months you will have gained while most in the gym will have continued to
stagnate.. ere are even small “plates” which are magnetic, so that you can easily stick
them to barbells, dumbbells or weight stacks.. If you cannot find any small discs, or do not want to buy them, visit a hard-
ware store, a metal workshop or supplier, and get some metal washers, pref-
erably with holes the right size to fit the bar(s) you use. Get enough to total
pounds. en you can add them in -pound increments to take you, for
example, from to in the bench press and then be ready to use regular
plates to make the full . en you would use the washers to build to ,
and so on. If the washers do not fit your bar(s), tape them onto your loaded
barbell as needed.. To discover the weight of each washer, ask a post office worker to weigh one
on the calibrated scale there; or use a kitchen scale. You could weigh several
washers if they are of identical size, and then divide the total weight by the
number of washers, to get the weight of just one.. As an alternative to the washers, tape bits of metal of known weight onto
your large plates, or fix ankle or wrist weights onto your bar. You can use a
combination of imperial and metric plates to produce an increment of about
pound, if both types of discs are available, or use bars of slightly different
weights. Use your imagination and you will manage.. You do not need your little discs or substitutions during the early stage of a
training cycle when you are having a mental and physical rest before hitting
the full-bore training stage once more. For the early part of a cycle, after
having cut back your poundages by –, you may be able to add –Comparison of a .-kilo plate with four “little gems”, i.e., .-kilo, .-kilo and .-kilo
plates for Olympic bars, and a .-pound magnetic PlateMate® which can be attached
to larger plates, fixed-weight dumbbells and barbells, and weight stacks.