Planning to buy my own bar from strengthshop.de

[Miro]

www.strengthshop.de seems like a decent site to buy stuff for strength training. Now I want to buy my own bar to start my quest in setting up a home gym, and the bar ought to last for a very long time.

Essentially, I got two alternatives:

A) The Okie Power Bar
B) The Original Texas Bar

The Okie bar has about 1/5 inch larger diameter than the Texas bar, and is about 1 3/5 inches longer, too. Otherwise, they weigh the same. The price is about the same, too. I don't really know, on what criteria I ought to base my decision to buy either of these.

Which one would you recommend as the all-purpose training tool, i.e. for both strength and power work?

[yorick]

For some reason Google Translate isn't translating those pages for me.

I didn't see larger images of the bars. Do you know if they have center knurling?

[Kincain]

go take a look at the uk site strengthshop.co.uk

[Miro]

They are supposed to have one, no? I haven't seen any larger images, either.

I had hoped, that someone may be familiar with the names of these barbells and could recommend me one against another.

Edit @Kincain: That's just the UK branch (probably the main one) of the same brand. It's got the same images and infos, anyway.

[Dastardly]

I wouldnt get either.

There is a huge premium added to the price of both because strengthshop import them from the USA at great expense, and then they have to forward them to Germany too. A texas power bar is about half the price in the USA.

I would certainly not get the okie bar if it is 1/5" thicker, that is an ENORMOUS difference. If the TPB is 28mm, then that makes the okie bar 33mm, this is too big. Way too big.

I would either look for a quality bar closer to home, or just get a reasonable quality chinese bar. Something with nice knurling and decent materials.

[yorick]

Miro - Have you tried searching this forum for links to good international sellers? Maybe Dastardly has a suggestion?

If your searches fail, maybe Rip could guide you in the right direction.

Rogue Fitness ships to Switzerland. I just priced their Rogue bar - estimate is $422.45 U.S. dollars (about 322 Euros) to Switzerland. Their customer service is really good. If you shoot them an email, they can probably give you an estimate on shipping.

[Dastardly]

Rogue apparently has a european branch now. You could try looking at them, also Germany must have its fair share of domestic equipment suppliers as Germany has such a strong background of weightlifting.

[yorick]

Rogue apparently has a european branch now. You could try looking at them, also Germany must have its fair share of domestic equipment suppliers as Germany has such a strong background of weightlifting.

Good catch. I did see a Rogue Fitness Europe Facebook page, but I didn't see a main website. Either way, I'm sure they could hook him up with something cheaper and better than what he was looking at.

[Miro]

I wouldnt get either.

There is a huge premium added to the price of both because strengthshop import them from the USA at great expense, and then they have to forward them to Germany too. A texas power bar is about half the price in the USA.

I would certainly not get the okie bar if it is 1/5" thicker, that is an ENORMOUS difference. If the TPB is 28mm, then that makes the okie bar 33mm, this is too big. Way too big.

I would either look for a quality bar closer to home, or just get a reasonable quality chinese bar. Something with nice knurling and decent materials.

Well, good thing I asked first. The Okie bar is just 0.5 mm thicker which translates to 1/50 inches. Ooops...

Miro - Have you tried searching this forum for links to good international sellers? Maybe Dastardly has a suggestion?

If your searches fail, maybe Rip could guide you in the right direction.

Rogue Fitness ships to Switzerland. I just priced their Rogue bar - estimate is $422.45 U.S. dollars (about 322 Euros) to Switzerland. Their customer service is really good. If you shoot them an email, they can probably give you an estimate on shipping.

Rogue does seem like a good bet. What's annoying, though, is that the address to their european site is hidden in their facebook page. One would think that they would advertise their website more openly than that. Heck, why not put a link on their main site?

Let's just say I'm going to order from them, which bar(s) should I be looking at? Also, for the purpose of doing strength AND power work (but no olympic weightlifting), what thickness is preferred: 28.5, 29 or 31 mm?

Edit: I looks like Burgener & Rippetoe is best for my purpose. Shame they don't support money order - some e-mail correspondence is in order.

[yorick]

Edit: I looks like Burgener & Rippetoe is best for my purpose. Shame they don't support money order - some e-mail correspondence is in order.

Yeah, the Burgener & Rippetoe bar should be a good choice.

Since I don't mind not having center knurling, I have a Rogue bar and like it a lot.

Besides the B&R bar, another good choice for a bar with center knurling would probably be the Rogue Power Bar.

Good luck. Let us know what you end up getting.