crossfit lite | As Many Reviews As Possible

Cerakoting barbells seems to be all the rage in 2017. For good reason, Cerakote is estimated to last 1000x longer than your standard zinc coating and have better corrosion resistance. I don’t think it’ll take long for this to end up being the standard, but for right now, it’s still a premium feature. Wright Equipment refreshed their barbell to it’s version 3 model a little bit earlier in the year with some pretty huge changes, most notably sporting a new 28mm shaft. It wasn’t until right about before the CrossFit Games did they debut their V3 barbell with a shiny new coat of paint, right before the barbell battleship Rogue unveiled theirs. Wright released their offering at a SMOLDERING introductory price of $220 shipped, which made it impossible not to buy, but since then has upped it quite a bit to $255 not including shipping. It’s still less expensive, but are you better off spending the extra bit on the bigger brands?

Build Quality/Construction:

I have a fair bit of experience with Wright barbells, that’s what I used to stock my affiliate after all. Other than the occasional re-oiling of the bushings, I haven’t had any issues with any of them over the last couple of years. If there was any one thing I could complain about, it’s that they’re somewhat noisy when dropped. The construction of the new V3 barbell has since been upgraded by adding in two more bronze bushings and tightening the tolerances overall. Wright claims that their V3 barbells are quieter, but in my testing, it’s not by much, if at all. The sleeves have a bit of play in them and they’re still quite a bit noisier than pretty much any barbell I’ve used.

Quite possibly the biggest change to the V3 Wright bar is that it now comes with a true 28mm shaft! Which makes it one of the very few, affordable options for a 28mm USA made barbell. The shaft now also sports an upgraded tensile at 201k PSI and since the shaft is a bit thinner, the added strength isn’t detrimental to the whip. If you’re serious about Olympic weightlifting movements, the .5mm should be a big deal to you because yes, it does make a difference. The Wright bar still plays nice whichever way you want to use it because it still has both IPF/IWF markings in the knurling. The knurling itself is a little on the coarse side but cut well enough to not be uncomfortable. Let’s put it like this: it’s like the PBR of knurling, good enough to get a buzz off of, nobody really hates it, lacks polish, it might leave you with a worse hangover than other beers, hipsters will love it but craft beer ( bar) snobs will probably hate it. I don’t mind it but I know others that do.

What about that brand new paint job? If you don’t already know what Cerakote is, go here. In short, the reason you’d want Cerakote on a barbell is for it’s rust attenuation and that it doesn’t wear down quickly like zinc does. On the flip side, it’s a ceramic based coating and can chip or scratch so keep that in mind when racking your bar. Unlike the other bars I’ve used with Cerakote, the Wright bar is coated on the shaft only up until the beginning of the sleeve; which makes sense since you really don’t have to worry about anything under the sleeve. I could be mistaken, but that’s what it looks like to the eye without having to take the sleeve off. The coating job is consistent and the only defects look to just be uneven parts of the knurling. Another major benefit of having Cerakote is that it’s matte by nature, so the grip even without chalk is much better than zinc or chrome.

The sleeves still used a tried and true zinc coating which can scratch and will fade over time, but will honestly probably last longer than if Cerakote was on the sleeves. I don’t think Cerakote was ever designed to take hundreds of pounds of impact repeatedly and on my Ohio bar, started chipping off the sleeves in 3 uses.

Performance:

I’m going to keep going with the PBR reference mentioned earlier. Is the Wright V3 the smoothest, fastest, or best tasting bar in the world? Nope. But like PBR, it’s a little rough around the edges but get the job done well enough and is great for the money. To be honest, I’ve had nothing but great lifting sessions with this bar and I love PBR.

