The four lifts need almost nothing to start. This is the gear worth adding as you progress — why it matters, when to reach for it, and what it isn’t for.
Just want to know if you need any of this to start? No. See the getting-started page for the actual minimum — a bar, plates, and a rack with safety pins. What you actually need
Already training and looking to add something specific? Jump straight to the category you’re considering. Fractional plates · Shoes · Bars · Bench · Belts · Sleeves, wraps, straps · Chalk
Standard plates jump in big steps — 2.5 kg, 5 kg, sometimes larger. That's fine early on, when every lift is adding weight almost every session. It stops being fine once a lift's own increment gets smaller than the smallest plate your gym actually has: the novice phase steps overhead press's own jump down after its first reset, and intermediate's own Test Day increment for bench and press is smaller still. A small set of fractional plates — quarter- and half-pound pairs, or their 0.25/0.5 kg equivalents, are the common sizes — is the actual physical tool that makes those smaller, real, prescribed jumps possible to load on a bar, rather than rounding up to the nearest plate you own and quietly taking a bigger jump than the program intended.
See the novice phase's stall and reset rules and intermediate's Test Day increments for exactly where this matters, and the warm-up and plate math page for the exact numbers worked out per side.
What I personally use: Micro Gainz Olympic fractional plates, a set of 10 — 0.25/0.5/0.75/1/1.25 lb pairs — with a carrying bag.
Squat and bench want the same thing from a shoe: a flat, completely non-compressible sole. A running shoe's cushioning gives slightly under a heavy load, and that give shows up as wasted force and a less stable base to brace against — a hard, flat sole transfers force directly into the floor instead of into foam. Deadlift wants something different: the lowest possible sole, ideally close to barefoot, since every millimeter of sole height is a millimeter the bar has to travel further and a worse position for your hips relative to the bar at the start of the pull. The same shoe rarely serves both jobs well — a flat lifting shoe is deliberately not minimal, and a barefoot-style shoe has no hard platform to brace against for a heavy squat or bench.
This is one of the least deferrable items on this page. A soft sole changes squat and bench technique from the first heavy set, not just once the weight is genuinely challenging — a running shoe's give affects bar path and confidence at the bottom of a squat well before it's the reason a rep fails. Worth budgeting for early rather than treating as a later upgrade the way a belt or sleeves usually are.
What I personally use: TYR L-2 lifters for squat and bench — a flat, hard-soled lifting shoe. For deadlift specifically, a TYR DropZero 2 barefoot trainer — minimal sole height, nothing between your foot and the floor.
A stiffer bar — thicker shaft, less whip — is the more forgiving, more consistent choice for everyday training, on all four lifts including deadlift. Some lifters keep a second bar with a thinner shaft specifically for deadlift practice in the weeks before a meet: a thinner shaft loads and whips differently off the floor, and the only way to get comfortable with that is to practice pulling on the actual bar you'll compete on. That's a deliberate, short stretch of meet-prep practice, not a permanent swap — the everyday bar stays the everyday deadlift bar the rest of the year.
What I personally use, every lift, every day: REP Fitness's Double Black Diamond Power Bar — a 29 mm shaft rated to 200,000 psi tensile strength, low whip, IPF-standard markings.
What I switch to for deadlift, meet-prep weeks only: Texas Power Bars' Texas Deadlift Bar — a 27 mm shaft, 92.5" long, aggressive knurl with no center knurl, approved for USPA and IPL competition. I bought it because it's the bar used at the meets I compete in, so I can get used to its thinner-shaft, more-whip feel before pulling on it for real. Not every federation uses this bar spec, so check your own federation's approved bar before assuming this one is universal.
What my gym uses: the gym I train at is a Starting Strength Gym, and it's equipped with Texas Power Bars' Starting Strength Bar collection — the standard 20 kg bar, plus 15 kg and 10 kg versions with a lighter, thinner shaft for lifters who need a smaller-diameter bar to get a proper grip.
Singlet, socks, and belt rules are a competition-specific question this page doesn't cover — see the first-meet logistics page for a real, cited example of what a federation actually requires you to wear on the platform, and joining a federation for what "your own federation" actually means before you have one.
Bench press on this program means flat bench press — the core novice, intermediate, and advanced phases never prescribe incline work. (Incline bench press does exist as an optional accessory exercise in the app's own exercise catalog, but it's never part of what a phase actually schedules.) That means a basic flat bench, the cheapest one you can find that's stable and rated for the weight you'll actually put on it, is genuinely all you need. There's no performance case for spending more here, and cheap-and-simple isn't a compromise on this program the way it might be somewhere that actually uses an incline.
If you do want a nicer bench, the features actually worth paying for are narrower than "adjustable bench with lots of angles": something that's still primarily a flat bench, since that's what this program uses; something genuinely easy to move even for a smaller person, since a flat bench that's a fight to reposition or store defeats a lot of the point in a home gym or a shared rack area; and an incline function as a bonus for accessory work, even though the program itself won't ask for it.
What I personally use: the Ironmaster Super Bench PRO V2. It's rated to 1,000 lb in the flat position (600 lb in the incline and upright positions), adjusts across 11 lock-out angles from 0° to 85° with a foot-lever-operated locking ring you can work from either side, and weighs 65 lb (69 lb with the incline seat attached) with wheels and a carry handle built in, standing up vertically to store flat against a wall. That last part is the real "easy to move" case, not a vague one — it's genuinely light enough and set up to be rolled and tipped upright by one person, which is the actual reason I like it, mostly used flat for this program with the incline function there when I want it for accessory work.
