How to Add Up the Weights When You’re Lifting With a Barbell

Pop quiz:

You want to lift 185 pounds. How many plates do you put on each side of the barbell, and what sizes? If you didn’t immediately answer “a 45 and a 25, of course,” perhaps a little primer on plate math would help.

Yes, you count the bar

Let’s start with the basics. When you tell somebody how much weight you lifted, that weight includes the total poundage that you had in your hands. The bar is part of that.

At most gyms in the U.S., a typical (Olympic) barbell weighs either 45 pounds, or 20 kilograms (which works out to 44 pounds). If the rest of your weight plates are in pounds, go ahead and assume it’s 45. (Nobody ever says "I benched 224 pounds" even if, technically, it was a 20 kilogram bar.)

You'll know that you're looking at one of these common barbells if it's seven feet long, and the sleeves at the end are two inches in diameter. In nearly all gyms, the bars on squat racks and bench press stations will be of this type.