bigDman

Does anyone know how long Chains should be

both the 3/8" chains and 5/8" chains

like how many links long

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geoffsherman

The ones they have at my gym are about 6' in length. There are two 6' lengths which are attached to a donut which then slides over the bar.

Get er Done

i'd say 5 foot lengths

ZackMurphy

5' should do it just fine for most things, but if you're 6' or above, you probably need a little more than that for squatting. Don't know what you're planning for chains, but IMHO.

But more importantly, can you picture how the chains should be constructed? I see some guys using a chain that's just a straight chain draped over the bar, and that doesn't de-load anywhere near enough weight to make it as effective as chains can be.

Ideally you have a pretty thin chain around the bar and hanging most of the way to the floor, with the heavy chain hanging from that. You want the heavy chain to be almost completely loaded at the top, and almost completely deloaded at the bottom. Know what I mean? Otherwise you're just trading a few pounds.

I can't tell how you're thinking of using the chain, but FYI. In fact, I think there's a photo of the ideal chain design on the elitefts site. I'll see if I can find it.

Here - found it:

DMan - also important, how much are you benching these days? This determines how much weight you want to be trading with the chains. Whoops - I see yoru journal. If your 1RM bench is about 200, you want to try to be deloading between 30 and 50 pounds on the bench. If your squat is 275-ish?, then about the same there would be fine. Maybe 60-70 pounds being deloaded.

bigDman

my squat is 315 dead 360 and bench 205 all steadly increasing

I was planning on setting the chains up that way

Are both the thin chain and the thick chain supost to be 5'. rember im a tall guy 6' and my dad is 6'2 (he will be using the chains too) and im still growing

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ZackMurphy

Got it.

The thin chain, which is usually set up as a loop, is about 5-6' long, so 2.5-3' looped. Go long, you can always adjust it later to fit you guys. If you wanted to get real precise about it, get your dad (taller) under an empty bar, drop ATG, and measure bar-ground. Multiply by 2 = thin chain length. Loop it and you're set.

The thick chain can be as long as it needs to be, and more importantly, you can have as much of the thick chain as you want. This will determine the load and deload. If the thin chain is a loop, you can just drape as much thick chain as you want. Easy enough.