28MM IWF Olympic Weightlifting Bar - Cerakote

I like this bar a lot. It is a quality weightlifting bar. The sleeves have very little slop. They spin well. The knurl is good. And it is black; a rarity for weightlifting bars. I lift weights recreationally and do train the snatch and the clean and jerk. I am not good enough at either lift to be meaningfully competitive. I am just on my own journey. But for those lifts, 3-4 days a week, I train with this bar. I also have the American barbell ss comp weightlifting bar (as a point of comparison), but I basically just use this one because it has much better knurl. Build quality is similar between them. The rogue bar has more noise when you spin the sleeve or drop it, but I think that is just due to the type of bearings that were chosen. Both bars have tight construction with a similar amount of play (not much) in the sleeves. This bar has a looser spin. On the cerakote coating: I think it holds up well as long as you are not using metal on it. If you are squatting out of J cups without a plastic liner, cerakote is probably not the right choice. But for platform work or for use with lined J cups, I think it is a good coating. I think black zink or black oxide show wear much faster than cerakote.

I bought this back in 2013 and it’s still fantastic. For many years it was my only bar and I used it for all lifts. The finish has held up over the years and has no sign of slowing down