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Welcome to The BarBend Newsletter! Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• Training legs with an achy back

• 6 of the best reasons to increase your grip strength

• The cost of chasing CrossFit glory

Workouts

Don’t Put Your Back Into It

You should always treat pain at its source, trust your doctors, and never ignore any injuries. Read that sentence twice before proceeding.

If you’re a meathead, you not only didn’t follow the instructions in the second sentence above, but you saw something about “pain” and “doctors” and just skipped the whole thing.

Whether or not you take care of yourself in the most appropriate ways possible, chances are you probably need a little help modifying your training when dealing with back pain. This is doubly true when trying to get bigger, stronger legs while dealing with a bad back. After all, barbell squats can be mercilessly painful if you’ve got a herniated disc.

Thankfully, lower-impact squat variations like belt squats and box squats can feel amazing whether you’re banged up or not. Focusing on unilateral work like step-ups and dumbbell lunges can also help balance you out and give you a more “athletic” feeling. 

It’s usually fine to keep exercising when you have a hitch in your giddyup, but it’s a doubly good idea to make sure you’re on the right track with things.

A Message From Hydrow

Set Aside 20 Minutes for Hyrdow 🚣‍♂️

Your day is full. You've got meetings, school drop-off, meal prep, and (hopefully) carving out some quality time with friends and family.

Somewhere in that chaos, you’ve got 20 minutes.

With Hydrow, that’s all it takes to get a full-body workout. And it’s not just cardio—it’s strength training, mindfulness, and adventure rolled into one beautifully designed machine.

And you’re not stuck rowing alone in your basement, grinding through 500-meter sprints.

Hydrow delivers immersive, instructor-led workouts straight to your home—hosted by Olympians and elite athletes. One session, and you could be rowing across a Scandinavian fjord or powering through a 10-minute core blast in Ireland’s County Wicklow.

For a limited time, save up to $1150 and use code "BarBend" for an extra $50 off.

Get rowing 🚣

Strength Training

Get a Grip

Grip strength isn’t just for bringing up the groceries in one trip; it’s actually one of the leading markers of longevity. Yes, that limp-fish handshake you dread feeling when meeting someone new at a corporate event is a major indicator for all-cause mortality, in addition to being a sure sign Bob from accounting isn’t going any further up the corporate ladder.

A potentially longer lifespan is just one of six significant reasons you should care more about your grip and your grip training than you currently do.

If living longer doesn’t do it for you (we get it), then we bet you’re the kind of person who is obsessed with lifting more weight. Well, guess what? Being able to hold more weight means — dum de de dum — you can lift more weight! 

Do you want to be the cool grandparent who everyone in the neighborhood comes to when they need help opening a jar of pickles? Then get your grip right with the article below, and your entire life will follow accordingly.

CrossFit

You’ve Got to Spend Money to Make Podiums

Living the life of a rockstar athlete isn’t always what social media makes it out to be. In a reminder that what you see on TV still isn’t real, Morning Chalk Up caught up with elite CrossFit athlete Hannah Black to examine the financial realities of pouring your heart, soul, and financial solvency into the quest to chase down sporting greatness.

Black’s basic expense list looks like that of a lot of 20-somethings, just with the addition of a huge black hole of travel expenses from contests. Black also had to leave her high-paid STEM job to train full-time; many parents and clock-punchers will note the difficulty of squeezing in enough time for “regular” training, much less the ruthless schedule of a semi-professional athlete.

Sponsorships pay less than you think, prize money is a drop in the bucket, and all these commitments leave little time left in the day for coaching. See the true cost of “chasing the dream,” which all but a very small handful of top athletes struggle with as they try to snatch and box jump their way to immortality.

World Record!

A Mountainous Pull

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Hafthor Björnsson officially broke the all-time world record deadlift over the weekend at the Eisenhart Black Competition with a massive 505 kilograms! Check out the lift in the Instagram post above, and read our full rundown of the list here.

Quick Hits

💪 Bulk Up: Learn the four exercises that bodybuilding legend Charles Glass does to grow his triceps.

🐞 Lie Down Like This: Dead bugs are one of the more literally named core training movements. Lying down and imitating a roach, which managed to outlive several extinction-level events, might be all you need to do to apocalypse-proof your abs for another century of fun. Here’s how to do it.

🏋️‍♂️ Keep Ahead of This: The 2025 CrossFit Games has a new series of safety measures in place to avoid another catastrophic incident like last year. See what new Head of Safety Wendy Guthrie has in store for the competitors' physical and mental health at this year’s edition of the event.

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