Following the program with kilogram plates

[AndreiDecker]

For the coaches that work with kilograms (if there is any at all), how do you keep up with the weight jumps prescribed by the program using kg plates? My gym has 20, 10, 5, 2.5, 1.25 kg plates and I own 1, 2, 3 kg plates and I usually have to round down or up to load my lifts. For example, if I need to add 5 pounds to my squat, that would be 1.136 kg each side to the barbell, in this case I can round to 1 kg or 1.25 kg using the plates avaible, wich often makes difficult to follow the program correctly. There is any way to deal with this? I've thought about homemade microplates but numbers seen to vary too much when converted from pounds.

[Michael Wolf]

Do your programming in kilos, not pounds - don't try to get down to the thousandth of a decimal to make 5 lb jumps, that's just silly.

If you can get your hands on some micoplates, that would be great, so you can make smaller jumps in the press, bench, and clean. And just do the program in kilos; 2.5 kilos is more than 5 lbs, but there's nothing magic about 5 lbs, it just happens to be the number the plates add up to in lb based systems. Your body doesn't recognize a "5 lb adaptation." It happens to be that the squat and DL can usually be estimated to 5 lb increases, but it's not a precise calibration of your body's actual adaptation, it just works well enough as a proxy. 5.5 lbs (2.5 kilos) is close enough.

You can order kilo microplates from Rogue, probably some other places too.

[Daniel Cavallari]

Coach, if I may add my own experience: I started lifting in a facility with 1.25kg plates, resulting in 2.5kg (~5.5lbs) jumps. Progress was fine.
I later switched to another facility without anything smaller than 5kg plates, so I bought my own 1kg plates, resulting in 2kg (~4.4lbs) jumps. Progress was also fine.
Eventually my press needed to be microloaded, so I bought some chains and weighted two segments resulting in 0.5kg each (i.e. 1kg or ~2.2lb jumps). I would just tie them at the ends of the bar.

So, moral of the story: you don't need to be exact with the jumps to make progress, 2.5kg jumps will work fine. Also, if you're ingenious you can microload without paying a lot of money on microplates. Buy a thin chain and find a good scale.

[jdw]

If you're in Europe, strength shop uk sells a set of 8 0.25kg plates for about 30 pounds,, they're good quality (Ive just bought some) and allow you to do 1kg jumps for bench press and even 0.5kg jumps for the press

[AndreiDecker]

Thanks for the answers , I'll definitely try to purchase fractional plates or make them myself. I know that I can use 2'' washers, but they are difficult to find where I live.