Hail to the Dinosaurs!
One of the best gyms I ever trained in was my parents’ garage back when I was 18 or 19.
You’d have laughed if you’d seen it. It was a unique collection of things cobbled together from a variety of sources.
I had an exercise bench we bought from a local equipment company that some guy ran out of his garage. I saved my pennies forever to buy it. The thing was a combination flat bench and adjustable incline bench, and the first time I tried an incline press on it with 150 or so pounds, it collapsed. After that, all I could use it for was a flat bench.
My squat stands were wooden things made out of 4 x 4’s, using a design in an old course written by Bruno Sammartino, the wrestling champion. I’m not much of a carpenter, and they probably would have earned me a C–minus in Shop class, but they did the job.
My dad had an old exercise style barbell with a one-inch bar and 110 pounds of exercise plates. He bought it in 1965 or 66. It was still in good shape 10 or 12 years later when I used it as part of my garage gym.
I had two “big” plates. These were black iron 25’s, which dad bought for his barbell. They let me load up to 160 pounds.
That wasn’t enough weight for squats, benches or deadlifts, so I had to think of something else. Barbell plates were expensive, and I was a poor college kid, working a variety of part-time jobs to try to pay for school.
First I got another bar. This was a seven-foot length of one-inch iron rod that lay rusting in the corner at one of the local YMCA’s. The athletic director let me have it for nothing.
An issue of Iron Man came out, and Peary Rader ran an article on how to make barbell plates out of concrete. This was amazing, because Peary sold his own barbells and barbell plates, so the article was strictly against his own business interests. He admitted this, but said it was okay because he was doing it as a sort of public service for lifters. Which goes to show you the kind of man he was.
Anyhow, I decided to make some concrete plates.
I followed the instructions carefully.
You made a mold out of sheet metal formed in a circle.
That was easy enough, although it took a lot of work to get the thing to form a perfect circle.
You mixed the concrete.
That was easy.
You poured the concrete into the mold, added some small pieces of chain and wire to help hold it all together, and then you put in a piece of plastic pipe to form the center hole.
That was all pretty easy, except for getting the center hole exactly right. I cast four plates and only got it right on three of them. The other was a little bit slanted.
After casting the plates, I waited a few days so they would have time to dry out and season. If memory serves correctly, you had to sprinkle water on them every day or two, which seems like a strange way to help the drying out process – but I think that’s what you were supposed to do. Mind you, this was about 35 years ago, so I may be getting some of the details wrong.
When they were finished, the plates were enormous. They were huge slabs of rock, several inches thick, and weighed about 75 pounds apiece.
They were so big and cumbersome that you got a good workout just loading the bar.
But they worked fine. I used my old iron bar from the YMCA and the concrete plates for all of my squats, benches and deadlifts, and although it may have looked funny, it built plenty of muscle. My first 300 pound squat was with that homemade barbell – and later, my first 300 pound bench press.
Today, 35 years later, I still train out in the garage, and I still keep things pretty basic. Basic is good.
That’s the way strength training used to be – a guy and a garage (or a basement) and a barbell – and not much else. But that was all it took. That’s all it ever takes.
As always, thanks for reading, and have a great day. If you train today, make it a good one!
Yours in strength,
Brooks Kubik
P.S. Those old concrete barbell plates weren’t pretty, but they WORKED! So do the training programs, the advice and the ideas in these books and courses, and in the Dinosaur Files newsletter:
1. Dinosaur Training: Lost Secrets of Strength and Development
http://www.brookskubik.com/dinosaur_training.html
2. Gray Hair and Black Iron
http://www.brookskubik.com/grayhair_blackiron.html
3. Strength, Muscle and Power
http://www.brookskubik.com/strength_muscle_power.html
4. The Dinosaur Files newsletter
http://www.brookskubik.com/dinosaur_files.html
5. History’s Strongest Men and How They Trained: No. 1 – Doug Hepburn
http://www.brookskubik.com/doug_hepburn.html
