Dumbbells: Why do a few heavy plates feel much heavier than many lighter ones?
I recently quit the local gym (budget restrictions) and started to workout from home instead.
I bought a little set of 2x30kg adjustable dumbbells, and built a little bench for doing dumbbell bench press. This being quite a light weight, I bought some 10kg plates to add up on those dumbbells.
My big surprise was that it felt incredibly more difficult to press, say only 2x30kg with the following setup:
5|10 === 10|5 x2
than with this one:
2|2|2|4|5 === 5|4|2|2|2 x2
The 10kg plates I bought are indeed quite large, but I didn't expect this to have an impact on the workout difficulty. Can anyone help me understand what's happening?
Thanks!
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The narrower your center of gravity the harder it is to balance the plate. Think about trying to press a relatively light bar that was 30 feet across. It would be very taxing to balance this bar even if it didn't weigh much. The balancing will happen from the use of your muscles, and the wider the weight distribution makes it seems heavier - due to more muscle interaction for the same "weight". Physics of lifting.
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