What do you recommend when the bumper plates start maxing the sleeve and start creating more whip? It seems adding eleiko plates to a Texas power bar kind of maxes out the bar and changes the start position from the slack. Would it be better to switch to normal plates? It is a commercial gym that has Eleiko bumpers and UMAX Polyurethane Plates for the rest of the gym. It seems like it would be less desirable to use the umax plates on the eleiko deadlift platform. What do you think?
Yea, you’re going to have to use standard width (typically steel) plates. We jokingly refer to using a deadlift bar, bumper plates, and straps as “ultimate cheater mode”, due to how different (and harder) the lift is than a stiff bar with steel plates.
Regarding UMax x Eleiko platforms, the platform won’t know the difference.
A related story. The first time I went to Europe to do some training camps, I had a helluva time training my deadlift and squat, as many of the places only had bumpers. With comp or training-certified Eleiko plates, I could get 270kg on the bar, but with the standard bumpers it was always capped at 180kg. Definitely first world problems, but annoying. I just doubled the rep range I was supposed to do and did my best.
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I’m guessing this would also be prudent for squats as well? Although probably less impactful? Bench as well? I do everything in the racks and just hate walking to get the steel plates!
the noise and the plates “rolling” or bouncing is what I was thinking of when using these weird commercial gym plates (would feel better if they were the classic irons). I will make the switch and hopefully doesn’t tank my great deadlift progress this cycle!
I think if you’re having problems loading the correct weight due to plate thickness, you’ll have to use the available, thinner plates.
I don’t think the change is likely to make much difference progress-wise, but you will have the added benefit of loading the correct weight without the plates falling off!
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