Barbell Shrugged - 155- Part 2- What Goes Into Making The Worlds Finest Barbell

Episode Date: December 19, 2014

Part 2 of 3

Hey, what's up everybody? This is Chris. This week on Barbell Shrugged, it's not your typical episode, baby. Get on over to barbellshrugged.com, queue up the video version, get your friends over, make some food, turn on the HDTV, and enjoy the show. But, if you are listening to the audio version, we broke this episode into three parts. This is part two of three, where we are in the factory with Aleko's CEO, Eric Blomberg, learning just what it takes to manufacture the world's best barbells. Hey, this is Rich Froning.

You're listening to Barbell Shrug. For the video version, go to barbellshrug.com. And we're back at Aleko offices slash manufacturing of the barbell area place. Factory? Oh, factory. That would be the way we should say that. We're standing here with the CEO, Eric Blomberg. And we're going to be talking about, well, we were talking about, what were we talking about?

We were eating waffles. We were talking about waffles, we were talking about, what were we talking about? We were eating waffles. We were talking about waffles. We were talking about the history of things. It was so long ago. Who remembers? It was at least two or three hours. We got a little bit into the bars. We got a little bit,

we wanted to talk mostly about the history, but we dug into the technology of the bar and all that prematurely. We got our hand slapped by CTP over here. He's the one that really runs the show, and then we just get off track. But now, if you're a meathead, this is one of the geekiest places,

most awesome places to be. Look at all this Swedish steel, baby. Yeah, so can you tell us a little bit about, so the bars did come around, started in 1957. There's been a lot of progression since then. You said slowly innovating over time. It's now 2014, and we're looking at it, and we got to come in here,

and we got to see the bars bending and things like that. Can you tell us kind of what sets your bar apart from the others? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we talked about it a little bit this morning, and we made thisn sedan 1957. Det finns mycket mer till en barbel än man skulle tänka sig. Det finns några saker som definierar en bra barbel. Stel är förstås viktigt och så är det stelhämmaren. Of course the steel is important and the whip of the steel. You have to have the right flexibility in the bar

to really support the rhythmic movement in a snatch or a clean. Do you have the numbers off the top of your head of the tensile strength and the amount of... Because that's actually something that's listed. I see when people are selling barbells if you go online you look around and people are shopping like what's the tensile strength that they should be looking for what's the what's the amount of whip is there like yeah if you if you imagine psi it says 215 000 for for our our competition bars and that's that's i mean i think i think a lot of the bars are around

150 160 maybe 170,000. So it's really a fantastic type of steel we use. So what's that mean exactly? It means that you... For people who don't understand these numbers. PSI is pounds per square inch. It's what it requires to actually break the steel. Gotcha.

So it's really a top quality steel we use but you have to find that you have to find a good mix of we have a very very hard surface on the steel but the soft inner which makes which allows for the flexibility so the chrome outer layer that's very hard yeah exactly and and also the the outer part of the steel okay yeah um and uh and that's part of of creating the the the the grip of the bar as well uh so when you when you when you will see the the knurling of the bars uh you will also understand how how difficult it is to to to work in this type of steel uh and you for for the real professional athletes you need to have a really great grip uh not not too sharp you should not tear your hands apart but you you need to have a really great grip. Not too sharp.

We should not tear your hands apart, but you should not allow for any type of slipping. The knurling is interesting because... Before the knurling, when you're doing the knurling, is that part of the hardening process? No, that's done before. The knurling is just how you work in the material. And you were talking about yesterday how to make the imprint, the knurling. You don't cut the steel, you press the steel. So you're pressing the knurling into the steel. And you're talking about how hard the steel is. So you kind of go through a lot of tools.

Yeah, exactly. How many, with those little circle things you said, of go through a lot of uh you go through a lot of tools yeah exactly how many with those little circle things you said you go through like seven uh roughly seven yeah seven weeks seven bars and then you have to start replacing yeah exactly so it's uh it's very and those are very expensive so it's uh it's uh of course you would like to push it more but but we need to we need to really stay stay stay true to what we want to have in the final product. So we need to have a really good... You'd like to get more out of it, but... Absolutely.

For cost reasons, but you're not going to sacrifice. That's another reason. People don't understand the cost of the barbell. This is one of the reasons. Like, to get the knurling perfect, you need a certain kind of tool, these little gear-like teeth that basically eat into the barbell and kind of displace this hard steel. Yeah.

