Mirafit makes a good Olympic barbell, but is it actually worth your hard-earned money?
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Most home gym gurus will tell you that you need to spend serious money on a barbell, and that this is one of the only pieces of equipment where you simply cannot afford to go diving into the bargain bin.
To an extent, I agree. A really cheap and nasty barbell comes with a whole host of potential hazards. And chances are, if you do go too cheap, you will eventually junk it in favour of a better model.
But it’s worth bearing in mind the fact that most home gym gurus are also barbell supremacists, people whose lifting philosophy comes from the world of powerlifting. You can get by in a UK home gym with a cheap barbell. Heck, even with no barbell at all if that’s your thing.
For seasoned lifters considering a home gym, however, nothing quite hits the spot like a 7ft Olympic bar, standardised to 20kg for men and 15kg for women.
And these are the people who will really dig the Mirafit M3 7FT Olympic Barbell. Here’s why.
What I Like About It
The Mirafit M3 range is supposedly its higher-end home gym range, with M4 being its commercial gym-ready line.
But as there is no M4 bar at the time of writing, this is pretty much the best conventional 2” plate-compatible barbell the company has to offer, unless you count the spring steel IFW-spec Classic bar.
The company does do lower-budget bars, like this. But from the images and my experience with Mirafit specialty bars, this looks like a very non-premium item that would resemble the kind of bar you’d get if you went shopping on Amazon with a £70 budget.
You can get a range of finishes, including chrome, a black zinc finish with chrome sleeves and a sick orange-and-black zinc coat. There’s also an all-black zinc-coated version. But, if you are based in the UK, the more expensive stainless steel version is a whole pile of win.
Why?
Well, my grandfather, who used to live in France, would complain bitterly about the humidity of the UK whenever he’d visit us. And he was right.
We don’t really notice it if we live here all year round, but the humid air is almost ever-present here. And for barbells, that usually means one thing: rust.
No doubt you have seen rusty and worn-looking bars in your local gym. And if you have cast iron plates, you need to clean the rust off them several times a year – and possibly repaint them regularly too.
Babying your barbell is a chore. But a stainless steel model means you don’t really need to. And this bar is no exception. I have been using mine for over a year, and I’ve barely ever needed to clean it. Sure, it will get covered in chalk if you use that, and its sleeves (also stainless, along with the bushings) will get a bit scuffed from weight plates.
But the stainless steel version of this bar is designed for those who don’t really want to spend time taking barbells to pieces to clean out rust. It’s worth noting that, per the website, Mirafit advises cleaning with “a damp cloth and synthetic bristle brush” – and not the kind of wire brush you might use on cast iron plates.
All versions of this bar have also been tested, the company says, to 680kg, which I find quite impressive. Most companies tend to be very conservative with max load figures.
Then there’s the knurling, which is fairly passive. I don’t know where I stand on this. I’d personally prefer something a lot more aggressive than this, but I may be in the minority. I think Mirafit has tried to go with knurling that won’t really offend anyone – and I think few but the more extreme of lifters would be offended!
What I Don’t Like About It
First of all, we need to talk about the price of this Mirafit M3 bar. I got mine on sale. But at full price, the stainless steel version costs a penny shy of £300. For £50 more, you could buy Wolverson’s stainless steel power bar, which may well be a superior bar for a couple of reasons.
Wolverson’s model has centre knurling, which helps keep the bar in place during squats. Personally, I have never had any problems with keeping the Mirafit M3 bar on my back, so this doesn’t really make a whole lot of difference to me. But if you are a centre knurling fan, it’s worth bearing in mind.
Mirafit also does a power bar, but not a stainless steel version.
The chrome and zinc-plated versions are cheaper at around £175-180, which is decent enough value for a bar. I really don’t advise getting any bar with zinc-plated sleeves. You will scuff it up with the metal-on-metal contact from weight plates in days.
Strength Shop’s budget bar, the E-coated Original 2028, is cheaper at £130 (plus you don’t need to pay for delivery, unlike Mirafit). But has a max. recommended load of 250kg and shorter sleeves, so I prefer the M3.
Talking of sleeves: On to my biggest bugbear with the M3. The Wolverson bar has 430mm sleeves, compared to Mirafit’s 416mm sleeve. For me, this is a really annoying drawback. If you use bumper plates, you will soon find yourself running out of space on the Mirafit M3 bar’s sleeves.
Granted, the Wolverson model is a power bar, so it should necessarily have more sleeve space for higher loads. But as the Mirafit bar can take 680kg, wouldn’t it make more sense to have the space to load that kind of weight on without having to use razor-thin plates with the diameter of tractor wheels?
So – Should You Buy the Mirafit M3 Olympic Bar?
I like this bar. A lot. It looks and feels good. The chrome finish is my budget pick, as the black and orange coatings are tricky to keep clean. But stainless steel rules in the UK home gym world, and the most expensive version of the M3 bar uses tons of it.
But you need to know that the Mirafit M3 7FT Olympic Barbell is a jack of all trades. It doesn’t really excel at anything. It’s like the Fleetwood Mac of barbells – annoyingly hard hard to dislike, despite all of your best efforts.
I find the sleeve length incredibly frustrating, because a bar that can handle this much weight really should have better loading capabilities. That said, this only really becomes a real annoyance for me during the deadlift. For most other lifts, it performs as well as almost any other bar I have used.
If you have yet to buy an Olympic bar and can snag the stainless steel version in a sale, I’d say go for it – but if you can afford something better, you might want to hold fire.
Scores
