Everymate 5kg Technique Bar Review: The 11 lb Bar I Bought for My Daughters
There is a moment every dad with a home gym runs into eventually. Your kid follows you out to the garage, looks at the rack, and asks if she can try.
And you look at the 45 lb bar sitting in the J-cups and realize the answer is no. Not because she is not strong enough to want it, but because an empty men's bar already weighs more than she should be moving, and the shaft is too thick for her hands to grip properly. So she stands there and watches, and the moment passes.
That is the problem I went looking to solve. I have been a home gym owner for over a decade and an independent professional wrestler for more than twenty years. I have been married fourteen years and I have three daughters. My oldest plays hockey, and she is going to need to get stronger. I wanted a bar my girls could actually learn on. This is the Everymate 5kg technique bar, and this is my honest first look at it.
Watch the full unboxing and rack test:Everymate 5kg Technique Bar Review on YouTube (5:54)
Why I Tested This
I was not shopping for a competition bar. I was shopping for a first bar.
There is a real gap between a plastic weighted bar from the sporting goods store and a 45 lb Olympic barbell, and nothing in most home gyms fills it. I wanted something that looked and felt like the real thing, so my daughters would feel like they were actually lifting, but light enough that the movement was the point instead of the load. The Everymate came in at a price where I was not breaking the bank on a bar my kids may or may not end up using. That mattered. If they love it, great. If they lose interest in six months, I have not torched a few hundred dollars finding out.
What You Actually Get
Weight: 5 kg, or 11 lb. That is the whole idea. It is a quarter of the weight of a standard men's bar, which means a 10-year-old can hold it overhead and a beginner can grind through fifty reps of a movement pattern without fatigue ever entering the picture.
Shaft diameter: 25 mm. This is the spec people miss and it is the most important one on the bar. A standard men's Olympic bar runs about 28.5 mm. That thickness is not a problem for me. It is a real problem for a kid, because small hands physically cannot hook grip a 28.5 mm shaft. At 25 mm they can. That is the mechanical reason bars like this exist, and it is the reason a 5 lb novelty bar does not do the same job.
Material: aluminum, rated 45,000 PSI tensile strength. Aluminum is standard for this category. It keeps the weight down, and it is why every reputable technique bar maker tells you not to load one heavy or drop it.
Total length: 1790 mm, right around 70 inches. On camera I guessed it was right at six feet, and that turned out to be close. It is a full-size bar in the sense that it fits a rack like a normal bar does. It is not full competition length, and more on that below.
Sleeves: 2 inch (50 mm) Olympic, 230 mm loadable per side. Standard bumper plates fit. I called the sleeves "maybe 10 inches" on camera and the published spec is 9 inches, so my eyeball was about right. They are short.
Rated capacity: 150 lb. Everymate's number, not mine.
Knurling: dual knurl marks, 45 mm, no center knurl. No center knurl is correct for this kind of bar. A center knurl shreds a kid's neck on a clean.
What It Was Like Out of the Box
It shipped in a tube and it shipped easy. No damage, no drama, no ninety minutes of assembly. I had it upside down when I opened it, flipped it, and the bar slid right out.
First thing I said out loud was "oh, look at that." It is a good looking bar. Mine came with blue sleeves and a black shaft, and I have never seen a blue bar before. It looks sharp. That sounds like a small thing until you remember who this bar is for. A kid is more likely to want to use a bar that looks cool than a bar that looks like everything else in the garage.
The knurling was the first real surprise. I expected a cheap, slick shaft on a bar at this price and that is not what I got. The knurl feels good in the hand, enough bite that you know where you are on the bar, not so aggressive that it would tear up a beginner.
About That 150 lb Capacity Claim
I have seen conflicting reports that this bar holds 150 lb, and my reaction on camera was that it seems a little crazy for an 11 lb aluminum bar.
For context: Rogue rates its 5 kg technique bar at 45 lb. Eleiko rates theirs at 44 lb. Bells of Steel says 45 lb. REP's is 50 lb. Everymate is claiming roughly three times the category norm on a bar that publishes a tensile figure well under what the premium brands publish.
I have not tested it, and I would not tell you to. But the more useful question is the one I asked in the video: why would you want to put 150 lb on it? If you are loading a technique bar to 150 lb, you have outgrown the technique bar. Buy a real one.
On the Rack
I took it out to the squat rack to see how it actually behaves, because a bar that does not fit your setup is a bar you will not use.
It fits like a standard bar would. Sat in the J-cups exactly the way I expected, with plenty of clearance on the ends so loading is easy. I put a 10 lb bumper on one side and it slid right on, nice and easy. Another 10 on the other side, same thing. Then a pair of collars, which went on without any fight at all. Nothing bound up, nothing had to be forced, and I pulled it back out of the rack without a problem.
Racked and loaded, it feels like what it is: a small bar. It does not feel as heavy duty as a standard Olympic bar. That is not a knock. It is aluminum and it weighs 11 lb, and physics does not care about my feelings. What I said on camera is what I still think: it is good enough for getting started. And I can see my daughters using this and feeling good, feeling strong, because they are getting to use an actual bar instead of a toy.
