Barbell plate calculator
Enter a target weight and the bar you are lifting on. This works out what plates to load on each side, and gives the closest loadable weight when the target does not come out even.
Standard Olympic bar: 20 kg or 45 lb. Women's Olympic bar: 15 kg or 35 lb.
Loaded total
100 kg
The diagram shows one side of the bar, inside to out. The other side takes the same plates.
What plates to load on a barbell
The bar counts towards the total. A standard Olympic bar is 20 kg or 45 lb, so a 100 kg target is 80 kg of plates plus the bar.
Plates go on in pairs, one per side, so each side carries half the plate weight. Those 80 kg of plates are 40 kg per side.
The heaviest plates go on first, closest to the middle of the bar, and lighter plates sit outside them. That keeps the load tight against the collars, and it makes the bar readable at a glance from the side.
Common bar weights
| Bar | kg | lb |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Olympic bar | 20 | 45 |
| Women's Olympic bar | 15 | 35 |
| Technique or training bar | 10 | 22 |
| EZ curl bar | 7 to 10 | 15 to 22 |
Specialty bars vary by maker. Safety squat, trap and cambered bars run from about 25 kg to 35 kg, and a few go past that. Weigh the one in your gym once and type that number into the bar field.
When the exact weight will not load
A plate set is not continuous. With a full kg set the smallest pair is 2 x 1.25 kg, so every loadable weight is the bar plus a multiple of 2.5 kg. A 101 kg target does not exist on a 20 kg bar.
When the target cannot be built from the plates you ticked, the answer above shows the closest loadable weight below it, states the gap, and names the next loadable weight above. Untick the plates your gym does not have and the answer changes with them.
The arithmetic is exact for the plates you ticked and the bar weight you entered.
Programmd programs print sets, reps, rest and an effort target in reps in reserve. The weight column is left blank, so you choose the load and this works out the plates for it.
40+ programs with the sets, reps and rest already decided.
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