Woodchuck Edition – Starting Strength Weekly Report February 2, 2025

John Watson

I was trying to understand why we ended up with useless 35 lb plates, and why we have to use 2 pairs of 10s in our setups, while metric sets have no such situation. So I poked around on Grok and had the below conversation.
I would really like it if a company like The Strength Co would make 15 lb iron plates, and fix a historical math fuck up, poorly thought out by early manufacturers.

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I feel like they screwed up when they created the imperial weight set. They should have made 15 pound plates instead of 35 pound plates.

Yeah, I completely agree with you: the standard imperial plate lineup feels like a historical accident that never quite got optimized.

The 35 lb plate is one of those “why does this even exist?” pieces:
• It’s rarely the most efficient choice for any common jump.

• It overlaps almost perfectly with 25 lb + 10 lb (which most people already have).

• It forces awkward gaps in the 15–20–30 lb per side range, where you end up needing multiple 10 lb plates (or extra 5 lb pairs) to fill in smoothly.

• In practice, a huge number of home gym owners either never buy 35s or sell them after realizing they sit unused.

If the imperial system had instead standardized on a 15 lb plate (roughly analogous to the 15 kg in metric), the whole progression would feel way more logical and frictionless:

• Direct +15 lb per side jump (no combo needed).

• +20 lb/side = 15 + 5

• +30 lb/side = 2×15

• +35 lb/side = 25 + 10 (still clean)

• +40 lb/side = 25 + 15

• No forced duplicates of 10 lb plates to cover the mid-range “dead zone.”

• The repeating 90 lb block (from pairs of 45 lb plates) would use the 15 lb plate 6 times per block (as we calculated), making it a genuinely high-utility piece instead of the 35 lb’s measly 4 (and often less in real loading).

Metric got it right by accident (or design): the 15 kg plate is perfectly positioned between 10 kg and 20 kg to bridge gaps without needing extras of anything. Imperial could have mimicked that by dropping 35 lb and adding 15 lb instead, and literally millions of garage gyms would have saved money, sleeve space, and loading headaches.

It’s one of those small design choices that compounds over decades—kind of like how the US stuck with inches/feet while most of the world went metric. The 35 lb plate is the imperial equivalent of “we’ll just keep using this quirky thing because it’s what we’ve always had.”

Satch12879

35 is approximately 15 kilograms. 15 is only 6.9. Their existence is based on metric to imperial conversions. I can do 15 pounds with two small change plates.

I don’t have a problem with 35 pound plates.

Jason Donaldson

It’s not clear to me how doubling 15s is any different than doubling 10s, but I’ll see your geek thoughts and raise you mine.

If the 45s were replaced with 40s, and the 25s with 20s, then you have a nice, pretty progression (ignoring the bar being considered 45…), because where it loses the pattern is where the next size plate is not twice the size of the previous one. That’s the only way you never have to duplicate a plate until you need two or more of the heaviest one.

If you made bar + collars an even 50, then had plates at 50, 25, 12.5, 6.25, 3.125, and maybe 1.5625, you could invent a new measurement, the semihundredweight, and make it easy to handle, as long as you learned to think in blocks of 50 lb.

All this is to say that you’re really not going to find a completely elegant way to do this, in that you’re dealing with loading two sides of the bar at once + the bar itself, and we think in base 10, and not in base 2, 4, 8, or 16. This is why I’ve caught more than one misload before a lift while officiating. (And those have been metric plates, no less.)

I’ll admit that I own a pair of 35s, since they came with a used set I bought cheap, but they haven’t moved off their storage pins since I got them home.

Lynxmith

Hi Rip, I understand that having a strong back and pain is better than having a weak back and pain, and I love training. But I’m not sure what to do about my back. I have had persistent pain in the lower back / SI area over 6 months now. It is in general not terrible, but I have good and bad days, and on bad days I cannot even sit down on a chair. Usually the pain is localised on the left side of the lower back but radiates sometimes down to my foot.

I’m 25 years old, 121lb, female, 5,2 feet. Have been doing LP, moved to intermediate programming (because of not eating enough, boyfriend says). Form is good according to my BF that helps me against all advice of coaching your spouse (but there are no SS coaches in Sweden yet).

I went to three chiropractors, two of whom where also PTs. Didn’t do anything that really helped. They say that I am overly flexible and do not have a leg length discrepancy, but my hip is a little tilted (maybe because of muscle tension).

Tried to not train, also tried to train through it but stopped again when pain increased after training. Replaced squats by front squats and deadlift for rack pulls to see if it has something to do with the angle at which the back is loaded. Didn’t make a noticeable difference. I bench press with my feet on the bench without pain. Sometimes I can feel it a little when pressing.

Right now I’m taking ibuprofen and doing LP with very light weights, but I plan to go up a little every time even if it starts to hurt again. I am just wondering what the community thinks I should do and if you have any advice for me.

Mark Rippetoe

Might be time for an MRI of the area. But I think you need to gain 10 pounds of bodyweight and see if training at the heavier bodyweight corrects the situation.

Nikola Blagojevic

I am in the process of recovering from what I believe was an SI injury. It felt like you describe – pain all the time, pain when sitting, benching with feet up, sciatic symptoms, etc. Squatting and pulling made it worse – you can see the details in my log in the Intermediate section.

I started feeling better after resting my lower body about four weeks and gaining some body weight. Nothing else helped.

NoStepOnSnek

I used to have chronic SI pain on the left side a few years ago, before I started training. When I started the program, it generally felt better immediately after squats and deadlifts, but would flare up again all the time.

I used to get chiro adjustments to “pop it back in” and that helped soothe things. Foam rolling, stretching, ortho visits. NSAIDs, massage…I tried it all. Over the years, the more I squatted and deadlifted, the less frequently the SI would flare up. If it hurt during a workout (and it did) I just ignored it and did the best I could. I haven’t had an SI issue, now, for probably over 18 months. Haven’t seen the chiro in about 2 years.

The issue doesn’t go away immediately. To me it just feels like the improving musculature slowly pulled everything back into the right position. Then, one day, it all fit right again and the pain hasn’t come back.

YMMV