Barbell Plate Calculator

You just did this for one set. THYMOS does it inside your workout, for every set, and it already knows your gym's plates, so the weight it suggests is always one you can actually load. See the THYMOS product facts and FAQ for the current feature overview.

Why "which plates do you have" is the whole question

Every plate calculator can divide by two. The arithmetic is trivial: subtract the bar, halve what is left, and start stacking from the biggest plate down. That works perfectly in a spreadsheet and fails in a garage.

Real racks run out. You have one pair of 20s, not four. Your gym stops at 1.25 kg and the programme just asked for 102.5. The calculator that assumes infinite plates hands you a number that looks right and cannot be loaded, and you find out with the bar in your hands.

This page searches the plates you told it about, exhaustively rather than greedily. Greedy "biggest plate first" is the standard approach and it goes wrong the moment a plate runs out: it commits to a big plate early, then cannot finish, and reports a worse answer than a smaller-plate combination would have given.

When your target is not achievable

Sometimes there is no combination. Rather than rounding up silently, this page tells you the closest weight you can actually load and how far under your target it is. Loading less than you planned is a training decision. Loading more than you planned because a calculator rounded in the wrong direction is an injury waiting for a bad day.

If the bar alone is heavier than your target, or you have not marked any bar as available, the page says that too instead of showing a blank.

Plate math for the lifts you actually do

The bar weight is the part people get wrong most often, and it differs by lift more than you would expect.

• Squat and bench press. Standard Olympic bar, 20 kg or 45 lbs. A 100 kg squat is 40 kg per side: a 25 and a 15, or two 20s if your rack is short on 25s.
• Deadlift. Same bar, but the plate diameter matters. Bumper plates and 20 kg steel plates both set the bar at pulling height; a bar loaded with 10s and 5s only sits lower, which changes the lift.
• Overhead press and rows. Often run on a lighter or shorter bar. Set the bar to 15 kg or 35 lbs and the per-side maths changes with it.
• Warm-up sets. This is where an infinite-rack calculator wastes your time: a 60% warm-up of 102.5 kg is 61.5, which almost no rack can make. Enter the number and take the closest loadable weight underneath.

If you also train weighted pull-ups or dips, the bar-and-plates model does not apply — your bodyweight is most of the load. The weighted pull-up calculator handles that, and the one rep max calculator turns any of these sets into a comparable number.

Notes that save arguments in the gym

• Plates come in pairs. A single 20 is decoration. This page counts total plates and uses whole pairs, so an odd count contributes nothing extra.
• The bar is part of the weight. A standard Olympic bar is 20 kg or 45 lbs. Shorter and technique bars are 15 kg, 7.5 kg, 35 lbs or 15 lbs.
• Collars are not counted. Most pairs are 1–2.5 kg the total. If yours are heavy, add them to your bar weight mentally.
• Fractional plates change what is trainable. A pair of 0.5s turns "stuck at 100" into eleven more months of progression.

Common questions

Does it work in pounds?

Yes. Switch the unit and the plate list becomes the standard 45/35/25/10/5/2.5 set with 45, 35 and 15 lb bars.

Why does it sometimes use more small plates than I would?

It gets as close to the target as your plates allow first, and only then prefers the answer with fewer plates. Hitting the number matters more than saving a plate change.

Can I use it without a bar?

Set the bar to "None" for loadable dumbbell handles or a plate-loaded machine. The maths still works in pairs.

Your plate list should not live in your head. THYMOS stores your gym's inventory once and rounds every suggested weight to something you can load, offline, with no account.