Power Lock Barbell Collars

The Husker Power Lock is a compression spin-lock barbell collar: a rotating outer shell squeezes a plastic sleeve down around the full circumference of a barbell’s sleeve, so the harder you twist it on, the tighter it grips. It’s built with a nylon/heavy-duty plastic body and a steel insert, with a rubberized interior lining and nylon bushing that protect the bar’s finish, and fits any 2” Olympic-style sleeve as well as axle bars and other specialty bars. First developed in 1986 by a father-son engineering team in Henderson, Nebraska, after a high school strength coach kept breaking cheaper plastic collars, it’s since become a fixture in commercial gyms, colleges, and universities, and comes with a limited lifetime warranty.

Independent coverage backs up the manufacturer’s “industry standard” claim: Starting Strength’s Mark Rippetoe calls it “the last collars you’ll ever need” after years of gym use, and Garage-Gyms.com rates it “all but indestructible” and well suited to high-impact drops in CrossFit or Olympic lifting. The tradeoff is length — the collar’s size eats into loadable sleeve space, which Garage-Gyms.com flags as a real downside for powerlifters chasing maximum plate capacity, and at $55+ per pair it’s a bigger investment than simple clip-style collars.