The IWF specification for a women’s weightlifting bar is 15kg, a 25mm shaft, 201cm overall and no centre knurl. The thinner shaft is about hand size, not about strength: a 25mm bar is easier to grip and much easier to hook grip if your hands are smaller. Plenty of men with small hands prefer one.
About the photographs. Product photography on this page is illustrative. We are licensing real images of each bar and will swap them in per product as they arrive — until then the pictures show a generic unbranded bar of that type, not the product named beside them.
The same 8 bars as a table, on the figures that decide it.
Every figure is the manufacturer’s or retailer’s own published specification. An em dash (—) means they do not publish that figure — it is never a number we have guessed. “Tensile” is tensile strength in thousands of PSI. “Rotation” is bushings, needle bearings, or both in the same sleeve. No prices are listed here, deliberately: check the current price with the shop.
Including the answers that tell you this is not the category you want.
Not necessarily. Mirafit’s M3 15kg carries the same 680kg load test as its 20kg sibling, and Bulldog’s Elite women’s bar is tested above 680kg. What a 15kg bar does have is a thinner shaft, which flexes more at the same load, and shorter sleeves, which hold fewer plates.
Yes, and it is a sensible choice if your hands are small enough that 28mm is awkward to hook grip. The only real catch is that every published programme and every plate calculation assumes a 20kg bar, so you will be doing a little arithmetic.
Because the bar spends time in a front rack position, resting across the collarbones, and a centre knurl there is genuinely painful. The IWF women’s specification omits it and nearly every maker follows suit.
Usually, but check. At 201cm it is 19cm shorter than a 7ft bar, and while the centre section is long enough for standard rack spacing on these bars, the shorter sleeves leave less margin either side.
The other 6 categories, and what each is built to do.
A 29mm shaft, almost no whip and a centre knurl that grips your back. Built for the squat, the bench press and the deadlift, and the standard diameter across powerlifting federations.
See the power bars →8 barsA 28mm shaft on needle bearings, so the sleeves spin fast enough to let the bar turn in your hands through a snatch or a clean. Marked to IWF grip spacing.
See the olympic weightlifting bars →11 barsOne bar for everything — 28mm to 28.5mm, dual knurl marks for both grip standards, moderate spin. What most home gyms and most mixed-training gyms actually need.
See the multipurpose bars →5 barsA 27mm shaft and a longer span between the sleeves, so the bar bends before the plates leave the floor. Aggressive knurl, no centre knurl. Not for squatting or benching.
See the deadlift bars →3 bars32mm to 35mm and 25kg, fully knurled and deliberately stiff. The extra diameter keeps a heavy bar dead still across your back instead of oscillating.
See the squat bars →5 barsLight bars for learning the lifts, and 6ft bars for garages where a 7ft bar will not fit between the walls. Lower load ratings — check them before loading up.
See the technique and short bars →