A belt isn't part of the getting-started page's actual minimum, but it's worth picking up earlier than a lot of advice suggests, not held in reserve until a lift finally feels heavy. A belt works by giving your brace something firm to push against — the same bracing effort explained on the bracing and Valsalva maneuver page. Learning to use one early means that technique is already automatic by the time a lift's actual weight demands it, instead of being learned for the first time under a bar that's already testing you.
For most lifters starting out, a simple leather single-prong belt is the right first belt. It does the job well, it's inexpensive, and there's no real reason to spend more before you know what you actually want out of one.
| Lifter | Width | Thickness |
|---|---|---|
| Younger lifters, smaller women, most beginners | 2" or 2.5" | 6.5 mm |
| Most other lifters, squat under about 400 lb | up to 3" | 6.5 mm or 10 mm |
| Squat around 400 lb and up | 3" or 4" (a lever belt) | 10 mm or 13 mm |
Belts come in a handful of standard widths — 2", 2.5", 3", and 4" — and thicknesses — 6.5 mm, 10 mm, and 13 mm. The narrower, thinner end of that range is often sold as a "bench belt," which is a real misnomer worth knowing about: there's nothing bench-specific about it, and it works well across all four lifts. It's just the size that suits a smaller frame or a lighter lifter best, not a belt built for one exercise. In the other direction, a rule of thumb worth following: don't go wider than 3" until your squat is somewhere around 400 lb. Below that, the narrower, thinner options actually work better for most people, not worse.
Family belts I've bought and can vouch for: Pioneer's belts, in a few different widths and thicknesses across the family. What I like specifically about Pioneer's own "Pioneer Cut" hole pattern is that the holes are staggered rather than evenly spaced, giving a real half-inch adjustment between settings instead of a full inch — a genuinely finer fit, not just a name. Pioneer's 6.5 mm belt, in 2" or 2.5", is the one that gets labeled a "bench belt" but isn't. Their 3" 6.5 mm Pioneer Cut is the wider version of the same belt.
Once a squat is getting up around 400 lb, it's worth stepping up to a real heavy-duty lever belt — thicker and stiffer, with a lever mechanism instead of a prong, built to hold its tightness under a genuinely heavy brace.
What I personally use: the SBD Lever Belt, in 10 mm — deliberately not the 13 mm version, which I find too stiff and inflexible for deadlift, even though the 10 mm still holds up well across all four lifts. The lever itself is the other real reason I like it: it adjusts significantly without a screwdriver, unlike some lever belts that need a tool to reposition where the lever sits, and it holds up the same whether I'm wearing it open between sets or fastened down for a working set.
If you're training for competition, the numbers above already sit inside most federations' own limits — USPA, for one, caps a competition belt at 10 cm (about 4") wide and 13 mm thick, the same spec on the first-meet logistics page's own equipment table.
Elbow sleeves (squat). These are not a universal recommendation — you really only need them if you have, or are prone to, elbow issues. If that's not you, skip them; there's no performance case for wearing them otherwise.
What I personally use: Iron Rebel elbow sleeves.
Wrist wraps. This is a later addition, not a day-one purchase, and it usually comes after a belt and chalk in the order a lifter actually needs things. Of the four lifts, overhead press is typically the first place wrist support is actually worth trying — the bar sits directly overhead with nothing but the wrist and shoulder supporting it, more directly than a bar resting across the chest or upper back does. Bench can follow if the same wrist bend or soreness shows up there; squat and deadlift rarely create this problem at all. My own main wraps are SBD, but I've seen a cheaper option — Iron Rebel's — work well for family members on bench and overhead press, and started using them myself on squat.
A good option I've seen work well, and started using myself for squat: Iron Rebel wrist wraps.
Deadlift straps. Chalk solves a grip problem first — reach for that before straps, and treat straps as the next step only once your grip, not your hips or back, is what's actually capping how much you can pull. That usually shows up on deadlift before it shows up anywhere else. Once you're there, straps let your grip stop being the limiting factor — useful for training volume specifically.
Straps are not allowed in competition. USPA's own rulebook permits a strap only for a lifter missing at least half the fingers, including the thumb, on the hand doing the gripping — worn on that hand only, at the wrist only (Rule 6.3.20). Every other lifter pulls without one on the platform. If you're training for a meet, don't let straps become the only way you know how to hold onto a heavy pull. Spend real time on your unassisted grip — see the deadlift page's own grip section for the real options: double-overhand, mixed, and hook — so competition day isn't the first time you've pulled a heavy weight without them.
What I personally use: I've tried many, and Spud Inc's 1.5" black figure-8 straps are the ones I like best.
Like shoes, chalk is worth having from early on rather than waiting for a set to actually slip. A bar that's harder to hold changes how confidently you set up and finish a lift well before it's the reason you miss a rep, and deadlift in particular tends to expose a sweaty grip earlier than most lifters expect.
Chalk dries sweat off your hands so the bar doesn't slip out of your grip. Liquid chalk — chalk suspended in a fast-evaporating alcohol base — does the same job as block or loose chalk with a real practical edge for a home or shared gym: no cloud of dust settling on the floor and equipment, and it travels cleanly in a gym bag or a meet-day kit without a chalk block crumbling everywhere.
What I personally use: Petzl Liquid Chalk, and sometimes Gripzilla Liquid Chalk — Gripzilla's is genuinely convenient for a gym bag since it comes with small carabiners built onto the bottle to clip it on.
None of the links on this page are affiliate links — nobody earns a commission if you buy any of this. These are the specific things used personally, named because a real answer is more useful than vague buying criteria, not because pointing at them is worth anything to us.