Barbell Shrugged - The Man Responsible for over 1,000 Weightlifting, Powerlifting, and Bench Press World Records w/ Eleiko CEO Erik Blomberg - Barbell Shrugged — Barbell Shrugged #434

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

Eleiko is a world-leading supplier of professional weightlifting, powerlifting and strength training equipment. “We work to make people stronger so they can perform better, in sports and in life,” CEO Erik Blomberg describes the company’s mission. In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, Anders, Doug, and Travis discuss: What is the Eleiko difference? Setting more world records than any other barbell in the world. Being innovative with new equipment. The process of perfection design, production, and customer service. Why Strong is Happy. The greatest weight lifting vacation in the history of the world. And more…   Eleiko Sport of Instagram   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Travis Mash on Instagram   TRAINING PROGRAMS   One Ton Strong - 8 Weeks to PR your snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench press   20 REP BACK SQUAT PROGRAM - Giant Legs and a Barrell Core   One Ton Challenge    8 Week Snatch Cycle - 8 Weeks to PR you Snatch   Aerobic Monster - 12 week conditioning, long metcons, and pacing strategy   Please Support Our Sponsors   “Save $20 on High Quality Sleep Aid at Momentous livemomentous.com/shrugged us code “SHRUGGED20” at checkout.   US Air Force Special Operations - http://airforce.com/specialops   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   ---------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs-eleiko ---------------------------------------------------------------- ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

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If you are a gym owner and you are interested in hosting the One Ton Challenge at your gym, I need you to send me an email at anders at barbell shrug.com. That's anders at barbell shrug.com. We are looking for homes. And as a person that, or as a gym that is hosting a one-ton challenge, we have landing pages, scoreboards, emails, training programs, digital media assets for your Instagram, Facebook, and video. We have everything that you need to host a successful event, standard operating procedures for how to run the event, everything that you need to get your gym community, the surrounding weightlifting community,

and the people into your gym doing the one-ton challenge and being a host site to find the most complete barbell athletes in the whole wide world and most importantly just getting people lifting weights because strong is happy and that's what we do we make strong people stronger and we can't wait to get the one-ton challenge out to you so gym owners me an email. We want to make you a host site for the wonton challenge. And I stole strong as happy. You know who I stole for? Today's guest, Eric Lombard. He is responsible for over 1,000, 1,000 world records because he's the CEO of the greatest barbell company in the entire world, Aleko Barbell. And guess what?

Aleko invited us to Sweden to see how they make it. That's why I have a beautiful Aleko Barbell in my PRX home gym right now. And what's beautiful about the PRX home gym is that it saves me so much time, so much energy, so much room in my garage. My wife allowed me to even build a platform. It folds up onto the garage. The quality of fabrication is unbelievable. I was really not expecting it to be so well built.

The fact that I can put the entire gym on the wall with the amenities that they have, really, it comes off the wall like five inches it's insane if you have a two-car garage you can still put two cars in there if you have a one-car garage that car will still fit in there because it takes zero room super high quality engineered perfectly the J clips do not break it's impossible if you can break them I'll just send you new ones I'll pay for them but what's really cool is I've been working with them. Uh, that's why I got to try out, test out the new home gym and you can head over to prxperformance.com right now. Use the code shrugged. You're going to save 5%. That's going to be at least a couple hundred bucks

because the home gym is going to run you about $3,500 and it's the best $3,500 you will ever spend on a home gym. I promise you. I'm training in there. I'm filming in there. I think these should be in every single gym because they save so much space and real estate is expensive. But for all you home gym killers out there, weightlifters, get over to prxperformance.com, use the code shrugged and it's going to save you 5%. Eric Blomberg, CEO of Aleko Barbell, responsible for over 1,000 world records. That's a crazy number, right? See you guys at the break.

Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson. Yeah. Coach Travis Mash. Yes. Eric Blomberg. Did I get that right?

Yes. I'm working on my Swedish accent. That Travis Mash. Yes. Eric Blumberg. Did I get that right? Yes. I'm working on my Swedish accent. That's perfect. We are here at Eleko Headquarters in Holmstad, Sweden. Eleko. Eleko. This is the coolest thing that's ever happened to me in my life. I have a child and I've gotten married.

This is, we're pushing the boundaries on amazing. We sailed across, or flew across this beautiful Atlantic Ocean, took the red eye. I feel like when I started lifting weights, I never really knew that I would be making barbells at Aleko. And the first time I ever touched an Aleko barbell, my weightlifting coach literally like walked over to me and told me in the same manner of as if he was having me meet his kid for the first time the importance of the barbell and how it basically was an extension of his life and his life's work to be able to actually own one of these things. So to have the CEO here, to actually be at Aleko headquarters,

I feel like this is as close to a dream come true as we can get. This is a dream. Amazing. Welcome to the show. I'm happy to have you here again. So good. For anybody that does not know kind of the history of the story, it's not the most – I feel like if you were to walk into a gym and be like,

we want to make the best barbell in the world, how do we do that? You'd go find like some meathead that spent a lot of time on barbells, but instead you guys were in the waffle iron industry, the appliance industry. Yeah, exactly. What's a little bit of the backstory of the company, and how did we get to making the best barbells in the world? That's a good question.

It's an interesting story. So actually the company was started already in 1927, and at that time it was making electrical appliances. So waffle irons, toasters, ovens. So that was the origin of the business. And it was doing that for quite some time, but it started to diversify as well. And out of pure chance, basically,

there was a weightlifter working in the in the factory in the 50s oh my and uh he wanted some strong guy to look like travis right but taller yeah of course everyone here's six three yeah yeah i'm definitely considered a midget and he wanted to make a barber that could last an entire competition yeah in those days it was really he used to used several barbers in a competition. Because they would bend? Bend, yeah. And sometimes even broke.

And it was also a funny thing. At the time, it was a widow of the family that originally established the business. She was running the company at the time. And this was quite unusual as well in Sweden sweden to have a female ceo running a business and she but she said yes to this so so she said let's develop a weightlifting bar and let's see what happens and that was done working with a steel mill up in the northern part of Sweden where we still get our specialty steel for this type of product and developed the Eleko bar it was introduced at a world championships in in Stockholm in the early 60s for for professional weightlifting and since then it's sort of built

really the reputation that we have in the industry right now. And over 1,000 world records with the Laker bar, and it was the first company to be certified by the International Weightlifting Federation. And that's been the core of the business for so many years. You have the most world records in the world. Yeah, I believe so, yes. Amazing. Over the course of 50 years like how how

have the barbells changed over 50 years i'm sure there's iterations and improvements that are constantly happening like what do they look like 50 years ago and then what do they look like look like today that yeah that's right and i think i mean we continuously work with with perfecting the the barbell and i think over the years there's been multiple incremental improvements to the product. I think we did the last real big upgrade just about two years ago, where we took a couple of steps back and really looked at the product to see what, really to examine and benchmark this product against everything that's out there and and that was a really interesting interesting project and ultimately that that led to us as launching the next generation of eleco barbers

and that there are three main things that we've improved now in the latest round of of development work and one is the steel where we perfected the both both the the steel we used, but mostly on the hardening and the surface treatment process to make it last longer. And the other thing is the grip. Eleco bars are known for having a very professional grip. It's quite sharp. It's quite suited for really heavy lifting. But we perfected that and made a smoother grip for the fitness and the performance bars.

And then I would say that the main change we did was on the construction of the bearings in the sleeve. And there we introduced two new things. One was a dustproof seal to really make sure that inside the sleeve it's clean and it's well greased for optimal durability. And then we also introduced a new type of construction for the bearing application. So we introduced an inner race between the bearing and the bar. And that has some interesting consequences. It really perfects the rotation of the bar. So typically, if you look at older bars, the heavier you load the bar, there's some slight effects on the

rotation of the sleeve. But with this new construction, we're really trying to optimize the rotation and make it smooth, optimally smooth for lifting for all type of loads. And really at the core is that we want to make an experience for the lifter where you have the ultimate lifting experience. You should be as connected to the bar as you are to your own body. Every slippage, everything should be so optimal that it feels like you're basically lifting your own self. That's kind of the driver behind our thinking with developing the bars. We talked about the history of the company starting as an appliance company.