But to do that in a way that leads to superior performance and grip, need a better thing and that's going to add the cost so like the every step of this way this is craftsmanship goes into just the final feel yeah the way that feeling feels the feel is incredible and we actually talk about the elaco feeling and the lifters talk about the elaco feeling and it's really a combination of the grip, the flexibility of the bar, and also the smoothness of the sleeves, how they rotate. Yeah. Because you don't want to lose, you don't want to lose,

have anything impacting your lift. And we were talking about the surface a lot, and I think we have footage of the kind of surface. And one of the things that we did yesterday is, I was handed a microscope, or a magnifying glass or whatever, and we got to place it on the bar and look at it, and we were looking through it, and it was like looking at a diamond.

It was totally unexpected. Yeah, you think there's still spikes. What's his name? He pulled out the microscope. Sander. Sander. He is responsible for he's responsible for the for the knurling and the right and the grip what they looked like to me was like little like fancy hunting arrows like the tips were so like fractal all overlapped all overlapping and incredibly intricate you would have thought that it would just be little spikes

like little simple things i never would have dreamed i've seen a lot of barbells and uses just lines of some kind of pattern i thought it was just gonna be a little crisscross pattern like that like but no it's not like that at all thought it was just going to be a little crisscross pattern like that. But no, it's not like that at all. We got it under the microscope and it's shocking how elaborate it was. It's elaborate. Yeah. I thought that was pretty incredible.

I never thought, yeah, let's inspect this with a microscope. I think people need to understand this is a weightlifting bar. That bar is designed for you to be able to put a limit load overhead. Yep. And the whip and all that's designed. But it's interesting how a lot of people complain, oh, this bar is designed for you to be able to put a limit load overhead. Yep. And the whip and all that's designed. But it's interesting how a lot of people complain, oh, this bar is sharp. Well, you can easily just sort of grade down the knurling, which will be more suitable for many, many repetitions,

like in a fitness or CrossFit setting, right? Yeah, exactly. And we have a range of bars as well. So the weightlifting competition bars, those are, of course course the sharpest ones in terms of grip. So sometimes ladies and gentlemen if you have a lego barbell in your gym there's always gonna be like a little bit of jealousy of who uses it whatever but you gotta keep in mind like you've got to be very careful in the barbell you select for the job. Yeah exactly. Use a specific barbell if you can. The training bars are a bit more caring for the hands.

And then if you look at our sport training and our XF bars, they have a much softer grip because you do more repetitions and also because they're used by people who are not professional athletes and who are used to lifting every morning, every evening. So if you have softer hands, you might want to use the FlyWave Quantum Babies. So if you're choosing between the two, the competition bars are sharper, and they're going to beat your hands up more.

So really, you should save the competition bars for competing and the training bar for training. Exactly. You shouldn't go, I want the nice one, so I'm going to buy the competition one for training. It's going to beat you up. Yeah. It's really when you want to go for personal records and win competitions.

Only when you want to win. Only when you pull out if winning is what you're interested in. Just never. So Mike was talking about how you press that instrument into the bar to get the knurling, but you don't actually remove any material. You're not scoring it and removing material. No, exactly. So we don't take off any material. And if you did, scoring it and removing material so we don't we don't take

off any any material and if you did it would create some type of a break point like if you if you score a bar i've seen this with cheaper bars where instead of having the like the little hash marks yeah they just score a line in the bar and that creates a break point i remember at one time i saw a guy he had he had 315 pounds on the bar and he was doing a hang clean and he went down like that and went to bounce the weight and and it just broke right at one of those score points, and he broke his wrist, and he was strapped in, and it was a bad situation. But something like that wouldn't happen with a bar like this because you don't have those points where the bar is scored and material has been removed.

No, exactly. It's just a more efficient process as well when you want to create this type of grip, this type of pattern. And not just the surface of the knurling, but we had the surface of the... You started getting into that a little bit, the surface of the collar. Yeah, exactly. And also if you look at our collars on all of the bars, there's a type of ribbing as well on them. Yeah. And it has a functional aspect, of course,

because it takes away a little bit. It gives us more friction. So it holds them on a little bit more. But it's also because it's a nice feeling. You throw the collar on, it'll lock it on. Yeah, you talk about the sound. You say it sings. It sings, exactly.

