Barbell plate calculator
Type your target weight, get the exact plates for each side of the bar. Handles any bar weight and whatever plates your gym actually has.
Counts are per side. Load the heaviest plates first, collars last.
How to load a barbell correctly
Plates go on largest first, closest to the collar, then descend in size outward — 25s, then 20s, then the small change. Loading big plates outside small ones lets the bar whip and makes unloading a puzzle. On squats and presses, load and unload both sides evenly one plate at a time; stripping one side of a racked bar completely while the other stays loaded is how bars end up catapulting.
Remember collars: competition collars weigh 2.5 kg each, but typical gym spring collars are light enough to ignore. This calculator assumes weightless collars, which matches how almost everyone counts gym lifts.
Common barbell loading reference
The loads lifters ask about most, on a 20 kg (45 lb) bar with standard plates per side:
- 60 kg — one 20 per side
- 100 kg — two 20s per side
- 140 kg — three 20s per side
- 135 lb — one 45 per side
- 225 lb — two 45s per side ("two plates")
- 315 lb — three 45s per side ("three plates")
When a lifter says "two plates", they mean two 45 lb (or 20 kg) plates per side — 225 lb / 100 kg total. Now you're in on the code.
Know the weight. Log the set.
Liftrava pre-fills every set with what you lifted last time, so you always know what to load — free, works offline, right in your browser.