When I moved to student accommodation I made sure I was to get the biggest room possible! Boy was I surprised when it was three times the size of my current room I had stayed in all my life! Definitely worth the extra few quid! Well I knew I had whole bundle of audio equipment to take up plenty of the space, but there just seemed to be more than I would need. Why not have myself a home gym?!

I left for University lighter than I had been as I went on several holidays during my gap year after college. No one wants to go on holiday bulky so I had been visiting the gym a lot. I wanted to keep this up and nothing makes you feel more manly than a cast iron barbell and dumbell set! I went for the 90kg set and at the time it cost around £120.

In this set I had the following:-

1 x 5 ft spinlock barbell (approx 7kg)
2 x spinlock dumbell handles
2 x 10kg plates
8 x 5kg plates
4 x 2.5kg plates
4 x 1.25kg plates
4 x 0.5kg plates

Barbell
As you can imagine picking up the delivery in student halls isn't easy, so I had to get a few friends to come along and help me out. Once laid out in my room it seemed to fill out that final space I had. The 5 foot is just long enough to fit snuggly into my room and not too short for my exercises. Being very broad a smaller barbell would of been quite troublesome. The barbell is about 7kg in weight without any plates which is perfect for any warmups or beginners. All beginners should always remember that form comes before weight lifted. A 7kg barbell seems just right for anyone to practice their form before moving onto heavier lifting.
The barbell is perfect for your heavy lifting and compound exercises. These include bench press, deadlifts and squats. However as it's a review of the product and not a workout diary I won't go into too much detail!

Dumbells
The are two dumbells which comes with the set, each weighing about 1.5kg. These are a good size and have good grip, however beginners beware of calluses. These are almost unavoidable and on an iron barbell can hurt at first! A solution can be to wear gloves, but a phrase which I live by and hear on daily at Uni is 'man up'. It's only a callus. Dumbells are perfect for working isolation exercises. Working separate dumbells can also strengthen your core which is a vital part to body conditioning. Overall these dumbbells are very comfortable to use.

Plates
There is a good variety of cast iron plates. With 90kg at my disposal I could always mess around with different routines and know I had plenty to use. The 10kg plates are also perfect to use by themselves. These can be used for 'around the worlds' to condition your shoulders and also for crunches with the weight supported on your chest. These plates are definitely going to last a lift time with the build of them!

The Negatives
The main problem I had with this set is it being 'spinlock'. To anyone not knowing what this means, it simply means you spin on the collars on each end until it tightens up to the plates. As you can imagine this can be a nightmare if you're always changing what you are lifting! With a lot of compound exercises you can usually find lifting a good heavy weight which is the same for each exercise is fine. This is what I did and hardly ever changed the plates on the barbell, except once I needed to increase them. However the dumbells which are used for more isolation are needed to be changed very often! As you can imagine, spinning 4 separate collars off, replacing plates, then spinning them on again for another set can be quite time consuming. During a workout you do not want to waste time if you want to keep your heart rate up! This is the biggest downfall to this set and I have to admit I rarely used my dumbells because of this reason.

In the future I soon replaced my dumbells with Bowflex SelechTech's which at the twist of a switch, completely changes the weight. These however were priced around £250 for two dumbbells so are a lot pricier in comparison.


I still use my barbell to this day and it still looks in perfect condition. Its been with me to 4 different houses and has been heavily used and I still feel it will be used for many more years to come. If you are happy with just a barbell then I would recommend purchasing this separately. If however, you are not bothered about the time consuming spin locking dumbells then it can be a perfect set for any home gym.