Am I the only person who doesn't count bar weight ??

benben2356

benben2356

Member
Ok this may be a very stupid post but it is worth a mention I guess ...

In all my years of training I have never counted the bar weight onto my lifts ... (I guess i just like selling myself short lol)

but upon browsing various other lifters stats I always wondered why I seemed so weak in comparison ...
And after discussing it with many other bodybuilders they all laughed and said of course you count bar weight into your lifts ...

Now on one hand I felt really stupid as I have always known the bar weights roughly 25kg ... But I guess due to my mentality I just only ever counted what was on the bar because I don't like to brag ...

But anyways .. On the bright side I guess I just added 25 kg to all my lifts lol so hey ho..

That means my actual 1 rep maxes are ..

Squat - 125 kg
Bench - 115 kg
deadlift - 200 kg
strict curl - 60 kg
military press - 80kg

still very far from impressive I know considering my training experience ... But at the weight of 12 stone 8 ..... It's not bad ...

At least I feel a bit better about myself now with this new found wisdom lol ...

Im currently welcoming the inevitable barrage of ridicule so feel free to have a laugh at my expense ;)
 
An Olympic bar is typically 20kg, not 25. And yes, it is affected by gravity, so count it. :)
 
You are lifting the bar. If you lift 300 lbs of plates supported by a 45 lb bar, you are not lifting 300 lbs, you are lifting 345.

You are the only person in the entire world who doesn't, for some reason, count the bar. I am honestly surprised that the first time you wrote that, you didn't immediately die as the universe decided to just delete you from existence for such silliness.
 
Sometimes it's useful to list your non-barred weights on your workout log so that it is easier to add up the weights correctly when you're loading...when lifting simple addition and subtraction evidently becomes too abstract for my mind.
 
See, I can't do math without the bar weight when I'm lifting. I must have it so ingrained from years of lifting or something because even plate loaded machines, I have to convert to bar weights when I write out my plans, then I have to subtract the 45 back out when I log those workouts. Sucks how the brain starts shutting down when you are lifting.
 
1. Count the bar

2. Stop using 'stones' ... these went out around the time O&G was born and Japan thought invading everyone along the Pacific Rim was a good idea ...
 
AlexAustralia said:
1. Count the bar

2. Stop using 'stones' ... these went out around the time O&G was born and Japan thought invading everyone along the Pacific Rim was a good idea ...
Click to expand...



Welllll, I was born before the Japanese surrendered. And I can translate 'stones' easily but it's that damn newfangled metric system that confuses me. :cool:
 
I'm generalising gramps, just generalising ...

Re: the metric system - isn't it always a bastard of a thing when measurements make sense ... ? ;)
 
And that is why we leave the UK the manage things like royalty and baby-based tourism and not mathematics and beer (the important stuff etc.) ;)
 
Well that stretch from '89 to '05 was just wasted spending so much time trying to polish the replica (given the land of Queen Libby is a bit too scared to give up something they only win in brief spurts) that we gave up caring ... although props to Ashton Agar, a pity he couldn't hold his wad 3mins longer and hit that #11 debut century. It'll probably be a Sri Lankan beating up on Bangladesh or Nepal or something now ...

... but the point remains, that stones and ounces, feet and inches are nonsense. Hell, the UK and US can't even agree on the length of an inch ;) ... also, when you measure food intake using one set of measurements and body mass using another, you know you're in a for a NASA to Mars moment ...
 
AlexAustralia said:
... but the point remains, that stones and ounces, feet and inches are nonsense. Hell, the UK and US can't even agree on the length of an inch ;) ... also, when you measure food intake using one set of measurements and body mass using another, you know you're in a for a NASA to Mars moment ...
Click to expand...

I also prefer the metric system, but the imperial system is still needed in some fields ie carpentry/joinery or where splitting lengths in three/six/seven etc are needed.

I do believe they settled on an inch being 2.54cm at somepoint though.
 
The UK is still holding out for 2.543 ;)



Also ... forget the Ashes ... the Wallabies were useless against the Lions just now (must be 6 weeks back now? maybe a bit further even? 8?) ... at least I know why we lost the Ashes; ****house selectors and selection policies for about 5 years; we didn't evolve or prepare towards the end of our ~13 year dominance (call it 94-95 to 07-08), and we've paid for it. Ironically it's the same mistakes we made in the 70's that led to the 80's being a lost decade of cricket for us ...
 
AlexAustralia said:
The UK is still holding out for 2.543 ;)
Click to expand...

When you mention it I remember my dad going on about a real inch and differences between real inches and us inches.

Re the cricket bit: Ive got no idea about the world of cricket. All I know is that it was on the news every evening as we used to have to sit through the national news which was sent from London! (I love playing it at school though.) I was just winding you up as Im under the impression every aussie has an opinion about cricket.
 
AlexAustralia said:
"every aussie has an authoritative opinion about cricket" ;)
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Replace "cricket" with "everything".

As for the game itself, :rolleyes: Nuff said!

And us Americans are proud to have our Ashes hauled every chance we get.

Finally, Alex, I believe you are referring to the now obsolete "Scottish Inch" as being 2.543 cm (actually it was 2.544). What I do not understand is why the English have declared that they are officially going to the metric system but officially maintaining speed in miles per hour.

Grampy Old and Grey :cool:
 
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England have been "officially" moving over to the metric system for as long as I can remember. Yet I can still buy four pints of milk at the supermarket. I tend to weigh myself in kilos now and all my weights are in kilos.

Re the OP's comment: it's definitely worth knowing the weight of the actual bar, or bars, you are using. If your gym has an accurate set of weighing scales, you should weigh the bar(s) and make a note of the weight. I have known O-bars to be up to 5kg more and almost 5kg less then I thought they were. This can mess up your training (and your head) if you have to change gyms for a few sessions.

Most cheap weight plates aren't much better either! I've weighed all my 45cm plates and confirmed that they are all close enough to the loads marked on them. The same cannot be said for some of the change plates I recently purchased. They are off by more than my heavy plates! Because they're small, I don't care enough to fix them, but if the 20kg plates you are using are out by ~1kg or more and you happen to load a bunch of them on a bar, the total load might be out by several kilos. If you hit a 200kg PR, it's nice to know it really is 200kg (or as near as dammit).

Ignore steel spring collars and the locking plastic ones, but include the 2.5kg Olympic comp ones or similar.
 
I also count the weight of the sled in a leg pressing machine. You should also count in your BW in chins, minus the weight of your arms, but plus clothes, cancelling each other out, so BW it is. Calculating the total weight lifted in squats/deads is a bit trickier. Anyone doing that? That may be worthwhile when calculating your warmup sets suggested in HST FAQ:

Specific warm-ups for first exercise of major muscle groups (legs, chest, back)
15s don't really require warm-ups.
10s - 1 set 5 reps @ 70% of working weight on main exercises. Later exercises for same or
auxiliary muscle groups don't require warm-ups unless you feel you need it.
5s - 1 set 5 reps @ 50% of working weight
1 set 3 reps @ 70% of working weight
1 set 2-3 reps @ 80% of working weight
1 set 1 rep @ 90% of working weight (optional)
Click to expand...
 
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