About Us
Beyond the name that I not-so-creatively came up with (my last name is O'Malley, and I help people get stronger by lifting with barbells) O'Malley's Barbell Club is a simple, practical and useful approach to both strength training, and training in general.
We're in the business of doing what works best for you. And because strength is the most useful thing we can train to improve; and it can most effectively be trained for, and measured, with the time-tested traditional barbell lifts, that's what we do.
The main barbell lifts - squat, bench press, deadlift, and overhead press - may not be the most trendy and attention-grabbing, but they are the most effective at making your body stronger.
These basic barbell lifts require you to use the major muscles of your body together as one unit - your legs, back, chest, shoulders, core - whilst also challenging, and therefore improving, your balance and mobility (as you have to control the bar yourself, through long ranges of motion) - similar to how we use our bodies in everyday life.
You don't pick up your groceries or grandchildren with just your biceps.
There's a difference between exercise and training. Exercise is doing random movements that get you tired and sweaty. Training is about making progress - working towards being able to do more in 3,6,12 months time, than you can right now.
We prefer to train.
To make progress, your training needs to be challenging enough so you will adapt to it, but kept at a level that's manageable so it doesn't take too long to recover from, and progressive so you can keep being challenged to adapt and grow stronger.
A barbell allows us to do this better than anything else. It can be increased in weight in a manageable, controlled way, specific to you. It can't be outgrown - there's always the potential to add more weight to it. And progress is very clear to see - how much weight is on the barbell now compared to before.
But above all else, we lift with barbells because we enjoy it. The rewarding feeling of now being able to lift something that 6 months ago seemed impossible. Being a part of the tradition of one the oldest forms of training there is. And because of the simplicity of what we need to do to get stronger, and the challenge of then grabbing a barbell and doing it.
