The Coolest Stuff

by Jim Steel | December 12, 2023

I’m as guilty of it as anyone, pining for stuff that you think you have to have. Right now, I am obsessed with buying a hunting blind for my first year of bow hunting. I could get by without it. I could create a natural blind with some brush and branches and saw grass. But that’s not what they do on my favorite hunting shows. They have the fancy blinds, all camo and with quiet zippers and little stools to sit on and rangefinders and all the latest gear. You really don't need any of it, but it looks so cool.

And then my sons are asking for all the latest stuff. One “needs” a $350.00 baseball bat, the other “needs” some shoulder pads because the school’s shoulder pads that he gets for free aren’t good enough. The food that I spent $485.00 on in one visit to the grocery store isn’t good enough, and it goes on and on.

When Chuck Taylor’s were all the rage in the 1970s, I came home and got all my gumption up to ask my father for a pair. Miraculously, he said yes. We climbed into his Ford Falcon station wagon with the “Go Terps!” bumper stickers on the back and headed to the shoe store. The price of the shoes there was $12.99 a pair. My father gasped in horror. He said, “I will never pay $12.99 for a pair of sneakers.” I remember that this was during the gas shortage under the inept Carter regime. So what did we do? We drove all around town, going from store to store, trying to find Chucks for under $10.00. I remember thinking that we spent $12.99 worth of gas driving all over the place, but of course, I didn't say that to my father.

We finally went to an outlet store where we found a pair for under $10.00. The shoes had a stamp on the tongue that said, IRREGULAR in big red letters. But I didn’t care, I had my Chucks. Now, the kids' shoes are $150.00 a pair (or more), and they still complain. Somebody somewhere convinced everyone that you can't do shit in life without having everything be so damn special.

I am glad that I grew up drinking from the garden hose (“But won’t you get worms?”), exploring in the woods, jumping over ramps on my bike, and walking everywhere. I swear, my one son got out of football practice the other day and asked me to drive 20 feet to pick him up instead of walking over to the car. If I didn’t have a ride, I hitchhiked. I know you can’t do that anymore because of the crazies in the world today. But as a family, we had one car, and my mom had to pick up my dad at work, so either I was walking or hitchhiking.

What does this have to do with weight training? Well, I look at what's in the gyms, online and on YouTube these days, and I see the same attitude of having to have the latest and greatest equipment or gear, when only barbells are necessary.

I grew up training in basement and garage gyms. Usually, there was one Olympic bar, some Olympic plates, a power rack or free standing squat rack, and a bench press. And we had some of those dumbbells where you put on standard plates and tightened the collars with a wrench. I can't ever remember using them but for some curls. We got crazy strong without a Power Squat or Hammer Row or a damn Bosu Ball. I remember that we had a Behind-the-Neck Stand, for seated behind-the-neck presses. Everyone did behind-the-neck presses in those days. The Barbarian Brothers and Ted Arcidi lifted close to 400 pounds in that lift. My training partner Chris, when we were both sophomores in Junior College, did 315 pounds for a few reps in the seated behind-the-neck. Strong.

He also squatted over 600 in my girlfriend's basement, and I squatted 550. We had shit as far as equipment variety, and it didn’t matter. Even gyms back then didn't have much in the way of machines besides cables and a leg press. And nobody had any cardio machines at all. The local Gold’s Gym where a few of my friends trained had one cardio machine: a stationary bike that sat in the corner. I never even heard the word “cardio” before the 90’s. I guess we sprinted hills and ran sprints for football and played pick-up basketball, but we didn't call it “cardio.” Most gyms these days have more cardio machines than weights and weight machines.

Hell, maybe it was because it was so damn hard to just use the barbell for stuff that we got so strong and put on muscle at a fast pace. Our bodies were forced to adapt or die. You punish your body with a barbell, but in a good way. Every time you use a barbell, even in the bench press, you are using your whole body. Think about how hard a max set of 3 in the press is when you are standing. You are using everything that you have – muscle and will – to lock out that last rep. All of you is engaged in that movement. A lot different than a seated machine press.

Using a barbell is awfully hard work. And maybe that is why there are so many cardio machines and weight machines in the gyms now. It’s easy. If you can look at your phone between sets, it’s too easy. Nobody is looking at their phones when your next squat set is 700x5.

Of course, you can get definitely strong on those particular machines. But for sports, and for life itself, the difficult nature of the barbell is hard to beat. It's been around forever. It’s too simple, really. People are like, “Yeah but… and what’s the catch?” Because everyone wants it to be so damn exotic and special and gimmicky. What’s the latest and the greatest? More like the first and reigning king, The Barbell. The damn thing sits in the corner at some gyms, and in others it isn't even allowed. These poor people don’t know that the only true and very simple magic tool out there for getting strong is sitting over in the corner, just begging to be picked up.