Barbell exercises

A barbell keeps both hands on one bar, so the stronger side can quietly help the weaker one, and your grip width is fixed for the whole set. In exchange you get stability and room to load: the barbell is where most people lift their heaviest weights. It also needs more setup than anything else here, usually a rack, plates and collars, and on a heavy bench press or squat a spotter or safety pins.

Reach for it for the lift a session is built around: the squat, the bench press, the deadlift, the overhead press and the barbell row. Those are the lifts you will keep adding weight to for the longest. For isolation work a barbell is usually the clumsier choice, and dumbbells or a cable do the job better.

StackUp's default step is 2.5 kg, which is a pair of 1.25 kg plates on a barbell. If your gym has smaller change plates, you can set a finer step for that exercise.