Black Competition Bumper Plates (LB)

Bumper plates are manufactured to withstand drops onto the floor, which is desirable for Olympic weightlifting (such as snatch, clean and jerk, hang cleans), where you often drop the plates onto the ground.

Iron plates are better for lifts that do not involve the weights hitting the ground (such as bench press, squats, and curls), because they can

cause damage to the floor, the barbell, and to the plates themselves.

When bumper plates arrive, unpack them and let them air out for a few days to allow any odor, however faint, to fade.

To extend their life span, try to drop plates as close to straight down as possible. If your bar collars get loose during a workout, retighten them so your plates always land straight up and down. This will lessen the sideways force on the bumper plate insert. Also, flooring with some type of give (like heavy-duty rubber mats or a weightlifting platform) will help absorb some of the impact from dropping the plates.

Generally, we do not recommend mixing bumper and iron plates on the same bar. Because iron and bumper plates can have slightly different diameters, dropping the weights causes all the force to transfer into the larger plate, leading to accelerated wear on those plates and your barbell.

However, there is an important caveat: it is perfectly safe and acceptable to use change plates alongside full-diameter bumper plates, as long as the total weight of the smaller/different-sized plates does not exceed 25 lbs. Once you reach that 25 lb. threshold, we recommend swapping those change plates out for a 25 lb. bumper plate of the same diameter to keep all plates uniform in size.

Example:

A bar loaded with a 45 lb. bumper plate, two 10 lb. plates, and one 2.5 lb. plate totals 180 lbs. — this is perfectly acceptable. However, if you want to go up to 185 lbs., you should remove all the change plates and replace them with a 25 lb. bumper plate instead of simply adding more small plates.

As a best practice, aim to keep all plates on your bar the same type whenever possible to maximize the longevity of both your plates and your barbell.

All our bumper plates have a 2” Olympic-standard inner diameter and will fit 2” Olympic barbells.

Yes, they come with a five-year warranty. Note: The warranty is void if the bumper plates are mixed with Hi-Temp Bumper Plates. Hi-Temps have a smaller diameter than regular plates, which means a bar loaded with a mix of REP's bumper plates and Hi-Temps will result in the bumper plates taking all the load, causing them to degrade faster.