The third pillar of my personal practice has been barbell training(pillar 1, pillar 2). The interesting thing about barbell training for me is while it was at one time intrinsically interesting for its own reasons a set of movement skills to master, going deeper into refining the basic barbell movement is no longer very intriguing, however the basic practice of barbell lifting strengthens my physical structure and supports my efforts in other areas. There is far more to manipulation and lifting then simple barbell training but we can not pursue all roads at once, if we go deeply into complex movement,flow and improvisation in locomotion we may not have the time or resources to explore so deeply in manipulation or combat. It is still very important and useful to develop the basics. You can learn the basics of many capacities in a 6 weeks to 6 months put that basic effort level in and maintain it and you will have much broader movement foundation.
If you spend six months with good focused barbell barbell program you can add a foot to your standing broad jump 3-6 inches to your vertical and 10-20 lbs of muscle, you can scale back dramatically after that and refocus on other things and still retain most of that strength and at any time be able to return to it to tweak your athletic profile or rebuild yourself.
I have trained many athletes from that novice to intermediate phase in weight training and always had immense effects on their overall athletiscm.
Being able to snatch a million pounds may be less intriguing then pressing to handstand, jumping between building, fighting like a tiger and flowing like water to you(and me too) but you are missing a huge piece in physical development if you ignore the power of the barbell as tool to build your athletic foundation.
My personal favorite barbell based program is the sparta performance science group.
For inspiration today in the barbell world check out chinese weightlifting virtuoso showing of one of the powerful movements humans can achieve the olympic snatch.
