Whats the advantage of using the Olympic bar?

What's the advantage of using an Olympic bar for lifting? Sometimes I want to do bench or something where you do need an Olympic bar but I see someone doing bicep curls with it, with only 5 kg on each side giving a total weight of 30 kg or doing shoulder press with it... I don't understand why they don't just use one of the ready made 30kg barbells (the ones on the rack)?

Main reason - more weight. You should always be able to bench more on the barbell than dumbells as it's easier to control. And more weight will lead to more strength.

As for the 30kg lifts, I'm not sure. At a guess they've bought into the high reps/low weights for getting toned myth.

sikhlion wrote:What's the advantage of using an Olympic bar for lifting? Sometimes I want to do bench or something where you do need an Olympic bar but I see someone doing bicep curls with it, with only 5 kg on each side giving a total weight of 30 kg or doing shoulder press with it... I don't understand why they don't just use one of the ready made 30kg barbells (the ones on the rack)?

that annoys me too, there is no benefit to doing bicep curls with the olympic bar rather than the ready made barbells. I think they just do it because they think the olympic bar looks cool.

Interesting Liverbnz...

I always prefered dumbell bench press and can lift far more with them than i can do the equivalent weight on the BB.

You can because it's logistically different...

If you trained on the bb bench then that would improve and your db press if you ignored it would shrink..

Using a barbell or Olympic bar helps isolate the pecs. The Olympic bar also lets you go heavier and work on different grips.

Lifting Dumbbells uses more of your delts so you can usually lift heavier.

Bicep curling with an olympic bar is only for morons