CKIDSOlympic Weight Plates Loading Pin

If you like to work your forearms with wrist rollers and like to use Olympic weight plates, I'm sure there are times when you wished you had a much shorter loading pin than the ubiquitous much-longer-than-needed loading pins on the market. When doing wrist rolls, these long loading pins significantly reduce the amount of distance the weights can traverse before one has to roll the weight back down again. With my 14 inch loading pin, that equated to maybe 6 twists for each hand. I do not quite understand the concept of having such a long loading pin for wrist rolls. Yes, one needs a loading pin several inches long so one can load enough weight onto the pin, but, surely, a person doesn't need a 14 inch + pin that a can be loaded with 200 lbs. or more. A six or eight inch pin should be more than enough for wrist rolls in most instances. For some odd reason, there is plenty of shorter loading pins for standard weight plates (pins with a 1 inch hole), but not for Olympic weights. Why is that? You would think there would be a greater number of short Olympic loading pins out there to accommodated us wrist rollers since many of us have Olympic weights and wrist rolls being a common form of forearm exercise. But for some reason. . .there isn't. Thankfully, though, I finally found one. . .and a nice one at that. . .I never heard of CKIDS before. The lack of any reviews told me this brand of loading pin has not been on the US market for very long, at least not on Amazon. The item seemed highly priced, and it also was to ship directly from China, which I figured would significantly increase the time of delivery. But since I desperately wanted a shorter loading pin and this brand was all that I could find that offered such a pin (did Google searches as well), I took a chance. Glad I did.First of all, even though this loading pin came all the way from China, it arrived in only 10 days (I live in the Midwest). Amazon predicted it would take two months to receive (ugh). The pin arrived with no scratches or nicks, and was in excellent condition. I must say, this is a VERY nice loading pin -- best one I've ever had. It is exactly as the photo depicts on the top of the product page. The welds are clean and appear well done. . .durable. With other loading pins I've seen or owned, more often than not, they appeared to be slapped together in a haphazard way (crooked, sloppy welds, bad paint job, etc.). Not this one. The paint job is a very nice and smooth with no sloppy globs of extra dried paint. CKIDS has several different sizes of pins, ranging from 4 to 20 inches, but I chose the 8 inch (bought the 4 inch later) for it would benefit me the most with doing wrist rolls. At the time, I wasn't sure if the four inch would have worked as well for me, thought it might have been a little too short; but, later, I realized the four inch would have actually worked better.The overall length of the 8 inch pin is approximately 9.5 inches, which breaks down to: 8 inches for the loading area, .25 inch for the bottom platform and 1.25 inches for the ring on top. The 1.8 diameter loading area is hollow, which I think most loading pins on the market are. I can't tell how thick the metal walls of the loading section are, but the pin feels durable, not cheap by any means. And as for the weight, it is about 1.5 lbs.I've loaded this up with four 25 lb. Olympic plates for show purposes (see photos), and there still is room for two more. A person can get six 25 lb. Olympic plates in total on this 8 inch pin. For wrist rolls, 150 lbs. surely will never be needed, unless, you truly are a gorilla. To increase the distance the weights travel before I have to let the weights down again when doing wrist rolls, I stand on a couple poly boxes which gives me anywhere from 12 to 16 more inches of travel. Works well.In all, I'm impressed with this pin. It is a nice piece of equipment that I know will serve me well. I can't attest to the strength of the metal or welds that were used, but, like I said, it feels very durable and well made. . .and, for what I need it for, it is more than enough. A five star product.**Note**I posted four photos of this 8 inch pin along side of my nearly 14 inch loading pin so you can see the differences in construction.**Update**Been using this for almost a year now. . .still fully intact and looks well. The paint does not chip off or scratch easily. Being that I liked the pin so much, I also bought the 4 inch one. The four inch gives me a little more distance and thus more twist contractions before I need to roll the weight down again when doing wrist rolls. I'm still very impressed.

I needed a short loading pin to reduce the amount of slack in my cable system.I happened upon the CKIDS Olympic Weight Plates Loading Pin.I immediately ordered it ... just what I needed.Yes I had to wait for it to be shipped from China, Yes it was expensive ...The TIG welds are perfect at both ends and the black finish is flawless.The wait and cost were well worth it! AWESOME :)