The Power Glide Barbell was conceived by two of the founders of Power Glide Fitness – Brandon and Marty – during a chest workout session at a local gym. Both experienced back pain and strained back muscles through their years of lifting. Such back stress was aggravated by moving heavy dumbbells (a single one weighing 100 pounds or more) into proper position to perform flat, incline, decline dumb bell press and related fly motions. As experienced weight lifters know, these exercises are crucial to developing strong chest, triceps, and shoulder muscles. Alternatives to using dumbbells are to use barbells or machines to perform the same exercises. However use of barbells or machines lead to an inferior workout due to reduced range of motion and worse yet, barbell presses force the shoulder joint to move in an unnatural manner, often leading to shoulder injuries. As compared to a dumbbell, the barbell does have an advantage, as they are much easier to load and position for lifting.
The Power Glide team concluded that the ultimate solution was to combine the ease of use of the barbell with the workout efficiency of the dumbbell, but the question remained — How to accomplish this? One day while watching a lifter at the gym flat press 150 pound dumbbells, Brandon noted the trajectory of the dumb bells. All that was missing from the barbell press was the freedom for the hands to move along the barbell toward or away from one another. Marty constructed a plastic and wood prototype with movable grip locations to confirm feasibility, the team concluded this truly was the solution!
Further metal generations of prototypes reinforced this finding and uncovered that use of the barbell gave the lifter a “fly” type of resistance. Excitingly, the fly resistance combined with a dumbbell press motion provided a significant benefit in workout efficiency! Other features and benefits became apparent as the team testing, refined, and improved the Power Glide Barbell.