I never thought about that. So it's a beautiful sound when you put about the sound. You say it sings. It sings, exactly. I never thought about that. It sings to you. It's a beautiful sound when you put the weights on. And you can, the faster you do it, the more they sing. Oh yeah, I like to get on there and just kind of whip the weight on and have it. Exactly. Yeah, you can feel it. You know, and that's one of the small little details I'd say that you can feel as an experienced lifter.

If that weight is a little bit more stable, a little tighter when you go to do quick, rapid movements, that stability is going to translate for you. You'll be able to feel that. Even if it's subtle, you'll be able to feel that, I think. It's also helped keep on the smaller weights that are outside the collars, like the one kilo, two kilo plates. The friction plate, the small friction plates, yeah, exactly. Do you guys used to have problems with that

where they were outside the collars and they would slide off until you made any adjustments? Was that ever a problem? We haven't seen that with the friction plate ones, no. But then it's happened that they put just the typical small discs on, and then they can slide off. But if you use the friction grip plates, then they stay on. They've got, like, the rubber inside.

Yeah, exactly exactly because they have that no they don't go anywhere no so you guys always call them discs you call them plates or bumpers or is this what you normally say discs is usually what we say yeah okay is that a swedish thing or is that just like what the weightlifting community tends to call them is that like a your thing well that's a good question i know in the us it's uh it's often called bumpers yeah they call them bumpers in the us so uh but we to, well, I think sometimes we do mix, but the discs is what we've named them. This sounds classier, doesn't it? Can you walk us through the process of the manufacture of the barbell from when you get the steel,

and kind of where you get the steel yeah until like it arrives at the doorstep yeah uh absolutely i mean we as mentioned we use we we've used a type of steel for many years which we are extremely pleased with uh and uh we get that from from a steel steel mill in the northern part of sweden this is a proprietary steel right yeah it's not getting anybody else can take the steel and make a barbell with it. No, that's for us. And when we get it here, the first thing we do is to do the knurling of the grip. And that's what you will see out with the sander doing. Then it moves on to the surface treatment facility, which is just nearby.

And it gets a chrome chrome surface on it also there it's important to get the right type of process when that is made oh yeah because sometimes you can see chrome falling off or even being shaved off yeah yeah I can be don't want it to be a laminate surface where there's a layer upon a layer it's got to be bound in a transition zone between the materials right yeah it. A strong bond. Is that just to make it look shinier and look more appealing, or does that make it stronger? No, it protects the bar as well.

So it doesn't rust and things like that? Exactly. And that's also what we test in the bending machine as well, just to make sure that the chrome stays on and it really returns to... I guess there's a time where you tried that a few times or a dozen times or a million times and the chrome did not stick the way you wanted it. I mean, how much tinkering goes into making...

Because this is a finished product. This is an evolved tool, like we said. How much screw-ups go into this? Has there ever been a key mistake you've made? No, I mean, it's just a gradual improvement process. You do something and then you find out that this was not the perfect way of doing it. I mean, it can be small things. You adjust just a little bit how you... We don't chrome the whole part of the bar. Where the color is on, that's not a chromed area.

It's like I hear the whole rest of Mike's question. You start off, you put on the knurling, you chrome it, and then what's the rest of that process look like? After that, we get back here to the assembly line. And we put the sleeves on, we calibrate it. We get all the bearings in place. Calibrate as in you're making sure it's the right specific weight?

Yeah, exactly. Is that what you mean? you're making sure it's the right specific weight yeah exactly yeah so if you if you take if you take a competition bar a man's 20 kilo that that cannot weigh more than 20 000 20 grams but we usually place them around 20 000 six seven grams that's a lot of precision you were saying you'd like to go you never want to go under we never we never want to go under because uh it's just it's just i mean as per the regulations you're allowed to go under. We never want to go under because it's just, I mean, as per the regulations, you're allowed to go just a couple of grams under. But it's just a principle of if someone beats a world record, they should know that it's never less than what they've been lifting.

Yeah, so that's very precise compared to many other weights on the market. Like we've taken weights that we have, like a 45-pound plate and weighed it. It might be 48. It might be 42. It's not 45 pounds. We're talking three or four pounds difference. Yeah, that's a huge margin compared to a couple of grams like you're talking about. Six grams is nothing.

