PRx 20kg Olympic Elite Bar Review

Who this bar is for

I'm not a barbell aficionado. I know there are a ton of different bars out there for different kinds of lifting, and there are people who care a lot about whip and spin. I'm not one of them.

This is a review for the guy who wants one good multi-purpose bar and then wants to get on with training. If that's you, the PRx 20 kg Olympic Elite Bar is a great bar.

If you're a competitive Olympic lifter chasing a specific feel, go read somebody who lives in that world.

Where it is and who uses it

This bar is in my parents' home gym. I put the gym together for them, specifically for my dad. He's not doing any elite level lifting. He's just trying to stay in shape and stay healthy.

So it's honestly a bit of an overkill bar for him. It's not something he really needs. But I wanted him to have a bar that would last, and one that didn't lock him into one kind of training. I don't want to set my folks up for one use of their equipment. I want as many uses as possible.

I use it when I'm over there, which isn't that often.

How it feels next to a cheap bar

At my own home gym I have a cheap barbell I bought years ago, and I still use it. The day I pulled this one out of the tube I said it was way nicer than the one I've got.

A month later I felt it even more. I didn't know there was that big of a difference in how a barbell feels when you're working out with it. The knurling, the tightness of the bar, the spin of the sleeves... it makes a huge difference.

Now I can tell that at my house I'm working out with a cheap bar. I'm a little jealous my parents have a better bar than I do.

The knurl and the grip marks

The knurling is not too rough, but it's not too soft. It definitely exists. It's just enough that you get a good grip without it hurting your hands.

The thing I like most is that it has two sets of marks on it, one for powerlifting and one for Olympic lifting. A lot of bars only have one. With two, I know exactly where my hands need to be, and I can set up the same way every time.

There's no center knurling on it.

The specs PRx gives

It's a 20 kg bar, so 45 pounds. When I read the specs off PRx's page for my one-month video, it was 86 1/2 inches long with 16.25 inch sleeves, a 1.96 inch sleeve diameter and a 28.5 mm shaft.

PRx calls it a medium whip with a light to medium knurl depth, and it has dual bronze self-lubricating bushings. It comes in bright zinc or black zinc. Ours is the bright one.

PRx sells it as a multi-purpose bar, built for Olympic lifting but strong enough for heavy lifting too. I'm not an Olympic lifter, so I can't judge it there. The spin is definitely there, and it works.

Hanging it on the wall

This is one of the things I think PRx does better than pretty much anyone. They have storage for all of their equipment. The hanging bar storage gets the bars up out of the way, and it's easy to get a bar on and off.

The rack mounts to a single stud with the lag bolts and washers it comes with. Our problem was wall space. We didn't have much, and the stud wasn't where I needed it, so I got creative and mounted the rack on a block.

On install day I figured that left room for one bar and I'd have to shift it over if we ever got a second. The curl bar ended up hanging right there next to it. If you have more open wall than we did, you won't have to do any of that.

How it's held up

In my six-month video I said I'd had it just over six months, and it's held up really well. It gets a lot of use.

It should last forever at the rate we're going. My dad's not doing a bunch of crazy Olympic lifts, and I wouldn't be either when I'm over there.

The catches

You're paying for a nicer bar than a lot of home gyms need. If you only lift light, a cheaper bar will do the job. I've been using one for years.

PRx's own pages don't always agree on the details for this bar, so go by the product page for the exact bar you're ordering. PRx's warranty page lists 10 years on barbells and 90 days on the coating.

And plan your wall before you buy the storage. It needs a stud where you want the bars to hang.

Would I buy it again?

Yes. If you press, squat, row and curl like we do, this is more bar than you need, and that's a good thing. It's a solid multi-purpose bar and it's going to be around a long time.

Get the wall storage with it. A bar that hangs on the wall is a bar that's not in your way.