The Best Bumper Plates for Your Heavyweight Home Workouts

Chances are, in the past year you've really stepped up your home gym equipment inventory. Maybe you went all out and created a homey workout space for the first time, or you just bought a few key pieces to use to keep up your fitness regimen while many gyms were closed. If you're seriously into lifting weights and strength training, that probably meant the addition of a barbell. (Here are 9 of the best barbells for strength training at home.)

A quick lesson on barbells: an Olympic bar is about 2.2 meters (about 7 feet) long and weigh 20 kilograms (about 44 pounds). A telling difference between Olympic barbells and 'standard' barbells are the sleeves at either end, where you'll stack the weight plates. Standard barbells have 1-inch fixed sleeves, while Olympic barbells have 2-inch rotating sleeves. (Looking for a killer barbell workout? Try this one from Kevin Hart's trainer.) Of course, a barbell is nothing without weights.

And if you're looking to keep your barbell and weights in top shape, an easy way to protect them (and also your gym floor) is by investing in a set of bumper plates. They work as the name advertises. When the heavy-duty plates hit the floor, the material "bumps", rather than crashes. They're usually made of a high-density rubber, which means that they have less bounce and produce less noise compared to standard iron plates that notoriously clank around. Overall, bumper plates will make your training session much less likely to require a home remodel afterwards.

Looking to invest in some awesome bumper plates? Here are our picks for nine of the best bumper plates on the market.