york fitness barbell set

York Barbells are legendary. 65 + years of making top barbells. Loads of weightlifting records have been set using York bars - You've seen photos of old-time weight lifters and strongmen like John Davis, Tommy Kono and Norb Schemansky hoisting massive poundages - the chances were they were using York Barbells.

OK, so these York Fitness barbells should be good right? Surely they can't be related to the York Barbell company. Because these are pretty bad.

*Note* We can now confirm York Barbell and York Fitness are two completely separate entities. To quote one of our American reader's "York Barbell is quality stuff and has been around since 1902 while York Fitness has been trading in on the York name for a whole 30 years and is known only for its junk." York Barbell continue to make superb products. October 2003

What you get:

1 165cm barbell, hollow with end stoppers
2 45cm dumbell bars, threaded for spinlock - hollow with end stoppers
2 knurled plastic dumbell sleeves
4 plastic spinlock collars for the dumbells
2 barbell inner collars
2 barbell outer collars
4.5kg/10lbs plates x 2
2.3kg/5lbs plates x 8
1.1kg/2.5lbs plates x 4
Paper listing contents and assembly instructions
Poster with basic exercises

The Barbell

Well, on the plus side, the knurling is okay. On the minus side - it's a hollow tube! I have no idea what the maximum weight tolerance is, but it can't be much, so don't be tempted to add a lot of iron plates to this.

The worst thing about the barbell setup is the shoddy plastic 'bulldog' style collars you get. There are no fixed inner collars with this set, so the weights are secured by these plastic efforts. Even the bolt is plastic and so it gets absolutely no bite into the bar. The result is, if you load the barbell up and tip it to one side, all the weights will slide to one end and fall off! Crap at best, dangerous at worst.

The Dumbell bars

Wooo the highlight of the set. These are threaded to take the plastic spinlock collars supplied and so offer a far and away more secure lock-up than the poxy barbell collars. These are OK. Sort of.

Plates

Hollow vinyl filled with what appears to be concrete. The weights are marked as 'approximate', so don't be surprised if each plate of the same marked weight actually weights different.

Two other problems - the size of them means you can't fit much on the barbell and dumbell. The second problem is that they are prone to splitting with use. The only plus point I can think of is that ther plates probrobably won't mark floors as much as iron ones.

Pros:

It's cheap

Cons:

Not nearly heavy enough - most people could overhead press the entire set with one arm
Little room to add more weight
Barbell not strong enough to add a lot more weight
Vinyl weights prone to splitting
Abysmal barbell collars - unsafe

Conclusion:

Possibly forgivable as a starter set for teenagers, on second thoughts not. Most people would outgrow it in a few weeks.The trouble is you wouldn't even want to keep the bars and upgrade the plates to iron - they just aren't strong enough.

If you really must, Argos sell a cast iron set by York Fitness - 50kg for £49.99 - SFUK advice read the Bodypower Barbell review first. Or if you are on a tight budget, try the Lifeline Cables.

Bottom line - Cheap n tearful. Avoid.