Last week I wrote a post that may have gotten more of response than any I have previously ever written! When I suggested that the barbell was one of the least beneficial training tools people went crazy!!! I had people suggesting that I didn’t know the history of strength training, some thought it was absurd to devalue another training tool, but most surprising was the fact a lot of people actually agreed with me.
Let’s look though at some of the possible arguments people had to my position.
“You don’t know the history of strength training.”
Here is the reality, the barbell only became really popular in the early 1900’s and truly gained form in the 30’s when Bob Hoffman started York Barbell. For the first time fitness was really being marketed hard. Yes, in the past people like Eugene Sandow actually tried to sell fitness products, but this was going to change fitness forever. There wer also companies in the early 1900’s such a Milo Barbell Company running such great hype such as, “By using a bar-bell you can make yourself a physical superman!” One could see it as one of the early forms of infomercials that often we laugh about today.
Before this time, the sport of Olympic lifting hadn’t taken the form that most are familiar with today. Lifters did “cleans” but there were many different styles and the rules hadn’t been hashed out like they for today’s lifter. There were one handed barbell cleans and snatches and all types of “feats of strength” that were used with the barbell. However, it was far from seen as superior to other forms of training before York really began to change things. These great strongmen that many current coaches refer to had spent extensive amounts of time typically wrestling, hand balancing, and all sorts of odd object and dumbbell training. In fact, many attribute their great ability to lift amazing loads overhead to things such as hand balancing, not heavy overhead presses!
Barbells were used also as another simple method of overloading the body. However, it was rarely used to the same types of loads that are common to see today. Typically MOVEMENT was still king and just to load these various patterns sometimes barbells were utilized. However, barbells were almost never exclusively used, possibly not even dominated many programs. That is until sports such as Olympic lifting and later Powerlifting would become far more mainstream. York Barbell can be credited with really helping the sport of Olympic lifting grow in the US and it was a rather influential sport!
YES, sports that the whole sport was based around the barbell became very popular. It would be foolish not to use the barbell as the primary implement in these iron sports, the problem became when many of these athletes from Olympic and Powerlifting became coaches in other sports. Their own personal biases came about in the programs and it didn’t take too long for these competitive lifts to become the standard for “athletic excellence”. We need to really understand the goal and who is coaching in some of the situations to understand why certain method, techniques, and tools have gained the fame they have.
Somehow physical prowess was capable of being developed before the 1900’s. How is that possible without the barbell?
“Josh, you need the barbell to train maximal strength”
It should be obvious that the influence of the these sports on strength and conditioning programs have been profound. Now, when you ask most strength coaches “WHY” they perform certain movements like these you get answers such a, “to develop power”, or “get strong”. Both of these answers are tremendously vague and don’t answer much of anything. We can develop power or “get strong” in a host of ways that have absolutely nothing to do with barbell training. For example, male gymnasts that have never touched a barbell have been found to bench over double their body weight. Does this demonstrate the fact, that neither position of “building power” or “getting strong” are actually rationale arguments for the focus on the barbell?
The barbell seems to lose even more power by the fact that single leg and upper body exercises have been rediscovered by many coaches and research has shown the power of these forms of training. This study by the Journal of Strength & Conditioning stated, “In comparison to bilateral jumps, unilateral jumps produced a stronger relationship with sprint performance.” (J Strength Cond Res. 2010 Dec;24(12):3200-8) This was in reference to Division I women soccer players. For those that think many of these exercise increase “power” look to see what this scientific journal states, “Using sprinting performance as an example, exercises involving bilateral contractions of the leg muscles resulting in vertical movement, such as squats and jump squats, have minimal transfer to performance. However, plyometric training, including unilateral exercises and horizontal movement of the whole body, elicits significant increases in sprint acceleration performance, thus highlighting the importance of movement pattern and contraction velocity specificity.” (Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2006 Jun;1(2):74-83.Transfer of strength and power training to sports performance.) In both these cases sprinting, which is one of the best measures of power, are not as strongly impacted as many would have us believe by the more popular bilateral lifts.
It should be coming to light now that what we deem as “necessary” has little foundation other than a fear of being different and going against the mainstream. Unfortunately, innovation only occurs when people are willing to be different and create better strategies. If we are now seeing that maximal lifts with the barbell actually prove very little other than your ability to lift a heavy barbell, we should see that other avenues of creating successful training programs are wide open.
Strength Coach, Charles Staley, has a great saying, “everything has a cost, not everything has a benefit.” Creating successful programs is all about maximizing benefits and minimizing costs. In this current age of Strength & Conditioning we have so many more options in accomplishing that goal more successfully. That really is what our program is all about and I hope we are able to demonstrate that in a strong manner for those that are willing to step outside their comfort zone and willing to be different.
What is my take home point? We need to start to develop new means in both programming and measuring outcomes that are more meaningful to our clients. Is the barbell and evil training tool? No, but the overemphasis and valuing of the barbell has been damaging to our own development. In the next few installments we are going to show how there are more effective means to establish movement, power, strength, and stability.
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