Fractional Plates - are they worth it?

[Nick Klemetson]

I don't get the huge ego people have like they are somehow cutting up their man card if they put a fractional plate on a bar.

This is actually something I've thought a lot about lately. Might be worthy of a blog post later this weekend.

[tan125]

I have 20-oz baseball bat weights, and they fit the bar really well.

[wakk0]

A useful rule of thumb to keep in mind is that, for most useful rep ranges, 1 repetition corresponds to 2.5% of your max. If your press is 135x5x3, adding 5lbs constitutes a 3.7% jump. Do you really expect to make 3.7% performance improvements for any great length of time? Put in another way, would you expect to be do 1.5 more reps every time you repeated a weight? Microplates are not just a good idea; microplates are damn necessary for optimal progress on the press, bench, and power clean. You will NOT get the most from LP without them. In fact, in my opinion, you're not even doing the program if you don't have microplates. I feel that strongly about this subject.

Hey Tom! How did you come up with, "1 repetition corresponds to 2.5% of your max." - that seems like a really neat fact to me.

Also, were there any lifts in LP that you were making smaller than 1 lb jumps?

[Tom Narvaez]

I've never personally used smaller than 1lbs jumps. I think it might be useful for those who weigh less than 150lbs on the overhead press (women, children, and small men). And if you're into this kind of thing, maybe it would work on a barbell curl LP.

I trained a big group of lifters, maybe two dozen, using a 5/3/1 style training method. After every workout, their "training max" was recalculated. I began to get a feel for what %s of 1RM corresponded to what rep ranges.

In my experience, it goes a little something like this:
2RM: ~95%
3RM: ~90%
5RM: ~85%
8RM: ~80%
10RM: ~75%
12RM: ~70%
15RM: ~65%
20RM: ~60%
Silliness, Madness, Death, etc.

So, there isn't any true linear value relationship there. Definitely logarithmic. But the 2.5% thing work pretty well enough between 3-10 reps. I do 99% of my training in that range (save a few assistance exercises of course).

[sbhikes]

I don't think it looks silly for men to use fractional plates. That is a ridiculous thing to believe. It makes you look serious. Like you take this stuff so seriously you'll do whatever it takes to lift more, even if it means just a couple of washers more.

[Arkansan]

I ordered mine from amazon. I always look silly, so no biggy to me.

[ChessGuy]

A useful rule of thumb to keep in mind is that, for most useful rep ranges, 1 repetition corresponds to 2.5% of your max. If your press is 135x5x3, adding 5lbs constitutes a 3.7% jump. Do you really expect to make 3.7% performance improvements for any great length of time? Put in another way, would you expect to be do 1.5 more reps every time you repeated a weight? Microplates are not just a good idea; microplates are damn necessary for optimal progress on the press, bench, and power clean. You will NOT get the most from LP without them. In fact, in my opinion, you're not even doing the program if you don't have microplates. I feel that strongly about this subject.

Amen to that.

[Burnsie]

I carry 1.25lb plates in my gym bag, and they are a very useful tool for microloading. I use them mostly for presses, but sometimes for bench when progress is slow. I would even consider going in smaller increments.

[Epictetus8540]

I've heard the arguments about them being useless if you take them to a public gym where the slight discrepancies in the weights you're using somehow nullify microloading. Argument seem awful to me. By that logic they nullify your programming to don't they? The variables are the same either way. You're just adding a new constant.

I think, in reality, MOST people are creatures of habit and workout in the same place with the same plates. In a real barbell club, where there's like a dozen power/squat racks and perhaps people are moving plates all around, you might not have the consistency you think you do. (If I owned a gym, I would weigh every plate and clearly mark them for exact weight, but that's just me.)

But in my gym, for instance, there are two squat racks next to each other and they both have bumper plates from the same manufacturer. I will ALWAYS use the one on the right, and not the one on the left if I have a choice. And those plates stay at that station, as do most plates throughout the rest of the gym. So even if they aren't 100% accurate, whatever inaccuracies are consistent enough to allow me to accurately measure progress.

[David McClelland]

I think, in reality, MOST people are creatures of habit and workout in the same place with the same plates. In a real barbell club, where there's like a dozen power/squat racks and perhaps people are moving plates all around, you might not have the consistency you think you do. (If I owned a gym, I would weigh every plate and clearly mark them for exact weight, but that's just me.)

But in my gym, for instance, there are two squat racks next to each other and they both have bumper plates from the same manufacturer. I will ALWAYS use the one on the right, and not the one on the left if I have a choice. And those plates stay at that station, as do most plates throughout the rest of the gym. So even if they aren't 100% accurate, whatever inaccuracies are consistent enough to allow me to accurately measure progress.

I also not only think the argument against accuracy in a commercial gym is useless, I know it's useless. Whereas my novice linear progression with squat fizzled out within 3 mos and I had to move into HLM intermediate programming, I went up to a full 6 mos still progressing workout to workout with bench and press using those micro plates I bought from the guy who sells them on here. I was able to keep everything exactly the same as far as reps and sets, which I felt more safe with all that time. I was especially proud of my presses because I was nearing 150 lbs on the overhead press, equaling that of a guy much more jacked and impressively built than me in my gym, and I'm in my late 40s and started very weak. I would have achieved it and possibly surpassed that via micro loading but had to stop work outs completely for other reasons.

For me keeping things as simple as possible (KISS method) is essential to success and those micro plates were key for my upper body.