To me, the biggest upgrade to the Wright bar is the 28mm shaft. I don’t mind using barbells that have 28.5mm, but my small hands definitely favor the thinner shaft. Plus I can always fallback on the fact that 28mm is the standard diameter used in IWF, so it’s more official and my hands aren’t just small. You see a lot of imported barbells have 28mm shafts, so why there aren’t more USA made 28mm barbells perplexes me (I actually know why). The whip of the V3 bar isn’t anything to write home about, but it’s better than the Ohio bar and good enough to suffice most Olympic weightlifters; most CrossFitters probably wouldn’t notice a difference. I felt totally comfortable with clean and jerks up to my 100% and even hit a new 1RM squat clean thruster with the Wright V3.

Wright upgraded the V3 bar with two more bushings, one per sleeve, presumably to upgrade the speed and smoothness of the turn over. Like all of the traits mentioned earlier, the V3 bar is good enough but isn’t the smoothest and fastest spinning bar in the world; and again, for most people, it doesn’t need to be. The shaft spins freely enough inside of the sleeves and never feels slow, choppy, or like you wouldn’t be able to make a lift because of it. All that really matters is that the shaft doesn’t get stuck in the sleeves anyways. You also don’t have to worry about them over-rotating for the slower lifts, making the V3 bar even more of an all-arounder.

The Wright V3 would probably be best suited for an affiliate setting, at a secluded home gym on top of a mountain, maybe bomb shelter, or a garage gym if you just hate your neighbors. This bar is LOUD AF. If there was anything that still needed upgrading, it’s the sleeve tolerances. I appreciate the use of bronze bushings still, but maybe those need to be retooled so that there isn’t so much play in the sleeve.

Value/Conclusion:

When this bar dropped it only costed me a meager $220 shipped, which for this bar, was INSANE. There are very few, good American made barbells for under $250, almost none with 28mm shafts (haven’t tried the 3B bar from Wright), and zero with Cerakote. When the introductory deal was available, I urged EVERYONE to buy this bar, nothing could touch it for $220. They only had 1500 barbells for that deal that went fairly quick and since then, have upped the price to it’s standard price of $255 without shipping. Add in $44 to ship to California and the bar quickly loses it’s appeal. $300 isn’t exactly cheap – the sub-par build quality and just good enough performance of the bar just can’t justify it’s price tag (not too bad if you can pick it up though). If I was only going to buy one barbell for my home, I would spend the extra bit on a nicer bar, or I would spend much less on something I could just toss around; the latter applies if I were to stock up an affiliate as well. You can get REALLY good bars for around $200 now.

I’m not calling for this bar to sell for $220 shipped again, but if Wright could get it down to the $250 shipped range, I’m sure they’d see a ton more sales. That would make it much more competitive against the American Barbell and Rogue offerings that are more expensive, but also much higher quality. It would at least be easier to forgive some of the build issues while still getting a good performing, Cerakote barbell for still far under the price you’d be paying for the premium names. Don’t get me wrong, I actually like the Wright V3 barbell…Hell, I LOVE it for what I paid for it; I just don’t think it’s worth $300.

(I wish I ordered more of them when they were $220!)

The Good:

28mm diameter shaft
Good whip, decent spin
Made in the USA

The Bad:

Shipping to the CA costs $45
Knurling isn’t well cut
NOISY AF

The Ugly:

Cerakote can chip
The shaft isn’t fully coated
Doesn’t quite feel as solid as other bars

Get your Wright V3 Cerakote Barbell here!

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Probably the silliest, yet most innovative, but not very creative “crossfit” shoe to hit the market this year, the Reebok Crossfit Lite TR, has finally dropped. Is it worth the price to pay over a tried but true pair of Chuck Taylor’s?

I have to admit, when I first caught wind of the Reebok Crossfit Lite TR, I wasn’t too keen on the idea. I thought it was just another cash-in scheme by Reebok to appeal to the people that like to workout in Chuck’s. Well, it kind of is, but after wearing the shoes myself, I can safely say that the RCF Lite TR is worthy of the premium over a pair of Chucks.

