Weight plates are a utilitarian staple across many strength training gyms, and using them in your workouts seems simple enough, right? More plates on a loaded barbell means a heavier lift. But if you've ever lifted with cast iron plates, you'll know it takes one mistake (and a few jeers from on-lookers) to realize the process is a little more involved than you thought..
The Correct Way to Load a Barbell with Cast Iron Plates
This question surrounding the proper way to load weight plates only involves cast iron plate designs with a raised lip. If you're lifting with bumper plates that feature a uniform design on both sides, you can skip this lesson, entirely — although we recommend knowing what to do if you ever find yourself lifting with cast iron plates in the future.
When you're loading up a barbell with cast iron plates you want to have the lettering facing inward toward the center. This means that when looking at a plate setup from the outside, you shouldn't be able to read any of the stamped lettering. While it might seem confusing for beginner athletes, over time, you'll eventually learn to determine your weight total based on each plate's size, rather than what it's labeled as.
Some old-school lifters like to tie this barbell practice to an old wive's tale — facing the letters in keeps all the "power" of your lift inside the bar. But there are some factual reasons why this is a desired practice in strength training.
Why Your Weight Plate Direction Matters
It helps lessen plate wobble during lifts.
When you load a plate with the letters inward, you create a greater surface area for the next plate to sit against. This helps create more friction, which keeps the weights more static and set in during the course of movement. This matters most when loading a smaller plate against a larger plate, like a 45 and 25. If you were to load the plates with lettering outward, your 25-pound plate could have more room to jostle and clang throughout your lift, leading to potential balance issues and annoying ringing throughout your sets.
A good way to combat this wobble is by always lifting with a set of worthwhile barbell collars at the end of your setup. These accessories can help keep everything compact and secure against one another through the entirety of your set, lessening the room your plates have for moving and banging together.
It makes for a safer loading and unloading procedure.
The lip of your cast iron weight plate isn't there just for aesthetics (although you are allowed to like the way it looks). The lip is there to help you control and grasp the plate more safely in transport. If you grab hold of a plate to slide it onto a sleeve facing inward, that means you have eight fingers across the lip and two thumbs at the rear. This setup creates more contact points across the profile as a whole, which helps lessen the chance of errant drops or slips during movement.
This same sense of security helps when you go to unload a barbell with the plates facing in the proper direction. This is where the proper setup pays off most, as the higher starting position can lead to more drops if handled incorrectly. Grabbing hold of the plate with both hands and more contact points at this stage can help keep things safe and sound, and keep your toes and shins safe.
When stored, it allows other athletes to grab hold of the weights easily.
Conversely, when you load cast iron weight plates onto a weight rack, you want the lettering to face outward. This places the lip facing you, creating a shelf for you to lift and control the weights when it comes time to use them. If the lettering were faced inward, you'd need to raise the plate from the stack, grab hold of the lip and try to finagle the weight free from the rack, giving plenty of opportunity for slips or the all-too-painful pinch.
Stacking plates outward across weight racks isn't just for your benefit, but your fellow gym-goers as well. After all, you're not the only lifter utilizing the weights at hand, so why make their training process more difficult by failing to load the weights properly?
What About Competition Weight Plate Setups?
Okay, so you understand why it's beneficial to have your weight plates facing inward during training, but why then do you see competitive lifters moving barbells with weight plates clearly facing outward? Well, it comes down to the rules and regulations of the given sport, as well as the idea that the lifted totals do have a visual aspect as well.
According to the International Powerlifting Rulebook, "All discs must be clearly marked with their weight and loaded in the sequence of heavier discs innermost with the smaller discs in descending weight arranged so that the referees can read the weight on each disc. The first and heaviest discs loaded on the bar must be loaded face in, with the rest of the discs loaded face out." Essentially, judges and spectators need to be able to easily determine the weight total at play. While you may want to believe your nightly gym sessions draw a crowd for each lift, focusing on your setup's safety is better than the visual appeal it's giving off.
Now that you know how to load a barbell with cast iron plates, here are a few of our favorite profiles to put your expertise to good use. Below are a handful of well-to-do cast iron silhouettes featuring the aforementioned lip.