We mentioned the waffle makers. We just had Swedish waffles a little bit ago. Delicious. Delicious. And we were talking about the grip and the knurling and whatnot. We haven't actually tied those two things together. Can you give us the story of the waffles? The funny thing is that the waffle iron is still there on the bar.

The grip is a waffle iron pattern. So it really connects back to the history of the company. It's actually 100% true. You don't have to believe them. You can believe us. We ate the waffles. It's the exact same. Exactly. And you've been in the production as well. So you've seen it. So someone back in the day saw the waffle iron pattern and was like,

we should stamp that on a barbell and that would give us better grip. And then it just turned out to work really well. The funny thing is I actually saw my brother visited the Nike headquarters some time ago. And they also have a similar type of waffle iron story to their history. Yeah, the shoe. Yeah, the shoe.

They made a sole out of it. They had the waffle pattern. They didn't make the waffle irons themselves, but they actually were somehow eating waffles and came up with an idea to make a sole that was really innovative and new at the time. So it's nice to have a shared history with that type of company. Nike's been around. Yeah, they've been successful. When did you become CEO?

2012. Was that right about when you guys went back and kind of this process of reinventing the barbell and upgrading everything? Yeah, you can say. I mean, since then, I would say we've accelerated our focus on product development and really focusing on the core of our business, which is the lifting equipment, of course, the free weights, the weight lifting, power lifting, para power lifting,

but really free weights equipment for for uh lifting strength training and and functional fitness yeah i think it would be cool to tell the people you know like how you guys use your company motto where you want to be kind to everyone not just to every person but to yourself the environment and we learned that a lot of your processes are very healthy for the environment i think a lot of people would love to hear that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, our values are really built on performance, of course. So pursue outstanding performance.

That's really at the core. He means being jacked. And to keep learning. So education is a key part of what we work with. And then the kindness part. We say you should act with kindness. And also that is sort of the

internally we talk about it as the ultimate display of strength. And it's something that we care a lot about. It really goes back to the way my father ran the business. So we're a family-owned company and my father ran it for quite some years.

And he was always talking about putting the human being at the center. And we tried to really keep that in the business. And it's something we care a lot about. So the relationships are extremely important, both within the company and then with every person that somehow touches the Eleko company. Kind of growing up in this business, what was your connection as a kid to the weightlifting, powerlifting community? And really, you don't have to go into the family business,

but you guys clearly have and accelerated it. Yeah, exactly. And I've always been close to the business. And I was working, even though I was not operationally in the company, I was working with my father on discussing how we could develop the company. But I went my own path for a while. My background is more in finance and that type of industry. But I've always had my eye on the company and really wanting to develop it in a good way.

And I think now seven years ago ago we made a decision to transition. And I've just always loved the company, the products, the people. And also I'm driven also by having a platform where we can actually have some positive impact on people so it's it's it's a it's a luxury and it's a it's a great benefit to be able to take take on a task like that and in terms of the specifics for for weight lifting i've i've lifted myself for for quite some years but i'm i'm really and i i eat everything in terms of sports so i i run i I cycle, I swim, I hike. But lifting weights is the coolest one.

Yeah, it is. Exactly. I think there would be a lot of pressure to take the business knowing that it's considered the best barbell that's ever existed, and you've got to maintain that. There's a lot of companies out there trying to beat you. What is the pressure like as taking that on? Because when you take it on, that's you saying,

I'm going to keep this the best barbell that's ever existed. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And I think this was something I thought a lot about just before I joined. And I think the big risk with running a company where you actually are considered to be a leader in your field is that you lean back. And you fall back on your history.

And the history is there. It should guide you a lot, but it should not let you lean back and stop developing the company and the products. So I think that's really been my guiding star, I would say. And to really push the company forward in terms of product development and innovation. And we're also trying to create a... I mean, our business model is really built around very strong collaboration with our customers,

having education, our education business as part of what we offer, bringing a solution with really top quality products at the core that are tested and developed in in together with the best athletes in the world and really being used in the in the world's best facilities so it's a i've thought a lot about that part, and it's something that I have to remind myself of every day. Yeah, man, because if you just sit back and say, look, we're the best, and you don't do anything to continue being the best, somebody will eventually take you over.

But if you're already ahead, the best part of that is I'm ahead, so keep going. No one will ever catch you. They'll just be getting to where you were, where you were, where you were. Yeah, and I think you need to really find a balance between being confident in what you do and having a humbleness for that. So it's extremely important. You guys have also structured the business in a way that it separates you with the contract that you guys have with the steel company.

You guys are the only people in the world that are able to have access to the raw materials to create the products. Yeah. How is that kind of not only that relationship but the other things that you guys have put in place to ensure that you're able to maintain that that leadership in the in the field I think that's right I mean we we try to work with proprietary materials and and we also look for for innovation that can be patented so you you can always work to find things where you can lock in some parts of your business. But I think to build something really sustainable for the future, that's one part. But I think it's really building the whole integrated offering that we can supply. I'm curious about marketing because we were told that humility is a huge part of the Swedish background.

So marketing would be interesting there because you want to be humble. You're number one. You want people to know that, but you don't necessarily want to say that. So how do you consider that when you're when you're doing your marketing yeah no it's right and it's it's uh it's i mean there's a trap where which you can fall in where you become sort of too self-confident or even self-righteous on on some parts but right i think yeah i think it's i mean that that has to come from the culture in the in the in the company right i mean we have as one of our three values really to keep learning and to keep examining yourself

and really being critical inwards on, do we really, are we really making the best effort we can? Do we have the best solution and the best products? So I think that's a day-to-day exercise

to keep pushing that mentality. Yeah, as you guys scale a business too, from creating a barbell to now becoming the leaders in the field, it's very easy to, I mean, we're in a room right now that is perfectly branded. Everything's gorgeous. From top to bottom, the entire experience has just been, I would say,

the best experience I could imagine. What have been the challenges kind of scaling the business, growing it into this leadership role, and then making sure that all the little stuff is taken care of with employees and culture and the ethics behind it. And that's really the challenges you have as a fast-growing company.

And we've been growing fast now for at least for the seven years I've been here and even before that. So we've been on a growth path for quite some time. And when you grow every year at a high rate, you need to make it into the – it has to be built into the strategy and built into the way you run the business. But definitely it has challenges every day. So just in terms of being able to build structure in the company and in the organization without losing the part where we've been nimble and flexible. So that's a real task that we work with every day. One of the most interesting things that I've seen happen in strength conditioning lately is the fact that I can walk into,

it used to be if you went to a, in order to find a good barbell, you had to go to like the one random power lifting gym of the guy that cared more than everybody but you knew he's gonna be out of business in two years and you'd probably have to go train in his gym to find a good bar and then you went to the globo gym and that was just like god soul sucking and they don't have bars that spin and it's just they're breaking all the time. Now you can go into a Globo gym and a Lico's in there. The fact that you guys have scaled it to Globo gyms has to have just radically shifted to become such a household name.

Yeah, how did you do that? Yeah, well, I mean, that's part of the strategy, of course, to really build on the expertise and experience we have from the professional market and take that to new markets. And I think, I mean, this is what's happening in the industry as well. I mean, you see it better than most, I guess. I mean, but there is a real shift in how people train and lifting is at the core. Thank God. Yeah, thank God. And it's really quite natural when you think about it because, I mean, the results are there. And the experience is better.

