The Curler

I replaced my cheapo curl bar and straight short bar I use for skulls and preachers with a Gungnir Curler and Fiver. I’m super impressed with the build quality and the built in collars are sweet. Since I have very limited space, I decided that the few products I get will be the best of the best. These are indeed the best of the best. The curler definitely feels better on my elbows for skull crushers and the knurl is just aggressive enough. They are definitely buy once cry once and it will be a long cry. 😂 They were worth it to me but then I use this type of bar a lot.

I have the fully knurled Curler. It's honestly the most premium feeling bar I've ever used. The electroless nickel plating coating is one if those things that you just think "ah, I get it now" once you see it and put your hands on it. The knurling is the perfect balance of grip-aggressiveness. The titanium collars are satisfying in action. My only complaint is sometime the collar does get stuck in the inner diameter of my bumper plates because the center insert has a slight chamfer to it allowing the collar to slightly slide inside, causing it to get stuck when trying to slide the collar off. This bar is not for everyone. But if you appreciate nice things, this is a beautiful piece to have.

I got this free (Instagram giveaway, woohoo!), but otherwise there's no way I would have bought this myself. If this weren't built as well as it was, I'd give it 1 star for value. You're basically paying for the R&D of a truly unique design. Don't get me wrong it works awesome, exactly as intended. But you're basically getting a barbell and collars for about double of a great quality Rogue curl bar plus collars. You get some extra convenience, sure, but then again, you also don't get as tight a fit on the bar as they will always rattle a bit (where as a nice collar on a regular curl bar won't). The only "performance" issue I've seen is for weight plates with slightly wider than normal diameters, they can slide right off the bar. True, if you buy a barbell like this, you probably have super nice low tolerance inside diameter plates too, but it seems like they should have accounted for this a little better.

Like all things Gungnir, this thing is beautiful. The built in collars are also really cool, but that's pretty much all you get. There's not much else that sets this apart from other non-sackable curl bars that are a fraction of the price.