Whether you’re a man or a woman, weight training is equally essential for both of you. Adding strength training to your gym routine helps you build lean muscle mass, burn more calories, improve your cardiovascular health, reduce risks of injuries, and much more. Strength training includes performing workouts like goblet squats, plank rows, hammer curls, dumbbell curls, and deadlifts using different weights like dumbbells, kettlebells, etc.
Now, using a dumbbell for some of the workouts mentioned above is easy, but when performing a deadlift using barbells? Well, things can get a little tricky here. Performing a deadlift itself is a task on its own, as it requires a specific posture to avoid injuries, but having to change and load or unload the weight plates is a whole new job.
You don’t have to worry about it anymore because even though we cannot help you perform a deadlift, we can make it very easy to load and unload the weight plates on your barbell.
Barbell jacks are like carjacks. These jacks are made of birch wood and are designed explicitly for deadlifting, powerlifting, and weight lifting. They allow you to hold up the jack easily and load or unload the weight plates as needed.
These easy-to-use and lightweight barbell jacks are lined with non-slip material, which ensures that the rods stay put in one place without making any sound or damaging the rod surface. The extra thick wood construction provides stability, durability, and strength to hold up to 500lbs of weights without breaking.
Barbell jack’s ergonomic design allows it to stand like a lever keeping in contact with the floor. To load or unload the weight plates from a barbell, all you need to do is slide the jack under the bar and pull the handle to elevate the bar.
Once you pull the lever backward and elevate the bar, loading and unloading weights is a piece of cake from here onwards. Here is how you can load the weight plates on your deadlift bar using the assistance of a barbell jack.
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Loading And Unloading Weight Plates On Barbell | Decoding The Deadlift Jack!
Before we get started on loading and unloading, it is vital to understand the bars so that you can use them efficiently. The significant parts of the jack include:
- Shaft: the total length of the barbell
- Knurling: the crosshatched/ rigged parts of a rod that allows a firm grip
- Knurl marks plain marks on the rod that helps you to hold the bar with equal distance, so it stays balanced when exercising.
- Collar: this is the relatively large ring that holds the weight plates on the sleeves, so they don’t slide onto the shaft
- Sleeves: this is the plain stainless-steel part of the bar where the weight plates are secured
- Clamps: (not in the image above) are the essential parts of a barbell, and they must be placed after the plate has been installed. These clamps keep the plates from falling off of the bar.
Now that you’re aware of the mechanism, it will be easier for you to comprehend the easy loading and unloading weight plates on a barbell.
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Step 1: Know Your Weights
Before you start loading, you must be aware of the weights you will be using for your workouts and keep them handy to change them easily. The weights must be for a standard bar and not the Olympic bar, or else the diameters of the plates and bar won’t match, and you may end up getting either loose or too tight plates.
Step 2: Understanding Weight Placements
When placing weights on the barbell, you must ensure that you have equal weights on both sides. The heaviest plates will go in the sleeve first and be closest to the collar, whereas the lightest plate will be on the far end of the sleeve and will be held with the support of a clamp.
Step 3: Elevating Bar On A Barbell Jack
Hold the barbell jack by DMOOSE with its handle towards you and the mouth of the jack under the rod. Drop the jack under the rod, ensuring the rod is firmly placed in the jack. Pull the lever of the barbell jack towards you to elevate the barbell from the floor, placing the jack’s surface on the floor.
Step 4: Loading The Weight Plates
Now that the barbell has been elevated, all you need to do is remove the clamps, place your desired weight plate and tighten the clamp back on the sleeve.
Step 5: Unloading The Weight Plates
For unloading the plates, you will be repeating the same steps as above. Once you remove the clamps, take the weight plates off one side at a time and put the flat on the floor to avoid the plates from rolling away. When the weights are removed, place the clamps on the bar sleeve and load the emptied bar on the rack.
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Conclusion
Loading and unloading weight plates on a deadlift barbell can be challenging, considering how you will need to keep the bar lifted in the air to remove or replace the weight plates.
This tricky and high injury risk task is made easy using a simple yet compact gym gear; a barbell jack. It helps you lift the bar off the ground and hold it steady in one place, so you can load and unload without fearing the rod falling.
Moreover, the wooden barbell jack is made up of wood and a non-slip surface which ensures that the barbells don’t get scratched and stay fixed at one point so you can easily change the weight plates.