It's like a feather. And that's because we sell so much to the professional market. And the demands there are very, very high. So if someone buys a leak equipment, they can be very sure that 25 kilos is very, very, very close to 25 kilos. Yeah. Yeah.

So you get the chrome applied. What's the next step after that? Well, that's when we get it back. We actually do a process where we make sure that the bar is absolutely straight. So we straighten the bar in our bending machine and just make sure that this is a perfectly straight bar. And after that process, it goes to the assembly unit that you see behind you you where the sleeves are assembled. You can tell these guys have done that job once or twice. Yeah, and they know the importance as well of making sure that every bar really lives up to the Laco standard.

How are the sleeves made? The sleeves, well we make the sleeves here as well, so we, and that's where you get this type of pattern that we talked about. But then what you do when you assemble it, you put the bearings in. And in the competition bars we use ten needle bearings. Just to make sure that they will spin smoothly and for a very, very long time. So you said there's 10 bearings. How much force can each one tolerate? I think we went through the numbers.

I think it was 2,000 kilos. For each of the little tiny 10 bearings inside each of the collars. I found that to be the most impressive number I heard. Like you're not going to harm that bearing. Like you said, it can even get better and better with time. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the smoothness can get better with time. But you should not...

Of the grease or the oil. Yeah, exactly. Because it spreads and it evens out. So usually the best spinning and the smoothest spinning bars are the ones who have just a year or two on them. The other funny thing is you never have to take that collar off for maintenance, do you? That's not recommended? No, it's not recommended.

That's cool. It should work. I know that from personal experience. I remember getting a Leica bar a couple years ago. I thought it would spin better. And then we had like a conversation. I was like, well, maybe you just got to break it in. And now, yeah,

it spins fantastically. That's a pretty good example. It's spreading out the lubricant, right? So what kind of maintenance or upkeep do you need to do with the bar? Is there much required? Yeah. They come with a brush at a minimum. Yeah, they come with a brush so you can take off

the magnesia from the grip and any other stuff that might get stuck. Chalk, blood... Yeah, exactly. Broken egos, whatever happens to be stuck in the knurling. So you get the... these guys apply the sleeves. They get the sleeves on there, they lock them in. Yeah. And then they throw the little Illico...

Illico... Sticker. Sticker as well. I don they throw the little Eliko sticker. Sticker as well. I don't know if that's a sticker. It's a hard plastic cap. Cap. Yeah, like the cap in the posters. Yeah, the ears there. And then is it ready to go ship at that point?

Yeah, then it's ready to go. Yeah, look at that. There's a finished product. Yeah. We saw a stack of those in your warehouse with the brush included and everything. You guys just got a new warehouse. Lustfully looking at this warehouse, by the way. Yeah.

There's piles and piles. One of our guys grabbed one of those new dumbbells that spin. Yeah. The handle spins. He's shoving it under. You made a great point about that, right? Why doesn't everything spin? If it's good for one thing, why is it not good for the other?

Yeah, it's just assumed that barbells need to spin and spin beautifully, but dumbbells are locked, and it just never occurred to anyone to make the dumbbell spin just like the barbells. It seems rather weird to me that it just never really came to be until you guys are more or less the first people to do that. Is that correct? It's been around. But it's great to have when you want to do snatches with a dumbbell. Well, I prefer the kettlebell.

It feels so much better. It's better than a kettlebell. Were you guys making it before the grid league or you started making it? We were making it before, yeah. But it's being used in the grid league, yeah. When you use it, I had a 12-kilo dumbbell, and it's surprising. If you just do a curl and a snatch, much more smooth range of motion, much more smooth mechanics of that load.

It made a big difference. I knew it was going to feel different, but yeah, the actual difference. Okay, I can work with this. I feel safer. You know, anything that turns in your hand when you're overhead doesn't feel good. I was in a gym this summer

where I was on really rusty bars. Yeah. And I actually like training on bad bars on occasion. Just gave him douche chills. Well, like Tommy Kona, he talks about in his book, he didn't have a decent barbell for a long time. He ended up being a really good weightlifter. I think it's good to do that.