And this has been a major hurdle in the fitness industry for so many years. There's been a clear opposition to taking on board that in the gyms. But so we worked a lot with that both in terms of messaging and in terms of product development. That was actually the reason why we started the education business to begin with. It was that we saw obstacles in actually getting the fitness market to adopt to this. And they thought that this was a type of training that had high injury rates. When it's got a low one, really. Young people should not do it.

Old people should not do it. And it's noisy and it's all that. So we worked a lot with trying to educate our customers on that part and really working together with them on understanding the true benefits of lifting. And it's both the physical benefits and then it's the community benefits of lifting. And it's both the physical benefits and then it's the community benefits as well.

It's a much more engaging type of training than the traditional type of fitness activity. When I first heard how expensive an Aleko barbell was, I was like, man, I just can't spend that kind of money. It's really tough. We just spent like two hours walking through the process i think it's the greatest deal in the world when it comes to a barbell like what creating that process and taking a piece of steel the bar that comes from your uh suppliers uh can you just walk

us through in case like we're here filming a documentary on barbells, specifically creating the best barbells in the world. But what, I guess, kind of that process and a lot of the checks and balances that go into making sure that every single person, whether you're at Gold's Gym that has an Aleko bar, a CrossFit gym, or standing on the world stage, that everybody has the exact same bar down to like the thousandth of a gram.

Yeah. That's insane. Yeah. That's insane. Yeah. I mean, that's a really, really tight margin. Exactly. I mean, that's what we do. And the requirements on our products are very, very high. And our products have been developed out in the competition field

where it's been used by the world's head, the people who lift the heaviest in the world yeah so so the the testing is there for for for real and and then uh and then we just work work uh very hard on on the whole quality assurance process throughout the the chain of production of course so we get the steel from our uh steel mill up in the in the northern part of sweden and it's. And it's a specialty type. It's an ultra-clean type of steel through a special type of production process. So it's really about the cleanliness of the steel.

That's sort of the starting point. And then it's all the way out through the surface treatment and the precision of the sleeves and the bearings and the final assembly process. So people sometimes talk about they lift junk almost, but this is a highly engineered precision product. And you can only use them three times. That press, the bars, they get used three times are $50. Spends your money, guys.

This bar bill. It's incredible. It's incredible. One of the most impressive things I think I heard all day when we were doing the factory tour and learning how the bar bills are made was we were asking, like, these bars are going to be used in the Olympics. Like the competition bars are used in the Olympics, the world championships, et cetera. And we said, is there like an extra special attention that goes into the bars that happen in the Olympics?

And they were just like, no, you can pick any one of them. They're all made at that caliber, so we don't need to make a special bar. We already make them the best that they can be made. There's nothing we can do to make them better. There's one that says my daughter's name on it, Doug Larson's bar, the mash bar bell. Dude, that was the coolest, making our own bars. So cool. I can't believe it.

I'm curious about the education. I love that part. I was watching, there's a class going on as we speak. So what all courses do you offer? Well, we have some different types of education courses that we offer. One is just product training,

which is sort of the basics on how to get the most out of our products. And then we have modules on specific movements, so like the snatch, like the clean and jerk or the squat. Yeah, people doing that right behind us in the other way right now. And right now we have an Aleko Strength Coach course going on, and that's a three-day course for basically learning the basics of basics of olympic lifting and then also be uh with with with a focus on on coaching and how you can apply that in your in your setting if it's a

crossfit club or if it's a fitness club yeah and and i think that's that's part of our mission as well i mean lifting is an amazing uh form of, and we want more people to discover that. And it's really a discovery activity as well. Once you understand it and once you feel it and once you are able to do your first real proper lift, you understand it and you feel it. And we need to get more people to enter that door. Not just feeling the lift,

but feeling the lifts with Laco barbells was the coolest thing ever. The first time you feel like the whip or when the bar bends on your shoulders when you go to jerk, it's such a noticeable difference compared to everything else that you're going to use. When you guys think about the education side

and running these courses, how does that play into the products or those separate pieces that you guys are building? Is that part of the education side and running these courses, how does that play into the products? Are those separate pieces that you guys are building, is that part of the core business? No, I mean, we get, I mean, there's a lot of synergies between the two. So we get feedback from the education business that we can use in the product development.

We can, I mean, the offering, of course, is a combined offering where we offer a solution and not just a product. In our marketing, one of the best ways to market these days is really to educate people because people want to learn.

It's fun to learn new things. A solution, not just a product. I like that. I just see so many benefits of having this as an integrated part of our business. I think one thing you mentioned is that feeling. Anyone who's ever done a really good snatch, there's no way to explain that other than to teach them how. And when you feel that first big snatch, whatever it is, 120 kilos, exactly 130 kilos and it feels effortless there is like there's no other feeling like that in in the world it's like when you take this heavy barbell

and you do it right yeah your body mechanics are perfect you stay over the bar you drive with your rights and it's just like and it feels like i didn't do anything but the bars above my head yeah you can't get that feeling 120 he said that's what two 280 uh 286 264. i don't know what that is i don't know what that feels like the gram sorry i mean i'm talking yeah they get the kilograms yeah but yeah there's no other or you see somebody beautiful you see lou when you see that with your own eyes it is like watching gymnastics with a heavy barbell yeah it's beautiful thing you can imagine yeah how do you guys actually decide what is right because all these federations are coming to you to build this barbell and you've got the best athletes in the world lifting on them but how do you decide like we've gone

too far on you know how much this bar bends. Or powerlifting should, in a way, you get to shape sport by the products you build. So how do you decide where you go with sport? And how do you decide where the product may be handicapping the sport or making it too easy? Yeah. I mean, this is the conversation we're having with all our… Well, let us be a part of it. Let's go. I want to shape weightlifting right now. Absolutely.

Tell us what you think. I need more oscillations so I get stronger. Absolutely. Cheat more. No, but it is a calibration as well. We get people from all over the world coming here and visiting the company, and they talk about their experience. And we also try to make it very personal as well.

So we want them to talk to our production guys, and we want them to sit down with our product development team and with our marketing team. So that's an ongoing conversation the whole time. But I think over the years, there's been many world champions and Olympic champions passing through these doors. In a way, I guess you could

push world records forward by the products that you put out that actually hit the stage. So that checks and balance has to be a pretty intense conversation. And I mean, the spring of the bar and how the rhythm can help you get a better lift, of course.

And then also just how, I mean, we focus a lot on really perfecting everything and optimizing the feel of the bar. There should not be any type of slippage in a weightlifting product because that's all lost effort. Yeah. product because it all that that's all lost lost effort yeah have you guys ever done experiments where like you put a force platform a force plate into a platform and have someone lift at like 80 percent on many different bars and then looked at like the force diagrams and what peak power was and all that just to see if there's any subtle differences with different bars lifting the same weights with the same people yeah maybe not exactly like that i mean we have a test level we test a lot of things but uh maybe not exactly like that no what is the the r&d process for you guys um bringing lifters in but um if you're going to make a one percent change or half percent

change to a barbell how long does that process take and how many lifters? I think we were talking about the dumbbell, and Joachim said he dropped it from overhead in workouts for like 500 reps or something, and then you guys had a machine dropping the dumbbells for half a million reps and making sure that it still spun perfectly. So just walk us through a little bit of the process of like we have an idea, and then now this is actually a part of the process or a product. I mean, it can take some time actually to develop products. But I think the biggest disturbing thing is often that we want to do too many things at the same time.

