I have the Rogue Bar and I love it. Great bar & guaranteed for life.

I'd recommend spending the $ and getting yourself a good bar. As far as weight plates go, weight is weight IMO so I go with something inexpensive. You shouldn't ever pay over $1.50/lb for weights.

defo invest in a decent bar it will be with you forever. in terms of weights it depends what floor your lifting from and dropping them on it, look into some bumper plates and see if you can afford

I have a Gold's Gym Olympic weight set, bar, bench and squat rack that I bought used about a year ago at our local Play It Again Sports.

Still going strong.

I will probably at some point purchase new equipment but I'm really loving the "old school" feel of what I've got. It's in my garage and has a bit of rust around the edges, but it's older so I'm okay with that, especially considering what I paid for it. I'm kinda afraid of what sitting in my garage in the damp Florida weather might do to shiny new equipment, so I'm going to milk what I've got for as long as I can.

It's all standard full size (7 foot bar I think?). Nothing fancy. Very basic. Works just fine. If I drop anything, it's fine. I tend to be a bit rough and tumble when I lift, and I love that I don't have to baby anything. If anything gets chipped a bit, so be it.

I have this one and have no problems with it- have had up to 200 pounds on it, only, so I won't reach or test its claimed capacity. LOL.

http://www.amazon.com/USA-Sports-Troy-Barbell-Olympic/dp/B000ZN2KQ4/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1389814114&sr=8-3&keywords=usa+sports+barbell

Also, with the olympic (as opposed to standard) bars, the end of the bar where you put the weights is 2 inches in diameter. Do check that the weights you get have a 2 inch opening instead of one inch if you get an olympic bar. There are different ones on the market and it's not always clear unless you look for the info or are very specific in your search.

Also, the rack you use the weight with may matter too. I have stands like the ones below that I can place any distance apart, so it's not an issue. If you have a fixed rack, then make sure the bar is long enough to fit in it properly (collar to collar distance of the bar).

http://www.amazon.com/Valor-Fitness-BD-9-Power-Squat/dp/B006CW02ZS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1389814751&sr=8-2&keywords=squat+stands


Sorry.... I know you just asked about the bar, but to avoid incompatibility in the future, I remember that I had to think about all these things at once.

I bought http://www.d*ckssportinggoods.com/product/index.jsp?productId=10793623 this (change the asterisk to an i) locally when it was on sale for just under $180. I had been checking craigslist for a while and nothing was coming up for both a good price and not massively far away.

I only started the program on the 5th but so far I'm very happy with weight set. I figure if the bar turns out to suddenly suck at heavier weights, then I still got a pretty good deal on the plates. If you ignore the bar, the 165 lbs of plates that came with it work out to $1.10 per pound and they'll work with any oly bar and I'm happy with that price.