Now, when you do it, you've got to be careful because your risk of injury skyrockets at that point. Yeah, it does. So when I did it, I was like, okay, when it starts feeling dangerous at all, I'm just going to stop there. And I did. I had to stop okay, when it starts feeling dangerous at all, I'm just going to stop there. And I did. I had to stop like 30 kilos short of where I would normally work

with overhead work. I was doing some snatches. It's cool to use shitty bars, but once you get used to the nice ones, it's hard to go back. It's tough, man. It is tough. It's good to try every now and then just to be aware of the difference. I was getting overhead, and I had to stop.

I was like, my ego wanted to go heavier. Didn't you learn a lesson about bars that don't spin well when you go to a meet where there's a nice bar? In the honor class, didn't you drop a bar on your head? I did drop a bar on my head. In the back room, we were warming up with bars that were so slow. And then the actual bar that was on the platform was a very nice bar and it spun very well.

And I went out there to do my jerk. And for the first time ever, like, I popped it up and then it kind of spun this way, which has never really happened to me before. And then I tried to correct it and it spun way too fast the other way too. And I dropped it right on my head and it kind of skipped forward. It's on YouTube if you want to go watch it. That's a spell, huh?

I will put it in. Doug Larson weightlifting myths or something like that. It's going in the show notes, by the way. Yeah, yeah. We'll show that video. Link in the show notes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Link the one where I went out there and got it two minutes later, though.

I will. I'll make sure you're very favorably presented. Don't worry about it. It's good to have consistency, especially within your training session. That's a lesson for gym or meet operators, too. Like, if you can, it's nice if you... Sorry. I jumped all over the place.

He just cut you off verbally. He was like, no. Michael, I want you to know that I'm very sorry. And you know what? I'm never going to stop making fun of you. I don't you off verbally. He was like, no. He just put his hand in front of you. I want you to know that I'm very sorry. And you know what? I'm never going to stop making fun of you. I don't expect you to. We're just saying that people should point out. Keep in mind, if you're going to run a meet like that,

it'd be really nice if you could use consistent equipment. Because that kind of stuff can happen. People can get hurt. Yeah. Sure. Like I was saying, I had to go way, you know. That was just to get a session in that day. It would be a lot harder to progress and shrink on not great equipment on a regular basis.

Yeah, yeah. I think I'm a bit spoiled because I tend to train with the Laker bars. I'm sure you do. You think you can get your hand on a few of them, can't you? Yeah, but there are actually bigger differences usually than people think between bars, and especially the spin, and also that you don't want to lose the grips. It's just like anything. It's always more complicated, and there's more to it than you think there is.

Yeah, exactly. I remember one time we had one of our bars rust because our cleaning crew came in and got them all wet or something like that. And we came in in and I put a bar on the ground and I, I didn't think that it wouldn't spin. It didn't occur to me because it's spun every day until right now. And then I went to try to do like a warmup clean, like 95 pounds. And I just, I just grabbed it and, and went to pull and it didn't spin at all. And I went like this and was like, Whoa, I did not expect that. Like when a bar doesn't spin, it's so much

different. It's almost impossible to lift at all. Cause can't do, you can't, like, put your elbows You have to do, like, a strongman clean. You have to do a continental style clean where you inch it up vertically up your body until you can pop it and catch it. You can't do a smooth clean. Yeah. I all of a sudden had, like, an instant appreciation for what a good bar feels like because I was like, whoa, that's the other end of the spectrum and these feel amazing.

Yeah. That being said, if you want to PR. Yeah, exactly. That's what the bars are for. PRing. I know most people hate hitting PRs, but sometimes it's necessary. It's fun.

Yeah. All right. I think we're going to wrap this up. I think we kind of covered a lot of the manufacturing process. Is there anything we want to talk about? Maybe with the rubber? Yeah. We didn't mention rubber.

We didn't talk anything about the plates because the bars are very precise in how much they weigh, like down to a very few grams. And then it's actually interesting. You guys are weighing the bars, and then you're having to weigh the sleeves separately, and you're having to match them up. So if a bar is a little light, you put a little bit heavier sleeve on there

and vice versa. Yeah, that's right. So you kind of make it, so you got everything organized in such a way. Yeah. So you got the bars down to a science on the weight,

but then the bumper's too. And Doug was talking about earlier, I remember, yeah, at University of Memphis, they actually had to weigh all the plates, and we kind of knew how much difference there were

because they were doing research. So you've got to be very precise about what you're actually doing, and that's why they had the actual weight written on there. And these are down to just a few grams as well. It's the same tolerance on these ones. So the one, this table, 25 kilos can weigh maximum 20,000, 25 grams as well. That's so precise. So some of your manufacturing of the plates or the discs is proprietary.

