Plywood technique plates

I saw someone had made a pair of plywood plates for technique work quite awhile ago, (I can’t remember where) but I had some left over 15mm plywood after building my lifting platform so I decided to make myself a pair. I’m not really sure how much use they will get from me, I’ve got a pair of 5kg plates on the way, and a pair of 10kgs and 15kg so I think any technique work will be better done with a little bit of weight. However they have already been useful in training a young athlete. The athlete is currently at a working weight of 35kg for deadlifts, so using a 15kg bar and loading up some change plates these plywood plates allow the same height off the ground warming up. This has been really handy, and I think this is where plates like these are valuable. These plates allow the athlete to practice the movement pattern and appropriately load the movement pattern, without big jumps.

The construction was super easy. I traced the outline and inside hole of a bumper plate onto two off cuts of plywood. I then cut the outline with my jig saw. The inner hole would have been much better to cut with a hole saw, but I didn’t have one so I cut it with my jig saw, it doesn’t look flash but it does the job.

 

The plates then fit to the bar as normal, but need the clips on tight to stop these plates from moving. I can then load the bar up in 2.5kg (5 pound-ish) increments.  

And that’s all there is to it.