US-MIL Spec Bumper V2

From Alabama with love! Hi-Temp plates are tried and true for a reason: they work and hold up to serious abuse. Don't convince yourself you need expensive, thinner bumpers unless for some reason bumper plates are the only plates you're going to get or you compete in Olympic weightlifting. I use iron plates for deadlifts and my Olympic bar holds enough Hi-Temps and change plates for Lasha Talakhadze to repeat his all-time world record snatch of 490.6 lbs if he ever stops by. Wider bumpers also absorb shock better and resist breaking at the hub, where all bumpers break. These Rogue US-MIL spec plates even have a 15 lb. option, which means you can avoid ever buying the fragile, doomed-from-birth, 10 lb. bumper (the 35 lb. plate of the bumper world).

I used these for years before finally swapping to all iron plates. I never had problems with them, but they are incredibly wide, even for bumper plates. They sat in a basement gym that gets pretty humid in the summers, and never showed any signs of damage. I’d imagine they’d hold up well for mixed indoor/outdoor use. If storage space or space on the bar isn’t an issue, they’re good.

They get the job done, but are not the nicest option in the list.

Another set of plates I tried out during covid as they came available. These were pretty hard to work with and I sold them pretty quickly. I paid $668 with tax and shipping at the time and currently the 260lb set I got comes in at $667 (plus another $60 with tax), so about 10% more than what they were in 2020, which isn't so bad considering what the cost of everything has increased by since then. However, a 3" 45lb plate is absolutely egregious and I can't see how anyone would want that much plate width, and especially given the fact that a set of Echos is $80 less expensive. I guess the military gets shafted on pricing by the vet Henniger, which seems pretty sleezy to me. Fringe offers pairs of these too and they're about as thick, but cheaper, with pairs of 45s being less than $2 before shipping. If you need these for the ACTF or whatever, get them from Fringe instead of Rogue.