber-encased plates (non-bumper) (for commercial buyers) was to reduce wear on equipment. Gyms would spend a lot of money on nice looking equipment, some of it with very expensive finishes, and these finishes would get torn up by cast-iron plates.

I think it was in the "my plates" thread that I posted some earlier examples (1920's) of bumper plates, which were cast-iron with a rubber ring. I can't recall any very early solid rubber bumpers. Before that, just cast-iron dropped to the floor :)

We do a cast-iron core encased in rubber for bumper plates. Only cutaway photo of ours I have available is here:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=419891995089&set=a.380686225089.203821.351135450089

A lot of factors to consider in what constitutes a good plate. I've been meaning to do an extended consideration of bumpers at some point, because I sometimes read internet forums and find misinformation out there on this subject.

My favorite design is the old Mavrik bumpers. It's a brilliant design. We've got a new bumper that's in the works that's inspired by, or a homage to the Mavrik plate. Let me find a photo and post it up here...

Nagamooto

11-07-2010, 03:18 PM

Thanks for the info. I did go for the rubber coated ones in the end. They were as cheap as cast iron ones as they were on offer.

The real bumper plates are a bit too expensive for me right now.

jormone

11-07-2010, 04:18 PM

A lot of factors to consider in what constitutes a good plate. I've been meaning to do an extended consideration of bumpers at some point, because I sometimes read internet forums and find misinformation out there on this subject.

My favorite design is the old Mavrik bumpers. It's a brilliant design. We've got a new bumper that's in the works that's inspired by, or a homage to the Mavrik plate. Let me find a photo and post it up here...

What do you think of the York bumper grip plates? (they are the only bumper grips I've found)

Seem like the best of all worlds. Color coded grip plates, rubber protected.

tinyurl.com/27tpg5y