If you have a vertical barbell holder where one end of the barbell rests on the bottom of the barbell holder, you might recognise how careful you have to be when placing the barbell in one of the tubes due to the metal-on-metal contact. Luckily, there is an extremely quick and easy solution to this problem.

Quick improvent to most vertical barbell storage solutions

All you need is a tiny bit of leftover rubber mat scraps (which you should always keep a bit of). In about 30 seconds you can carefully cut these rubber mat scraps into small hexagons – or circles if you want to be fancy about it.

You then simply drop the rubber hexagon/circle into the vertical tube on your barbell holder. Now, the end of your barbell is better protected when you go to store your barbell. Hence, you do not have to be overly careful is this situation anymore.

Make them or buy them?

If you do not have any leftover rubber mat scraps and you do not plan to acquire any rubber mats (or something similar) anytime soon, you can head over to abmat.com and buy 4 for 7$ or 10 for 13$. This is a pretty fair price. But you still have to pay shipping from the US.

Therefore, if you live in Europe, it might actually be a better idea to just purchase an used rubber mat from for example a local gym. Sometimes, you can also find companies that sell rubber mats with cosmetic flaws at a reduced price, which might then compensate for the high price of getting rubber mats shipped.

Moral of the story:

“Always keep some rubber mat scraps”

-Homegym Vault Europe