At our gym a couple sets of weights on the lifting platforms are in kilograms, which can be confusing in America. It doesn’t have to be confusing though; the math is actually quite simple.

In order to make the conversion you need to know that 1 kg is roughly 2.2 pounds. If you go out a few more decimal places it’s actually 2.20462, but that extra only ever makes a difference of a pound unless you’re setting world record deadlifts, so you can pretty much throw it out and call it close enough.

So…

1 kg = 2.2 pounds
10 kg = 22 pounds
100 kg = 220 pounds

You shouldn’t even need to think about those, but rarely do our weightlifting numbers fall on powers of ten. What about 53 or 97 kilos?

First double the number.

53 x 2 = 106

Then take care of the 0.2 part. Multiplying by 2 is already done, so take 106 and move the decimal place over.

10.6

Round up to 11.

106 + 11 = 117

Easy! How close does that come out? 53 x 2.20462 = 116.84486. Spot on. How about 97?

97 x 2 = 194

19.4

194 + 19 = 213

Here’s one where the extra 0.005 would have made a difference because 97 x 2.20462 = 213.84814 or 214 when rounded up. Close enough though. 😉