Some of it's kind of a secret, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, also with the discs, you want to get the right composition of the rubber, of course, because you want to find a good enough bounce. You don't want it to bounce too much, but you also don't just want everything to go into the... all of the force to go into the bar. I've definitely used plates, you know, bars and plates that have too much bounce. Yeah.

And it's almost like... it's almost dangerous sometimes like come up hit you in the face sometimes i actually had a gym member break his finger oh yeah a bar bounced back and he was trying to settle it yeah yeah and yeah yeah it was he was trying to rush a lift and end up breaking his fingers or it'll it'll jump into your shins it'll jump into somebody else's platform or something you guys have this down, like what, two bounces? It has to do with the platform, too. The platform is important. So if you looked at the World Championship, it really just fell and landed on the platform, on two bounces, and it was just nice.

But then it's a platform. It's an Olympic competition platform with full oak beams. it's a fantastic it's like a living room floor yeah i think some people like to have the balance like he's bouncing like a basketball that's yeah you probably clear that up that's not what you want it may feel cool that your weights bounce really high but yeah i think it's better to call it a disc for that reason bumper is not you don't want like bumpy and bouncy wrong cue you don't want to die on the ground either no you don't better to call it a disc for that reason. Bumper is not, you don't want it bumpy and bouncy. That's the wrong cue. You don't want it to die on the ground either. No, you don't want it to die.

It's got to be a right balance. Exactly. A controlled landing. What I love about these is that, I guess I learned a lot of the load comes from the center hub, right? Yeah. How much was it? At least half of the load? It's roughly half.

Half of the weight is in the hub and half is the rubber. Yeah, and these are glued and screwed together? Yeah, exactly. Wow, so, I mean, I've used a lot of plates and a lot of bumpers are just fine, but these might be the only ones I've ever felt where you pick it up and drop it a million times and this does not rattle, this does not shake around, this does not come loose at all. No, it has to stay really close. Could you ever, what do you need to actually get that apart?

Do you ever need to get these apart for servicing or anything? Can I ever even be separated? Well, you can, of course, separate it, but it's not something we recommend. Yeah, yeah. So they should also stay like that. So these fit really snugly. They clamp together and squeeze.

It's a snug fit on the bar. Yeah, exactly. That's also important because that's also part of the whole feeling of the lift. You don't want it to be like a distance to travel before you start to lift the weight. And this is also continually getting better, so continually innovating exactly bumper plate or the disc and uh yeah exactly and we we we're working really to understand what what what uh what constitutes the perfect the perfect disc as well just working on some interesting interesting projects what do you think makes a perfect disc well one thing it says illegal well it does have to look beautiful as well because it's part of it it's's part of creating a good lifting experience.

It has to be inspirational to go to your area for lifting. So it's a big part also. So all these details make a difference, right? So if you think, even the act of like, here's a barbell that's a little heavy. Let's pair it with a car that's a little light. We're not talking like a significant, we – we're talking, like, grams, like tiny grams.

It'd be so easy for you to say, you know what, that doesn't matter. No one will feel that. Let's just keep this an efficient process and walk them all the way through really quickly. The attention to detail, to mix and match, to get as close as possible, the attention to developing these discs, which seem to have evolved in a way, right alongside the barbell. Because if you look at Alico plates from the 80s or so,

they're obviously radically different. But those are still around. They're still fantastic. But this is a lot of years of tinkering, I mean 50 years of tinkering to get subtle additions to the outer surface to improve the grip, to learn that you need to glue and screw this, how you could construct a house that's going to last. I mean that's a principle that carries this as anything else.

And then, of course, it's got to look good, too, to meet that Swedish design ethos. Like, it doesn't matter if it's hideous. What does all this craftsmanship matter? I mean, the pairing is what makes this powerful. Yeah, that's a point. Yeah, I love that. I agree.

Absolutely. All those things are important. Should make that the summary of the show. Yeah. I guess I will. Yeah. Yeah, good job, me. So we've gone through many bumper plates at our gym in Memphis.