So easy, right? Yeah. Do everything. Exactly. So it's down to focusing on what's the most important thing for us. Well, that was something you said when we were going through the tour. It seems like kind of you guys are in that Apple space where you guys have outsourced a lot of the products

and a lot of the processes, but you guys really have three barbells that you just are the best in the world at and just keep making them better. Yeah, exactly. And then we want to innovate within that field as well. These are quite traditional products, but we just launched the open deadlift

bar this year. We've got to talk about that. Which is a new way of approaching a trap bar. And it's a very simple and... I know, but it's simply beautiful because of the way you flip it up to load it, flip it down, the back is open. I love that the back's open so you can do reverse lunges

and all kinds of other stuff you can't do with a regular trap bar. You can do a good row of slung and you can. And that's exactly where we want to be. And that is what excites people here. That's when you can take a very traditional strength training product with the lifting at the center and make it better through simple, innovative ideas. The first time I saw that bar

or the half-trap bar, I looked at it and was like, there's no way that works. What's the official name for that bar? Open Deadlift Bar. I saw it and I was like, there's no way the whole front end is going to fall down. And then you see it in the two stoppers or however, whatever you call them.

Yeah, they counterweight. Yeah, the counterweight is on one side, which also helps load the barbell. So the weights are off the ground. Counterweight is so perfectly that it just sits there perfect every single time. I think something that would give the audience just a bit of how amazing you guys are. We looked at the platform. I'm sorry, the squat rack slash the combo. It's a combo lift, right?

And so you guys got a bunch of engineers to develop that, to make it better than anybody else who's out there. And somebody asked them, well, you know, like, what can you do to make it better? Like, is there a lot you can do? And then there was 80 points that they used to improve the combo rack. The competition powerlifting rack is what it is. 80 points, that blows me away because I've been around forever

and I've seen a million of those. And the fact that these dudes took 80 things from this simple piece of equipment made it the best. What does the engineering department look like here? How many engineers do you guys have on staff? And I guess how is that split on creating new things and making things better versus kind of being the the red team yeah exactly pointing out being the bad guys yeah pointing out all the bad stuff things that need to get better we have 10 people dedicated for product development in the company

and then we also work with some outside support as well where we need to bring in some other competencies. But that's the goal. And this is a journey for us as well. That's where we're pushing our resources as well. So we want to really lead and grow with product development at the front. So it's a very interesting journey. And it's such a fun thing to develop and innovate. Yeah.

So I'm quite excited about the coming years here as well. Jokab was telling us about kind of the mission to empower and kind of change the way weightlifting looks a little bit, not weightlifting the sport, but lifting weights looks, just to get more people involved and kind of get people lifting weights but not being scared of barbells specifically and the trap bar deadlift being um or the hat what was the name of it open deadlift bar yeah um being kind of that first step when did that new mission take over that vision take over um i think i mean implementing that's really the the strategy and the journey

we're on i think we want to we want to take lifting to more people. And I think this product is one way to do that. I think the sound and vibration reducing platform we have is another way. Oh, yeah. That's really opening up. Man, you could have saved me so many problems. Me too.

Yeah. And especially if you look in commercial fitness clubs, that's been a major hurdle for actually introducing this type of training. Especially for someone who's lifting on the second floor of a building. Exactly. You're dropping it, and someone's below you. It's like, gosh, every time I drop the barbell, it's like, and they're up there yelling at you.

So we want to find ways to make it more accessible for people. But I think another important thing is also to look at who's lifting. I mean, the perception of weightlifting in the past has really been that it's a very masculine sport, and it's mostly for men. But, I mean, what's happening in the industry is that it world. In the world. Yes. It's women that take up lifting. And I think that's a fantastic thing

to support. So looking for ways to actually invite that type of new groups of lifters in different areas. Girls like Sarah Davies from Great Britain.

She's a beauty queen too. So she competes in the beauty pageants and is going to the olympics you know it's like she's getting like number six in the world in weightlifting that changes the perception of everything the core is that it's about capability and not about looks it's not it's both for for for men and women but it's how capable you are uh with your body that counts and i think that's the really positive development that i think we all should yeah well what's about what's super cool about the girls to me is like if you see Lou out there and he's clean and jerking a billion pounds whatever the world record is like nobody in the world except him understands what is on the bar right it's way too far away yeah

but you see a girl snatch a hundred It's like everyone kind of understands what 220 feels like. And they're like, wow, I can't do that. And that just looks so simple. And they're so strong. And it's a girl. Holy crap. These girls are such gangsters. Ballet on barbells.

It's beautiful. It's really, really intense. How do you guys come up with and source a lot of this stuff? I mean this this leather that is on here i think it's leather yeah it's not normal leather that everyone might be thinking of um and then the foam pads like how long of a process is it to find the actual raw materials to create oh it can it can be quite quite tricky but we have a i mean the part we're in right now in sweden we have a very a very a very uh like like it's like a cluster of manufacturing companies companies very close

to here as well so we have our own manufacturing here and then we're working very closely with some some some other swedish companies that are that are uh in this field so so uh but that's that's that's uh that's uh that's the key thing as well, finding the right suppliers and the right materials. Yeah. Where do, you know, coming up with the platform, Travis and I have joked about it for many, the last couple hours, like we both have been evicted three times from buildings for dropping barbells. That whole thing started with with that problem so we had customers who were almost being thrown out of their of their of their facilities because they because they disturbed so much with the with the lifting and and and that that triggered that that project yeah so so so and

but and that's been a that's been a long development process as well really trying to find the optimal layering and composition of the materials uh materials for that that product so it's uh it's uh several iterations to reach where we where we are right now yeah do you guys bring in i mean we've mentioned multiple times that you have world-class athletes coming in here and you know testing products and seeing how it feels and making sure the barbell is just an extension of their body. Do you have regular Joe coming in from off the streets that's at the CrossFit gym or at the Globo gym to play with the products and just see the difference and feel what's going on so that you're not just having this Olympic-level conversation with people?

No, that's right. And I mean, a very important testing ground for us, of course, is our customers. So we work with some core facilities that we are very close to and we collaborate on the development side. So we get a lot of research done in those places. We have a concept, which is a LACO certified facility, where we have some facilities that are really fully equipped and fully dedicated to our philosophy and we share the same values and they have the education part of their business as well and then we can build a concept around that and those facilities are typically the ones where we work on product development projects as well. Yeah you mentioned a little

bit earlier talking about your own training it's much more of like a sportsman approach where you're biking and just many sports weightlifting is just kind of, we made sure it was the most fun one that you're doing. Yeah. Do you bring a lot of, or I guess when you go out to play other sports and having a background where you're deep in these products, does it,

are you constantly looking at ways to innovate based on, or seeing other sports in the way that they go about their business? Yes. And I think, of course, I mean, weightlifting has so much to offer other sports as well. I mean, it's sort of the core part of most sports training program. So just, I mean, we sometimes talk about weightlifting for other sports, and we do specific efforts in really trying to bring weightlifting or powerlifting movements into other sports because it has such great benefits.

Sure. So that's also a key part of the education business, trying to really apply the weightlifting and powerlifting movements in different settings in a good way. I'm curious what your best market, because obviously you deal with weightlifting federations, different countries. But I also am very familiar with strength and conditioning staff

at, say, Wake Forest University, which is the city I live in. So what is your target? Where do you guys do the most business? In terms of facilities that we serve? Yeah, yeah. What industry or specific populations is your target market? I mean, we come from professional sports, so we talked about three main main segments for us so the competition market this is really the history of our company and that that's the professional weightlifting and powerlifting and para

powerlifting right markets and there we serve mostly competitions and and sort of professional clubs right and then the performance segment for us it's more focused on schools universities like the one you mentioned right and the military market where we are doing we're quite active at the moment and and also other professional sports so it could be in in soccer or it could be a foot American football or basketball or what beat and then we and then we also serve the commercial fitness market and then it's commercial clubs when you say military I just assume you're talking about the

middle of the American military US military yeah that's one one on a world scale you guys are serving multiple military units, countries? Yeah, because they are quite far down this type of training as well. So they are quite into this more performance-based training to begin with. And I think what's happening in the U.S. right now is that the whole, I mean, now there's a whole shift in the way you test the soldier readiness as well. They need that new deadlift bar. They do. And there's a massive,

we spent a weekend with a special operations person from the Air Force. And hopefully we'll be working with them a lot because they're having massive issues in the fitness space just in America with our general lack of health. It makes it very challenging. To get new people. To get new people.

