Adjustable Dumbells

If you look around today at sporting goods stores or surf some fitness websites, you’re going to see a lot of modern adjustable dumbells that have different types of locking mechanisms to add and remove plates.  These mechanisms do not require that you actually take a plate off, rather, you simple select the weight you desire and lift.  The plates come with it.

Contrast that with our friends to the left here, which although are still a new set of adjustable dumbells, are very old technology.  Old, inconvenient, and cumbersome.

If we look at their construction, it’s quite basic.  Two bars that are threaded on each side to accept a collar.  This collar screws onto the bar and compresses the plates against a shoulder that rests just outside the grips.  You can add just about any amount and configuration of plates that will fit on each side of the grip.  It’s so simple it’s almost genius.  But not quite.

The problem comes when you want to change weights.  Don’t get me wrong, the whole contraption is very secure and safe.  There’s probably no safer way to secure weights to a bar.  The problem comes when you want to shuffle weights.  Adding plates onto the outside is relatively simple, as long as you don’t mind having them stacked randomly.  those of you who are OCD and demand that your largest plates be on the inside will soon find this to be an unacceptable situation, and start removing smaller plates before you put on the larger ones.  This takes time, and is tedious.

When taking plates off, you can’t simply strip off the 5 lb plate on each side if there’s a smaller one closer to the collars.  You’ll need to take the smaller weights off the adjustable dumbell, remove the larger one, then add the smaller plate back on before tightening the collars.  Again, messy.

Working out is enough of a hassle that I like to minimize as many interruptions as possible to get maximum return on my time invested.  I think most people will agree.