Our pond has them all around the edge. All dug up from our property, all hefted down. Varying sizes and shapes, but the amount of granite tells you you’re in for a good time.

Phenomenal plates that used to be hidden gems on places like marketplace and have slowly become “almost never find” at unload prices. My last find was an old HS gym that was unloading a bunch of mismatched 45’s. No one else apparently wanted to go through them so we made a single offer and bought all only to find a treasure trove of vintage plates in the stack, including several pairs of milled plates.

A solid piece and Rick at Edge has always been an innovator. If you are from the rust belt you’ve for sure come across his benches and other pieces. As a hip thrust it does exactly what you want. You remove the belt squat attachment from front, and put in angled platform and go. As a belt squat it’s also nice but really should be mounted down as you’ll drag it forward. The belts Ric had made were top quality, but surprised he never had a multi-setting belt. This piece has the added handles which allowed Hatfield squats. We also used for rows, shrugs, marches, donkey calf raises, and anything else you can imagine. We changed out to a Rogue Rhino

Everyone knows what they are, and they are the staple of home gyms, dorms, hotel fitness centers, and dust collection on Walmart shelves pre-covid. While we still have a few we had a 5-50 set that got us rolling in the garage days before our new space was completed and our new DB’s procured. They performed well, but moved on to the next gym in an upgrade. The nice aspect of them is you can find anywhere, and build a set as you go.

I picked up a pair for our early days as COVID set in, and I convinced myself that they were the answer. They weren’t, and have the same challenges any “loadable” dumbbell has so no use rehashing that. That said, if you want DB’s, have Olympic plates, these could be a good pic. I knew a guy with a “cheapo” pair that we bent pretty quick and these always performed well for me. But as we grew space and equipment they slowly just became an eye candy piece so it was time to move on from them

I got mine used, and that shows on the green painted center knurling. Inherently it’s usually not the best idea to fill in center knurling on a squat bar with paint, but that’s ok. Bar served us well for several years before we made a couple upgrades and sold this down the line to a gym where it’s still in use.

There wasn’t a lot exciting about them. They were bumpers. They worked. I honestly like crumb bumpers better so when a buddy was looking for some weight we sold these out to switch more plates. I would make the most economical buy that isn’t having hub issues at that time if in the market. A pair is hiding on bottom in background of this old pic.

I am 4/5 when I’ve seen these racks in meets. 4 meets they were incredible, and worked well. 2 had made pad changes so you didn’t have the armor-all vinyl pad to slide around on. But we went to another and I’m not sure if the rack had survived a tornado or what but it was all kinds of wonky and took some iron coaxing to get into play. Ultimately I consider that one a ‘flyer’ and maybe it had seen more than I knew, or someone else had screwed it up along the way.