Much less the top 1% of the 1% to be in special ops. And the ability to get quality products, lead through education in those units, it's massive. I mean, I think a squat, a deadlift, a snatch, a clean, I mean, that should be things you learn at school early on. I agree. In national programs because the benefits are just incredible. For every human on earth, it's movement.

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that there is on earth. And what a great place to start by teaching someone to move around a barbell with such you know you know amazing precision and such amazing yeah and we we talk about i mean pursuing outstanding performance in sports but also in life because the benefits you get from actually being able to move i mean to move better i mean you can you can and and feeling and being strong right i mean you I mean, you can run up that mountain that you come across, and you can swim in that ocean. Right. Climb the tree. Exactly.

And when you go out to actually do things, go on vacation, you're going for a hike, and it's unplanned. You don't have to think about it. You just know you're strong enough to do it because you spend enough time doing these things. Do you guys have a big education piece, locally internationally um for kids in schools is that a piece that you guys ever look at we don't have any active programs for it it's it's one thing that i personally feel strongly about so we are looking for ways to to to to do that we we have

some cooperation in sweden where we support support some more national initiatives on getting more people active, especially with regards to kids. But it's one area which I would love for us to do more. Yeah. You guys work with the, I wish I could remember, the Para Adaptive Sports. Yeah, exactly. When did that start and just the innovation that goes into the equipment that they use for everything? I mean, it's been around for a while, but I think the real breakthrough for that sport was really in London. And they did a fantastic job on promoting the Paralympic sports in a good way. They did a really, really incredible job with communicating what this community is about.

So I think we actually see a strong, a really strong growth in that field. And it's such an inspiring part as well. It actually inspires a lot of people to just see what people with those type of difficulties can do. I mean, it's incredibly inspiring.

And you guys have a partnership for powerlifting side of things for them, right? Yes. So we supply Paralympic World Championships and the Paralympics with the full set of equipment. The Paralympics with the full set of equipment. The Paralympics only have powerlifting,

which makes sense. They don't do weightlifting. And it's only the bench press. What about, but did you see, okay, so I remember when the Paralympics was kind of starting, and I remember there was no special bench press.

I actually coached, you know, a guy who didn't have legs and it was like you basically had to strap them to a regular bench press. It was very awkward for them. I just saw, I had never, this is the first time I've ever seen a bench press made for those people.

How long has that been? It's awesome. First I'm like, what is that? It looks nicer than the regular one. Yeah. It's got the big base. It looks like some giant power lifter would fit well on it. I mean, this process has really been working closely with the Para Powerlifting Federation,

so the International Federation. So they've been a very big contributor to developing these products. And I think the next step is really to try to integrate this more into regular facilities and try to find ways where you can actually promote more of this type of training in a regular gym. I think it's still quite dedicated for the sport. And I think there's an opportunity to actually introduce this more and make it more accessible for people. Or even in colleges. Absolutely.

My mind just went crazy. Wouldn't that be awesome to offer these people places to train all over the country? I want to go to school, but they don't have anything. I can't be active. For veterans as well. Yeah, veterans. For veterans as well. For the people who get into this, it can have a massive impact on their lives. Given the quality is so high, you guys basically make the nicest barbells in the world. You do everything you can to just make sure that the quality is super, super high.

Then you just charge whatever price makes sense to have the nicest barbell that is possible to make but then you also have like xf bars and things that aren't for people that are trying to go to the olympics so it's a cheaper price but the quality is still very high like how do you how do you yeah how do you how do you make sure that that you can uh have those barbells available at a cheaper price but still keep the quality very very high yeah we do some changes to the product of course and i think that the main changes with regards to more the the the hybrids or the fitness bars is in the in the in the bearing construction but i mean overall they are very high quality as well so i think it's more but but they they are more they are more uh optimized for that that type of type of uh

target group rather than than than i mean we don't we have no intention to dilute the quality in any way it's more about finding the right the right product for the right person right they said his grip was a big part of that the grip is a bit smoother yeah and uh the well the bearing uh construction is a bit different as well. We don't have as many needle bearings in that part. It still spins really well. It spins really well. But the needs are different. You're not dropping 500 pounds from overhead with a fitness bar

like you would with a competition weightlifting bar. Right. And Lash is not doing CrossFit. Do you ever have him in here? Have you? He hasn't been here yet.asha's not doing CrossFit. Do you ever have him in here? Have you? He hasn't been in yet. What's he doing? That's not your fault.

He doesn't know what the best is. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. I promise you, Lasha knows good. We talked to him a bit, and he did what an amazing performance in Pattaya. I saw it. I'm like, I just can't believe that we're going to see this. That was incredible.

If you're listening, you don't know who Lasha is. He just set the snatch and clean and jerk world record for the heavyweight. He's 6'8"? He's 6'7". 6'7". Yeah, not only he crushed it for every man that's ever lifted, there's never been anyone stronger than Lasha in the snatch clean and jerk total. We're going to see a 600-pound clean and jerk.

He's chasing that right now. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of coaches out there, a lot of international coaches who we've talked about that. Can he snatch 500 pounds? I think yes. I think he can clean and jerk 600. I think he's just so far ahead he's being very wise. He goes six for six at every world championships.

So that tells you we all know this. If he's going six for six all the time, he's capable of way more. Yeah, when he's doing 220 and it's like a twig, it's like most of us are last warm-up and that's his last. You know he's good for five and six, and that just blows my mind. Yeah, that's incredible. How many would athletes have come in here where you just see them and you go whoa that is next level scary i don't know exactly which

one to mention but i mean we we have a you just get used to it yeah but i think i think the best feeling probably is when you when you visit one of the world championships and you're in the training area yeah you have just this these amazing lifters around you, and they all just get at it. And that is an incredible atmosphere to be in. I always like watching it more than when they're on the platform. Because if they're lifting a weight that's kind of similar to something you can do something with,

like if they take, you know, if they can, if Walsh can do 220 for snatch, you know, pushing 500 pounds, but then you see him snatch like 150 and it's 330 pounds, but then he moves it so incredibly fast. It looks so easy. He muscle snatched it. Oh, did you see the muscle snatch? Oh, my gosh.

He muscle snatched, what, 308 or something? Yeah, that's right. Oh, 140. Eric, would you agree that in the training hall is really where the competition begins? I think those dudes get in there and it it's like their way of marking their territory. They're basically pissing on the barbell and saying, I am going to – Not an illegal barbell. No way.

They would never do that. Besides, the training hall is the most intense, because especially like a week before, prior to competition starting, it's just them beating their tooth. Everyone's in their posture. When he muscle snatches 308,. yeah everyone else just goes home the other the other weightlifters look at each other the other heavyweights they're like all right we're battling for second who's gonna get yeah who's getting silver yeah no i mean that's where it starts

yeah that's where it's not where you position which platform you take and who you who you're lifting uh next to or oh yeah or and you see them like looking at each other you positioned which platform you take and who you who you're lifting next to or oh yeah and you see them like looking at each other you know and like you're dropping the barbell in the training hall and they're like already like you said posturing you look over that that 73 kilo chinese dude's over there the guy that power snaps 190 you're like six kilos shy of the world record or power cleaned it rather i saw the 67 doing, he was repping 600 pounds. Well, it was 270 kilos, and he's repping it for clean pulls. That's 140, for all of you that don't know, it's a 148-pound man.

He's playing with 600 pounds. Yeah. 4X body weight. Just doing some clean pulls. Yeah. Man, when we talk about innovation with you guys, the dumbbells that you guys are making are super cool. They've got the spinning handle like a barbell. They've got the bearings.

