Stainless steel barbells have been around for a long time. But it seems like they have recently become much more widely available. And not to mention, a lot more popular.
If you’ve been shopping for a new barbell, I’ll bet money you’ve looked at a few that come in stainless steel. And it makes sense as they offer a combination of benefits that no other barbell finish provides.
Those benefits have made the stainless steel power bar by Rep Fitness my top recommended barbell for the last several years.
But even though I recommend and use a stainless steel barbell daily, I still get asked if stainless is worth it.
Are Stainless Steel Barbells Worth the Money?
Yes! If it fits your budget, a stainless steel barbell offers a combination of feel, durability, and corrosion resistance that you won’t find in any other finish. Stainless steel provides the best possible connection between you and the bar while resisting rust and requiring very little maintenance.
I’m a big fan of “buy once, cry once” or “buy nice or buy twice.” Both are smarty pants ways of saying you get what you pay for.
When you are building a garage or basement gym, there’s a lot of stuff you can go less expensive on. Your barbell shouldn’t be one of them.
The barbell is your connection to the weight you are lifting. The more weight you lift, the more important that feeling of connection is. Going cheap on a barbell will be something you regret later.
Also, your barbell should last you a lifetime. Seriously. For most casual lifters training in their garage, one barbell is all they’ll ever need… As long as it’s a quality barbell. And there is no better quality than stainless steel.
Benefits of a Stainless Steel Barbell
There are four key benefits of a stainless steel barbell. You might be able to get one or two of these benefits in another finish, but not all four at the same time. It’s this combination of benefits that sets stainless steel barbells apart.
Feel. As I’ve already mentioned, with no finish material to get between your hands and the bar, the feel and connection you get with a stainless bar can only be matched by a bare steel bar. Those are the only two barbell finishes that are bare metal.
Even a high-end finish like Cerakote™ can’t come close to bare metal. You can see clearly in the image below what happens when you layer something over the bare metal knurling on a barbell.
The image on the right is bare steel. The image on the left is the exact same bar with Cerakote™ applied. You can easily see the difference in the feel that I’m describing.
Corrosion Resistance. All barbells can rust—even stainless steel. But of all available barbell finishes, stainless resists rust the best. It’s not even close. Even Cerakote™, touted as more resistant to rust than stainless, doesn’t help here.
Cerakote™ wears off. It chips and scratches. It wears down with regular use. And guess what is under the Cerakote™? Bare steel. And raw steel will rust if you even think about water while standing next to it.
Never heard of Cerakote™? I wrote a detailed article about it that you can read here!
If you are at all concerned about rust (and you should be), stainless is the only option to go with. No other bar material combines feel/connection with corrosion resistance like stainless.
Durability. Because there is no finishing material applied to a stainless steel bar, there’s nothing to wear off.
Virtually every finish applied to a barbell will wear off over time. Not only that, it will end up looking like crap. Sure, those black barbells look pretty sweet when they are new. But a mere few months into training, they start to look awful!
Stainless steel will look great for the entire life of your barbell!
Looks. Not only will it last, resist rust, and not change over time, but raw stainless steel is beautiful in its own right.
Stainless is this fantastic gunmetal color. You can recognize it from across the room. It’s my favorite color for a barbell, especially since I realized that no black barbell would stay all black for very long!