They crack, they break, the centers come out. Yep. And the plates that I grew up on that I explained earlier, they're 30 years old, and none of them are cracked, and none of the centers have come out yet. How is this different than some of the plates that we might be using that are breaking on us? Yeah. No, I think, I mean, it's all those small things

that you mentioned that have sort of developed over the years. And also just the whole construction of the hub and how you fit it to the rubber. That matters as well. So it's just, I think we're at the good point now where these are really, really long lasting discs. And that's where we wanna be. Right, I mean being a premium product, this is going to be more expensive

than the plates that I was talking about. But if I have to replace those other discs four or five times in 10 or 15 years, then this eventually comes out ahead yeah exactly you're thinking long term yeah absolutely and i mean that that's real i mean our products and uh from a commercial point of view of course it's not the idea that they last for 40 years like some of the bars do but it's a it's it's just it's just part of the culture we we want to we want to make products that really can last last a lifetime because it's it's just part of the DNA of the of the of the company and the and the brand it's quality and they should really not not break that was something I kind of want to touch on we

talked a lot about it before the podcast yeah started like doing the interview and so like sometimes when we start talking about something before before the interview, with the mics off, we forget to mention it when we're on, and that is kind of the company culture. And that was one of those things, that was something I did not anticipate to be impressed by. When I showed up, I was like, I'm going to be really impressed by the barbell,

the manufacturing process, which I was. But then when we got to meet a lot of the people in the company, you kind of gave us a presentation yesterday. Was it yesterday? Yeah, yesterday. The whole jet lag thing was throwing us all off. It was vicious. Was it last week?

Was it yesterday? I don't know. Time travel. Yeah. So I was really impressed by that. Could you kind of tell us a little bit about the company culture? And then you actually did a really good job of showing us visually and verbally what that was. Yeah, I think we have an overall vision within the company to really work to create a stronger world.

And of course, that's why these things such as to celebrate strength that I mentioned before is such an important thing of what we do. Det är därför det här med att ge styrka är så viktigt. Vi vill verkligen förbättra styrket i människors liv. Vi vill också förbättra styrket i lifting. Det är väldigt intressant i allt vi gör. Vi har även andra viktiga valutområden som vi verkligen är med om. present in everything we do. And then we have a couple of other values, important areas that we really care about. And one thing is just this constant pursuit for quality, for outstanding quality. And that's partly what we've discussed here

with the bars and the discs. And it has to be in everybody. Everyone in the company has to have that as a guiding star the whole time that we want to pursue and achieve outstanding quality. Other things are just the winning mentality, the strive to win. Så det är en väg som en företag ska ha som en guiderstarn hela tiden. Som vi vill uppnå och uppnå utställning. Det andra är bara vinnar-mentalen, att strida för att vinna. Det är också en stor del av vem vi är. Vi säljer till professionella atleter som vill vinna rekord, vinna olympiska guldmedaljer.

Så vi måste förstå det. Men vi vill också vinna oss själva som företag och som team. of course win ourselves as a company and as a team other things that that that are important within the company is this uh improvement process of we we we call it uh to to keep learning and that has to do with product development innovation new technology new materials education which we talked about in uh during the breakfast we're gonna we're gonna get more into the educational piece exactly that's the next step. You'll meet Anders, who's our head coach. And that's a

really big part of what we do as well. And the last area, which is also extremely important, is this whole, we call it to nurture kindness. And it has to do with all the relationships that we build within the company

and with all the people who come here and that we interact with. It has to be an objective for everyone to really build long-lasting and genuine and honest and fun relationships with the people we meet, customers, suppliers, you guys and colleagues. If you have a chance to do anything with Aleko, I would recommend it. It's been an extremely positive experience.

Like I already said, I expected the manufacturing process, but hanging out here has been fantastic. Right now, you have some classes going on, of course, out in the training area. So if you had a chance. Yeah, we have a Laker strength coach going on at the moment.

So you'll see bits and pieces of that. And Chris, Mrs. Dana, working out as well. That's right. She was on edge, man. She had to get in there. She was losing her mind. Yeah, you could really see it. She's gone a few days without touching any weights.

She's getting a little stir crazy. Let's wrap this up. And what we'll do is next we'll move into the education piece. And we're going to get a chance to talk to Anders, who's in charge of all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Excellent. Thanks for joining us and thanks for having us out.

Thank you very much. Yeah. This is Andrea Ager and you're listening to Barbell Shrug. For the video version, go to barbellshrug.com. Barbell Shrug is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrug.com and sign up for the newsletter.