Can you walk me through just a little bit of the production of those? Clearly, they're very special. They're the one of a kind in the market. Yeah, exactly. So this is really where we've looked at the bar, the barbell to begin with, and then really taking all the expertise we have from that type of production, but of course shrinking it down to a rotating performance dumbbell. And we've just launched it, and it's a really nice product.

So we make it here in our factory. It's the Leiko steel for the grip. The knurling is there. It's a new way of applying the bearings on a rotating dumbbell. So it's really about finding a solution for a smooth and optimal rotation for the dumbbell. And we've also been able to do it in a way where we don't have to go up too much in diameter on the grip as well, which is actually better for most people. So typically if you look at the rotating dumbbells out there they're almost

fat grip dumbbells but here we have a performance dumbbell which is of the same type of smoothness in the rotation as our bars super high quality spins like they're barbells it's a really nice that's one of the products where you

need to pick it up and feel it and then you feel that it's this. I mean, you can do proper snatches with this dumbbell. Do like a one-arm dumbbell snatch and it rotates real nice. Oh, but it's even good. I remember when I was at my peak in powerlifting, like taking the dumbbells, let's say like 120s, or the most I've ever done is 150s.

And like when you fall back with them and they don't spin, it's just murder on your wrist. But these would just be like it would just be yeah the feeling would and the amount of wear and tear and you still need to have some kind of connection to them yeah it should not just spin uh out of control of me yeah so you still need to feel to feel the the weight basically people are going to pick it up and then open their wallet it's's what's going to happen. It's part of the deal. I just want to give you my credit card and be like, do what you want with this. Yeah.

Well, we're going to do that later when we go to the apparel store. I think they mostly sell 150s. That's really all they sell with the dumbbells, 150-pound dumbbells. That's the most they've ever done. But it was murder getting it back. I remember doing inclines. It's just like on my wrist. Yeah. That would just like on my wrist.

That would just flow so much better. Do you ever just do one arm at a time? Like whenever dumbbells get heavy and I don't want to try and position myself, I just do one arm at a time. Right, that's what you do. You fall back and you fall back and it's just rough on the wrist. But that would just flow into place so much better. I think any powerlifter out there listening is probably going to buy these

because it hurts. That's why going to buy these because it hurts. That's why you stop doing them because it hurts too bad. How often are you guys trying to revolutionize a product? You walk into a gym and you see this stuff that has been here, like a squat stand. I looked at a squat stand and I'm like, man, that's the same squat stand I've been squatting on since I was 13.

It looks the same. When do you look at that and go, we need to make that better? Like, we need to find a way. This is exactly what we do with our product development. I mean, we are not looking to expand outside of our core product.

So we are about barbells, about the discs, about the dumbbells. We haven't even talked about the discs. We have to talk about them. It's a bumper place for people who haven't even talked about the disks. We have to talk about them. It's a bumper place for people who don't call them disks. Yeah.

I like all the disks here and it sounds way cooler. I just say plates. Plates in the US. So we do this all the time. And we have a list of projects that we are both working on and wanting to initiate as well. So there's not a list of projects that we are both working on and wanting to initiate as well. So there's not a lack of it. It's more that we just need to focus and get one thing or a few things done at a time. Is there a company slogan, piece, commitment of no matter what we put out, it has to be best in class?

Best in class is... We talk be best in class. I mean, best in class is, I mean, we talk about best in class strength products. That is the key to our offering. And really it's about the safety that comes first and then it's about the quality and then it's about the performance.

So we really look at safety, quality, performance as the key components of what constitutes the best-in-class strength products. And then we have our categories of products that we focus on. And for each one, we benchmark and test and measure our performance and our quality and our safety levels against the competition. I think that's the whole process. And in the super secret room that we got to go in to make the barbells, which you couldn't bring the camera so you guys can't actually see it,

the amount of testing that goes on, they try to break barbells here. Yeah. They're testing things. I wish I could remember to the exact PSI, but it's, I mean, you guys are trying as hard as you can to break and bend barbells and they come back to like a thousandth of a degree

yeah and it's like okay we'll call that straight and every single barbell has to meet those standards before it gets sent out and it's always I mean you can push the quality to the extreme and the durability of a barbell to the extreme, but then you lose also some of the features that make it optimal for lifting.

Oscillation, if it's too... You need to really find the perfect balance there. And we built several test machines ourselves really for this specific purpose of testing. And that's where we learn a lot about the longevity of the bars and how they perform as well. Yeah, it's nice to see those tolerances being so tight. With the weight of the barbells, the woman that was helping us assemble them earlier was saying

that they can't be any more than 10 grams below 20 kilos or 20 grams above 20 kilos, which is a very tight tolerance. 10 grams is not much weight. I remember in graduate school, when I was competing in weightlifting, we had iron plates in our gym, and all of them had the real weight written on the side of the plate. It says 45 pounds, but it would be like 47.24, 43.11. They're not within 10 grams.

They're like many pounds off that's such a doug move right there to really know exactly i would just be like ah pr no who knows we did the same thing you can pick them up and tell sometimes yeah they were that they were that 43 and a 47 it's like yeah you know what i mean sometimes you walk it out you're like this is not right barbell moves plates fall off i always had four or five plates on the side of my bar. So I figured I'd kind of just average that out to 45 per. I'll take a 43 and a 47, and we'll call it 245. Eric, I asked a question there, and he wasn't quite sure.

But, like, when it comes to PSI, can you explain, like, what does that mean? And he said, like, that, you know, it doesn't necessarily, like, 18,000 PSI could mean a couple things can you explain psi the psi is really where the i mean that that's that's the that's the measure of of of when the bar breaks basically and and and that's an important part of of creating a a really high quality bar but you you also need to factor in the yield strength of the of the bar which is sort of where the and we also need to factor in where the where the bar bends so that the the different the different parameters to to factor in to really find the the the optimal uh place for the for the steel to be in so it's's, I mean, PSI has become sort of the, the main thing that people look at

for, for, for having a, for, for assessing a bar. And, and, and if it's above 200,000 or somewhere around there, it's a, it's a high quality bar. And, but, and that's true, but you also need to factor in some other, some other other aspects that's where it breaks yeah but like but so we had a bar this is that was we were testing out for another company and we had someone do a clean injury you know at first i was like it spins well and it definitely oscillates well but i think the problem was it oscillated too much yeah in a cleaning jerk we had kane wilkes is a heavyweight in amer in America he clean and jerked it was a lot but it wasn't

even close to his best it was like 210 kilos he clean and jerks it and that's all he did didn't miss clean and jerks it sits it down bent it it was like that will not happen we have a couple of elaco bars at our gym and like

it's been put to the test. Never come close. This bar was its first day in existence, and it bent from a simple cleaning chair. He caught it, and that's where it happened. We looked on camera. As soon as he caught it, he saw it. You could see it. What kind of weight would cause one of the nicest bars you have to bend?

Is it 3,000 pounds? What type of weight would you have to lift? Yeah, exactly. I mean, we test our bars with 1,500 kilos. I can't walk that out. 3,300. I can't walk that out. That's roughly around that.

And then, I mean, when you do, I mean, when lasher lifts, of course, the force is much more than just what's on the way right given the the speed of the bar and and how so so you you need to be i mean you cannot just measure it based on what you what you load on the bar right so you have to you have to you have to test it on on a very different different because if you drop it at this angle and it hits there would be more flexion and more isolation in the bar first like if you drop it and land straight that's hardly any bar is going to bend right it's like if it lands slightly off

there can be more oscillation yeah yeah it depends how fast it's accelerating decelerating to figure out the total force yeah and then also when you when you catch it in a in a clean right that's where you get a lot of force as well right it was nice to see that when when putting the knurling on the bar No actual material is removed. It's just it's just press I just just excited just form it the only time I've ever seen a barbell break I was playing college football. We had one of our D tackles was doing hang cleans with like, you know, three wheels, you know 315 Yeah, and in the barbell broken happen He broke his wrist because one of the one because one of the little hash marks or whatever,

like the little smooth lines in between the knurlings was scored into the bar. It was like a break point intentionally put into the bar and he went to a hankling and just broke right in half. And it snapped his wrist. Things like that. Yeah, it broke his wrist. He had straps and all that.

