The Barbell Tells No Lies

Henry Rollins said it the best, ‘Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.’ I wish Henry had picked a bigger number like 500 pounds, that would have sounded way cooler! But the premise is the same.

For me, I like to think and say, ‘The barbell tells no lies’. It is like the Santa Clause of the weights room. It knows who’s been naughty and who’s been nice and it will reward you accordingly.

We have all been there, when the barbell tells us some truth. You know the session. It’s at the end of that training block, where for whatever reason you have been just scraping by with the minimum. Where each session is just good enough that you can tell yourself, ‘It will be okay’. Then you do that one session that slams you. The warm ups are heavy, you miss reps and weight. You look at the barbell with that confused look, thinking ‘I’m sure I did the work, what’s going on?’ The barbell stares back and tells you the truth.

There is yin and yang here though. For all things bad, there are all things good. These are the sessions that come at the end of training runs where you have had that consistency, where you are doing all the right things. It will be your training partners that notice first. They will say, ‘Dang, those are moving good for you, what have you been doing lately?’ This too is the barbell speaking the truth, letting the world know you have been doing the work!

That’s one of the many good things about the barbell, it is forever rewarding, it doesn’t care who you are, what sort of job you have, it will like you for you. It will be your best friend forever. Do remember though it is only your best friends that tell you the absolute truth. Make sure when training, it is the truth you want to hear.