Desert Barbell: the Middle East's largest powerlifting club

euronews (in English)

After joining a gym in Dubai to get in shape, Marco discovered powerlifting and fell in love with it. Now his team is set to represent the UAE at this year's Asian Powerlifting Championships in Dubai.

Transcript

00:00 When we started the club, a lot of people just competing locally.

00:04 And now we look and we see how many of our members are actually representing their nations.

00:08 Swimming was really where I started my sporting career.

00:14 My mom is actually the sportsman in the family.

00:16 At every gala meet I had for swimming, just every time my head would come out the water,

00:21 I could just hear her in the crowd.

00:23 That was kind of where the journey started.

00:26 I did my undergrad in financial management and thought, you know what?

00:29 I want to get international experience.

00:31 I want to live and work in a place that's diverse, that feels a lot more competitive.

00:36 I then landed in Dubai and I landed up working for an events company.

00:41 I was very focused on my career and I noticed my body weight started going up.

00:45 I wasn't as active as I'd like to be.

00:47 My diet was all over the place and I thought, no, it can't go on like this.

00:51 I have to change something.

00:57 It just so happened at the time, this very big bearded man walked into the gym by the name of Patrick.

01:03 He was just kind of this first legitimate powerlifter that we'd met.

01:07 He competes for Team Sweden, he'd been to the World Championship.

01:10 He said, you know what? Let me coach you.

01:12 We started following strength training and powerlifting.

01:15 I thought, I want to do more of this. How can I get better at this?

01:18 We'd always kind of chat and I said to him, there's nothing really now that brings together

01:22 this community of strength athletes and powerlifters and weightlifters.

01:26 I'd love to have my own facility.

01:27 And he said, oh yeah, me too.

01:29 And fast forward to December 2018, we opened Desert Barbell Sports Club.

01:35 Powerlifting essentially is a game of three movements.

01:39 It's a squat, bench press and a deadlift.

01:42 So the training consists mainly out of those movements and complementary exercises to support them.

01:48 A very interesting thing that we managed to do is de-dramatize the barbell for individuals

01:52 that had no idea what powerlifting was.

01:54 We have about 120 some members and there are huge benefits to paying resistance training

01:59 for literally all age groups.

02:01 Almost every single health factor benefited by training with weights.

02:05 My dad suffers from osteoarthritis.

02:08 A couple of years ago, he said he wishes that he had done something to change his situation today.

02:14 A lot of what would have helped him is actually strength training,

02:16 which is what we say countering the aging process by maintaining muscle density and bone density.

02:21 If I can get that message out and if I can change one person's life 20 years from now,

02:26 I've done my job.

02:27 In our region, we are the biggest powerlifting club.

02:30 So we have British champions in our club, Swedish nationals, world championship level,

02:35 Asian championship level.

02:37 The Asian championships this year presents a unique opportunity

02:41 because the competition will be in the UAE, hosted in Dubai.

02:45 When the head of the powerlifting committee said, do you want to represent the UAE?

02:48 How do you say no to that?

02:50 It's such an honor, such a privilege.

02:51 So I very much am looking forward to representing the UAE at the Asian championships.

02:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Recommended