He was tied onto the bar. But yeah, things like that wouldn't happen because you don't actually remove any material. No, exactly. And I mean, that's the safety aspect of it. I mean, that's where, I mean, it can be quite dangerous if those things happen. So the safety is the key thing when you look for a bar, in my mind.

Yeah. One time at our gym, we had, we didn't tell them to do this we had a cleaning crew come in and they cleaned the whole gym and then we had a bunch of barbells in a vertical bar stand you know like you know three by three so there's nine barbells in this vertical stand and they came in and they cleaned all the barbells and then all the water or whatever ran down the bar and got into into the bearings and all the bars froze like they wouldn't spin anymore uh earlier you said that you had like dust-proof seal, so to speak. Exactly.

If that happened with your dust-proof seal, would the water get in there and would it mess up the rotation? We just have to kill them. We took those two. I've tried to rid the world of these people. That's why we've designed it like that, to seal it off. Because that could be an issue. That's where you could get a jammed sleeve if there comes dirt or moisture in there somehow.

So, I mean, definitely, that would be prevented. And you guys have, what's it like, a 10-year warranty? Is that correct? For if there's anything that any defect or whatever i think we're at 12 on most of the bars and then lifetime on on the competition bars that's what i thought i thought it was a lifetime yeah yeah so let me ask you like for our you know listeners because we have obviously a lot of owner gym owners like uh i've always heard that the storage of the barbell should be horizontal versus vertical. What is the difference?

Is there a difference? Is that a tall tale? I mean, it could be what you explained, Doug, that there could be. And especially if you don't have any seals to the sleeves, then it could be an effect that either something gets in or the grease ultimately disappears as well. So, I mean, ideally, if you can have it horizontally, that's better. Unfortunately, not all the gyms really have that possibility. So there still needs to be some vertical racks as well.

A lot of people hang their barbells. Like they'll have a hook and then it'll just hang on the like on the top yeah on the top sleeve is that is that problematic at all in the long term for for the sleeves hang on the on the on the walls or no he's talking about like he's like it's it's being stored okay like a j clip on the wall yeah yeah yeah i see what you mean i i mean we don't have it we don't have we haven't experienced that problem, really. But if I would hang my own bar like that, probably not. But we haven't seen that as a big issue with our bars.

We put our bars to bed like babies. Yeah, I mean, it's a beautiful gun that designed perfectly. Very gently. In a bed of silk. Yeah. We've talked very little a beautiful gun that designed perfectly. Very gently. In a bed of silk. Yeah. We've talked very little about the plates, the discs. Where did you guys, you know, what is the process to creating one of those? We actually didn't get to see any of that.

That's it. Hopefully tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow. Tomorrow, I think you can, we'll take it to the river. More tours, more tours. The best thing. We're going to make a whole set of plates that's a funny story as well because that the the coloring of the plates was actually

uh uh something that the lego came up with in the in the beginning you guys created that and and it was really like uh there was some different coloring options out there among competitors but ultimately the the management team at the time were able to pursue the weight lifting operation that this was the right way to color the... Change the game. All different companies had different color schemes, then you guys kind of got there first and said, let's lock this down as the official color scheme. Exactly.

So it's... But I mean... I'd love to be at the meeting when they were like, red. Red has to be the big one. Like, ah, you put them on there. Everyone knows you mean business. But we'll take it to the factory tomorrow for the plates, and they are. And, I mean, that's really the core product in terms of exposure, and that's where you see that uh that uh uh it's it's the

laco products well what what makes a good disc and like what what's about that yeah what helps with the longevity of a disc because like i grew up lifting on laco discs and bars yeah and my strength coach from from 20 years ago still good friend of mine he still uses those same plates he got them there they're rather like 40 years old absolutely and we we we have so many discs out there that are really 40 50 years old and and the old ones are really fantastic to lift but actually they but i mean the rubber composition is really key so so you need to have the the right rubber composition for uh for uh of course durability but then also you don't want to have too much bounce so that that's kind of the the key the key thing to to optimize with with regards to the discs and and other things like of course the construction and and i mean some some are are molded and some are screwed together

with it with the steel hub but i mean for us it's important to optimize the bounce, the durability, and then we care a lot also about just how the look of it as well. I mean, it has to really inspire people to lift. So the coloring and the overall design as well is important. Is it the same tolerances with regard to the highs and lows of what it can weigh? Yeah, exactly. tolerances with regard to the highs and lows of what it can weigh yeah exactly so so a 20 kilo disc disc can weigh maximum 20 grams above that right now and the grooves there's so many little things that what about the center part i would say that um a lot of the discs yeah that could

go where it can go bad is that middle part coming loose yeah like a lot of the muscle driver plates do that so like you know how do you avoid that and it it's it's really i mean one one is of course how you how you fit with with the construction how you fit the rubber to the steel hub right and and we have a kind of a fishtail solution there which which really makes it last for a very long time right so it's typically that or that it's the it's the quality of the rubber so that's where they can I mean if you look at the plates in general that's where they can where they can try to wear out right but this is this is what we just need to test and continuously improve as well so I mean this is I mean we want our plates to to to be there

in 50 years to be used. Everyone in the world will have them and then you're out of business because they never go bad. I like how you guys,

you guys, for the 5 kilo plates and even the 2.5 kilo plates, they are larger than even the 25 kilo plates. In width. Yeah, like the same diameter

but with this figure. A lot, I mean, the reason diameter yeah with this figure a lot i mean the reason i brought that up is a lot of people they have they have those smaller plates and the the diameter of the disc is the same that way you can pull from the same height but they're really thin and they break really easy yeah the design you guys have doesn't seem to have that problem no and and that's really both for technique training and and for for uh youth and and and kids to use that. And I think it's a better solution. And you can actually drop those as well from above your head as well. So they are very durable. Well, on the same note, over there, the bars at the bottom left,

what are those, 5-kilo aluminum bars? Yeah, exactly. If I remember those correctly. So for technique work, people that are just learning that aren't very strong yet for kids, they have very nice lighter barbells that have similar dimensions. Right.

Yeah. And I got a question. Like, I've never really fully understood. You know how you have some barbells that have the grooves in the sleeves? You know, there's one on the far rack. Is that still around? What is that about?

You mean the type of ribbing on the surface? On the sleeve itself. It's got the lines. I mean, to be honest, that's more of an emotional thing. I mean, the sound of putting a disc on, it should be sort of a singing sound. It should be a nice feeling to put the disc on.

And you have many sleeves that are completely... Emotionless. Emotionless, exactly. I was looking for that word. So you were talking about the... The little tiny ridges make the singing sound, but you're talking about the deep grooves where they actually click into place?

Yeah, the barbell. you're talking about the deep grooves where they actually click into place? Yeah, the bar behind. You were talking about what we call the power lock bar. Yes, the power lock bar. Where you have a special type of collar as well. Right. Yeah. And that is a great bar, which hasn't really gotten the breakthrough it deserves,

to be honest. It was used in the old times, and we took it back to be honest it was used in the old times and and and uh and we took it back sort of to to to reinvent it and introduce it again like what's it for yeah i mean it's really for for uh uh tightening the the uh the clips come off exactly i mean when when you drop it typically they they start to lose the colors but here you can lock it and the feeling is actually better in my mind lifting with that type of bar because it's it feels like one piece so you don't have any slippage and you can do multiple repetitions with that as well are each of the grooves set up so it's like a 45 or 20 kilo plate fits and then there's a groove

yeah kind of but they're more just just for well you still have to tighten the the collar as well so so but i mean it's it's fun i actually hope that will that will uh that will i mean more people will discover that it's a i mean the professional weightlifters they they love it it would prevent any of that you know you've seen i'm sure we've all seen the videos of people in major competitions, the weight's sliding off. Yeah, it would totally end there. I don't understand why it doesn't take off.