I am not a bar aficionado. I do not geek out over whip and oxide finishes and bushing tolerances. From a training perspective, if you can put weight on it and lift with it, it works. This works.
Pros and Cons, Real Talk
Pros
11 lb makes a real barbell accessible to a kid or a true beginner, today, not in six months
25 mm shaft is the right call, because small hands can actually grip and hook grip it
Knurling is genuinely better than the price suggests
Fits a standard rack and takes standard 2 inch bumpers and collars with zero fuss
Shipped fast, shipped easy, no assembly
Looks sharp enough that a kid wants to pick it up
Priced where a "maybe they'll use it" purchase is not a painful one
Cons
Does not feel as heavy duty as a standard Olympic bar, because it is not one
Short loadable sleeves at 9 inches per side, so you are not loading this up, by design
The 150 lb capacity claim is roughly three times the category norm and I have not verified it
At 1790 mm it is shorter than American Barbell's 5 kg (1835 mm) and well short of Eleiko's competition-length 2200 mm, so a wide snatch grip will not sit where it sits on a comp bar
You will outgrow it. That is the job, but go in knowing it
This is a first-look review. I have no durability data yet
Mine arrived with blue sleeves; the colorways currently listed are black and silver
→ Grab the Everymate 5kg Technique Bar here
How It Compares
The honest comparison is not Rogue. Nobody cross-shops a sub-$100 factory-direct bar against a $245 Rogue T-5KG, and pretending otherwise wastes your time.
The real comparison set is what this bar replaces. On one side, the plastic weighted bars and 5 lb "mini barbells" that do not fit a rack and do not take real plates. This is a genuine upgrade over those in every way that matters. On the other side, the premium technique bars, Rogue at $245 and American Barbell's 25 mm 5 kg at $185, which are better bars with published warranties, published tensile strength, and conservative honest load ratings. If you are coaching Olympic lifts for a living, buy one of those.
If you are a dad who wants his kids on a real bar this month, the Everymate sits in a gap almost nothing else occupies.
Who This Is For (and Who Should Skip It)
Buy it if you are:
A parent who wants a kid on a real barbell now
A beginner who is not ready to press or squat an empty 45 lb bar
Coming back from injury and need to groove a pattern at almost no load
Learning the snatch or clean and jerk and want reps without spinal loading
Looking for a warm-up and mobility bar for the rack
Skip it if you are:
Looking for a bar to train heavy on. It is not that and never claims to be
Coaching competition lifters who need true 2200 mm comp geometry
Expecting steel-bar durability out of aluminum
Someone who needs a published drop rating and warranty before you buy
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a technique bar used for?
Learning movement patterns without load. Snatch, clean and jerk, overhead squat, front rack work, the lifts where your position matters more than the weight. A 5 kg bar lets you run fifty quality reps and never get tired enough to start moving badly.
How much does the Everymate 5kg technique bar weigh?
5 kg, which is 11 lb. About a quarter of a standard men's Olympic bar.
Can you put real weight plates on it?
Yes. It has standard 2 inch Olympic sleeves and standard bumper plates slide right on. I loaded 10 lb bumpers per side and ran spring collars with no issue. The loadable sleeve is only about 9 inches per side though, so you are limited on how much fits, and that is intentional.
Is a 5kg technique bar good for kids?
That is exactly why I bought it. The 11 lb weight and the 25 mm shaft are both about the same thing: making a real barbell physically usable by someone who is not a grown man. My daughters get to lift on an actual bar instead of watching.
What is the difference between a technique bar and a regular Olympic bar?
Weight and shaft diameter, mostly. A men's Olympic bar is 20 kg with a 28.5 mm shaft and is built to be loaded and dropped. A technique bar is 5 kg with a 25 mm shaft, is usually aluminum, and is built to teach the movement. Different tools, different jobs.
Can you drop it loaded?
The video does not answer that, and I am not going to guess. Everymate does not publish a drop policy, and for aluminum technique bars generally the answer from every reputable maker is no. I will cover it in the 30-day update.
The Verdict
I think this bar is a great addition to my home gym, and I think my daughters are going to love having a bar that is theirs.
That is the whole thing, really. Part of leading a home is making the good stuff available. Not lecturing your kids about discipline, just quietly putting the tool within reach and letting them pick it up. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Sometimes that verse is about a Bible on the table. Sometimes it is about a bar they can actually lift.
So far, so good. It shipped clean, it fits my rack, it takes my plates, the knurl is better than the price, and it costs less than a night out. What I do not know yet is how it holds up. This was my first time using it. I am going to run it for the next month, put my daughters on it, and come back with an updated review, including whether that 150 lb claim is anywhere close to real.
If you are new to lifting yourself and want to start lighter, or you want to learn the Olympic movements without a barbell's worth of weight punishing your form, this is a reasonable way in. It is, after all, called a technique bar.
→ Grab the Everymate 5kg Technique Bar here
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Big Mike Behrens personally tests every product before recommending it. No paid promotions, no sponsored opinions.