Looks:

Probably the best feature, on the list of good features of the RCF Lite. Definitely an attention grabbing shoe, even in the black on black leather colorway. I wouldn’t mind wearing these shoes out on the town, they just look clean. Talk about general physical preparedness. Obviously the design pulls cues from your favorite traditional Converse shoe. Gone is the rubber toecap, in it’s place you’ll find the same type of Duragrip toecap found on the Nano 2.0. Haven’t stubbed my toe on anything yet, but I’m sure it’ll protect my toesies at the very least against double unders. The stitching adds a great touch of contrast along with the grey metal eyelets against the leather upper of the RCF Lite. I’m generally not a fan of all the pizzazz that Reebok throws over all their crossfit products, but at least here with the black leather version of the shoe, it’s subtle and not very noticeable. For those of you that aren’t down for the hi-top look, sit tight, lo-tops are on the way; but I don’t think they retain flavor of the RCF Lite.

Performance:

Say you were to, for some reason wear these shoes out and came across a 500lb uprooted tree that blocked your path. Fear not, lock those laces in and deadlift that tree out of your way with your new mighty powerlifting shoes. These shoes were designed for work, and work they will do. If the Hulk could wear shoes, this is probably the shoe he would wear. Though they look like Chuck’s, they don’t actually feel like you’re wearing chucks. I would say the closest thing the RCF Lite’s feel like are hi-top Nano 2.0’s. The soles are a LOT shorter and close to the ground than Chucks are. Traction is great, I guess the pattern on the bottom of the soles is supposed to act like suction cups, I recall being pretty glued to the ground doing deadlifts this past weekend at St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Though it sports Ortholite insoles, they don’t feel very thick, lending itself more to the minimal shoe feel. I usually run into problems with stability in Nano’s backsquatting around my 90% (375#ish), but I managed to hit a new 3RM box squat (395#, wide stance) in the RCF Lite’s without even thinking of changing my shoes. Solid. Short runs, double unders and metcon’s aren’t so bad in the RCF Lite’s either, they’re a little stiffer than Nano’s, but not so much that it’d make a huge difference in a WOD. I didn’t bother with the rope, I’m not trying to mess my new shoes up just yet.

The RCF Lite’s weigh in at 10.2 ounces, WAY less than Chucks, slightly less than Oly’s, slightly more than Nano’s. Not going to make a huge difference for normal box jumps, but they probably wouldn’t be my first choice if I was trying to hit a max height box jump. Heel to toe drop feels nonexistant, I would say it’s close to zero drop.

Fit:

Fat footed people rejoice! This is the shoe for you!

At the same time, sorry really narrow footed people. If you hated Nano’s because they were too wide, you’re not going to find solace with the RCF Lite’s. As previously mentioned, the RCF Lite’s fit very similarly to Nano’s, most closely resembling 2.0’s. Nice touch with the ankle support/padding, though I wear mine pretty loose until I’m actually working out.

My size 9’s are perfect on me, so I would say these shoes fit true to size.

Value:

A steal!

For $90, you get a shoe that is just as capable as Nano’s, won’t blow out like Chucks, and has more style than both. If you’re a dedicated powerlifter, don’t even think twice, just buy this shoe.To those of you that would argue that you might as well just buy Chuck’s, at half the price. Take into consideration that you’ll most definitely blow those shoes out; I’ve done it to countless pairs throughout the last 10 years not even lifting in them. If you’re a crossfitter, Nano’s are very all around shoes, good for just about anything. If you only had money to spend on one pair of shoes, you might want to look in that direction and spend the extra bit.

Conclusion:

The Reebok Crossfit Lite TR’s might just be my favorite shoe, crossfit or not; granted I value my powerlifts more than my metcon. Not only will they set you apart from the crowd, they’re completely functional! Though they were designed by powerlifters, with powerlifters in mind, the Reebok Crossfit Lite TR definitely earns it’s medal as a crossfit shoe and a casual shoe!

Highly recommended.

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Tag Archives: crossfit lite

Wright Equipment V3 Cerakote Barbell Review

Unboxing the Reebok CrossFit Lite TR 2.0 – Best CrossFit Powerlifting Shoes