You should try it because the feeling is different. I will today. We will right now. Right at the end of this. Travis Mask is going to front squat 400. Minimum. At a minimum. Probably five today because he's all fired up hanging out at LECO HQ. As the visionary CEO, what gets you really fired up about the future of the company and the products you guys make? Well, I am fired up because I think we have an incredibly exciting journey ahead.

We want to continue to grow, product develop, innovate, bring weightlifting and powerlifting and strength training to more people. I mean, ultimately I want us to have such an effect on the industry and on the way people train that this is the base. I mean, this is the base. This is where you start.

You start to learn how to lift. And from there you grow more capable and then you can really pursue what what what excites you the most I want to get that message out to so many more people yeah and I think the best platform for us to do that through is really through creating fantastic products education will be there I say as a really as a channel for us to communicate through. But the core should be great, best-in-class, innovative products.

Beautiful. When you kind of pan out and look at the fitness industry as a whole, you've been through this CrossFit craze where it just exploded for a while. Yeah. I guess where do you see a little bit of the future of like fitness because we've kind of seen this plateau in the crossfit space weightlifting i feel like is on its way up and feels like it it's it's still still rising yeah um are there things on the horizon that you see coming um or just the general continual growth of people understanding the lifts and recognizing the health and benefits being strong i mean i think i i think that's what i see i think

crossfit has had an incredible journey and we've been part of that journey as well and i think the influence that has has had on the on the overall commercial fitness industry is quite significant, but still it's very limited. And while CrossFit has grown quite, it's a very strong identity to CrossFit, which is a very strong and positive community, but it's also still a very small part of the overall global fitness industry. So I think it's more finding ways to connect because the basics of CrossFit is very positive in my mind. And it's really down to weightlifting and gymnastics, basically the basic movements.

And I think that's resonating with with the the larger fitness industry i think it's just trying to find ways where this can actually get commercialized even more i think we're still looking at the very small part of the population that are active in fitness to begin with and in that market it's a very small part still that is in crossfit all of us i think are in it and we we feel, it's a very small part still that is in CrossFit. All of us, I think, are in it. And we feel like it's happening all over the place. But if you zoom out a bit,

there's still... Massive health problems. We have to get barbells in more people's hands. And those, I think, are not really being addressed yet by the performance market we're in. So we need to find a way to bridge that because I think the focus on the basic movements

and on education and on the lifting is a solution and is part of it. It just needs to get bigger though. Yeah. And that's really where I want us to be part of that work as well. I mean, we need to find ways where we can actually have a bigger impact on the industry. Yeah, and get really quality, best-in-class products to people as they enter in instead of the janky products that get sold to them because they don't know what's going on. Yeah. You can hand someone the best barbell in the world and teach them how to lift and move and now safely yeah yeah now it's a i think i think

we want to connect really with the with the user of the product as well i mean typically if you look in our our industry it's it's a business to business uh industry where where we sell to uh facilities or gym chains but i think i think where you can really we want to build a brand we sell to facilities or gym chains but I think we want to build a brand we want to build a connection to the product out with the user and then I think you can get interesting things starting to happen

where you actually get a pull from the people who use the products and where they discover the benefits and then they start to influence as well what is out there in the gyms agreed you know i think we are also like we're all in it like you said and we all think that everybody it works out or that yeah or that crossfit has really spread the word but if you go to any in any grocery store in the world and interview the first 100 people i guarantee

maybe two out of the 100 have lifted a barbell yeah exactly you know exactly so like still there's a 80 you know that would mean that no that like the majority of the population still needs to learn yeah so yeah i had a meeting with a marketing agency recently and they uh i i we had a back and forth and i tried to ask them what what what do they see? Who's our typical user of our products? And they really described a person which was not at all doing what I'm used to. I mean, when you look at the traditional weightlifting lifts, so even when you had a company that really had researched us and looked at what we do,

they had in their mind a completely different user which was really doing some kind of odd old style heavy lifting movement you're like no that's not right at all you're fired so we're not friends and also he was envisioning

this person screaming a lot and I mean what we talk about is a very different type of exercise yeah and it's almost it's more towards the the quiet still meditation type of yeah of reward you get from from lifting yeah so it was just in golf claps i mean i think i think it should good job you did well today human being to the world championships, I think they would appreciate it. They just don't see it.

I could take anybody there and say, watch this person lift, like, pretty much a heavy car. But, like, look how easily he does it and look how he moves. And just, like, say, here's an empty barbell. You try to move like that. They can't. And then they would be like, their minds would be blown. It it's not screaming and yelling it's not a bunch of barbarians it's incredibly athletic people they're moving their bodies the way that they were designed to move

and it's beautiful it's truly beautiful it is beautiful man when you see lou you're just like you know yeah like i like uh as a coach i love movement is what I love. You know, like I follow worldwide ballet. Okay, I'm out. I've said it. You know, it's out there. But like I do it because you watch these people. Arnold did ballet. It's cool.

I knew it. You do it? Beautiful. Yeah, but I love the beauty of the movement. Like the ballet, you see a person move like that, and they take their leg and they put it above their head, and their torso is still vertical. You're just like what?

I love watching those. How does that happen? So that's what people need to understand. It's about learning to move your body through space like in beautiful ways.

Yeah. Where can people find it more? Where can people buy one of these beautiful best in class barbells? Do yourself a favor

and do it. Just do it people. Yeah I'm excited. You'll share a bed with it at night and hug it like it's your kid. I'm going to. Drew's going to have to sleep beside it. Get in touch with us. You'll find us on elaker.com.

That's where you reach out. We would be happy to assist and help. Coach Travis Mash. Mashelite.com. There he is. Doug Larson. Before I throw my Instagram and all that, I've been lifting on you guys' bars for 20 years. I really cannot endorse a Laco

any stronger. It's an honor to be here. We did this five years ago. I had a fantastic time. You guys treat us incredibly well, and it's really good to be back here. If you haven't lifted on the Laco bar, I highly, highly recommend it. They really are the best. If you haven't picked that up from the rest of the show. So, Eric, thank you for having us here.

I appreciate that. And you can find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. Yeah. I also would love to say thank you so much for having us out here. Just I never knew barbells would take me to the place where they make the best barbells. And on top of just doing this with two of my best friends here, we have our families out here. And our daughters are basically a year old.

And they got to go on this tour. And, yeah, it's unbelievable that this is part of our lives and we get to be here. So thank you so much for having us. The pleasure is mine. And I love what you guys do. So thank you very much. I'm Anders Varner. At Anders Varnerarner we're the shrug collective at shrug collective one ton challenge snatch clean jerk squat deadlift bench 2 000 pounds 1200 for you ladies that's the

goal you can get over to one ton challenge.com download the free book making strong people stronger we'll see you guys soon that's a wrapChallenge.com forward slash qualified. Make sure you get signed up. All the strong kids are hanging out. Snatch clean jerks. Go out to the bench. Gym owners, send me an email. I want to help you build your community.

I want more strong people at your gym right now. Our friends over at LiveMomentous.com, L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com forward slash drug. $20 off your first purchase of $50 or more. P3OM forward slash shrugged free for the gut bacteria from Bioptimizer and WOD on the Waves

of course. WOD on the Waves.com. Come float with me. WOD on the Waves.com use the coupon code shrugged and PRXperformance.com use the coupon code shrugged and prxperformance.com use the coupon code shrugged to get the badass home gym friends next week we got more cool stuff

and there's a documentary coming out god I have so many things to tell you about have a good one