All bodybuilders and weightlifters at one time or another hit what is known as a "sticking point," or plateau. That is, a lifter may be able to bench press 295 pounds but when he tries to do 300 pounds he fails. With a conventional plate-loading barbell set the smallest increment he can increase the weight by is 1.25 pounds on each side of the bar, or 2.5 pounds total. He will more than likely fail with 297.5 as well.

If the lifter has 265 pounds on the bar and can do five repetitions (reps), increasing the weight to 267.5 will cost him 20% of his ability to move the weight. He will be able to do only four reps.

Over a century ago the shot-loading barbell was invented. A large globe at each end of the bar was loaded with lead shot to increase the weight. Lead shot, such as a .44 caliber percussion (or cap and ball) round bullet, weighs one-third of an ounce. The weight could be increased in very small amounts. The problem with shot-loading barbells was that it took an inordinate amount of time to change the amount of weight for different exercises.

British strongman Thomas Inch invented the plate-loading barbell around 1900. It became much easier to change the amount of weight on the bar. However, the weight increases were in pounds, not ounces.

The body can differentiate an increase in an amount less than a single pound (8 ounces to a side) on a weight over 100 pounds. For example, if you are doing an exercise with 120 pounds eight reps, you will find that you can tell the difference between using 120 pounds in one workout and using 120.5 pounds in the next one. Now imagine what adding 2.5 to 5 pounds at a time does to you.

This probably explains why Herman Goerner, a German strongman of the 1920s who stood 6 feet tall and weighted 245 pounds in his prime, was still training with shot-loading barbells a quarter century after the plate-loading barbell was invented.

Goerner had a 330-pound shot-loading barbell with 2.5-inch diameter handles that he could lift overhead any time, day or night.

This might also explain why Arthur Saxon, at a bodyweight of 200 pounds and a height of 5' 10", could get 380 pounds overhead with one arm in the bent press. This was once also known as the "screw press"—a lift in which the lifter shouldered the barbell and then bent away from it, locked his arm out, and then stood up straight.

What we are now offering is an invention that turns a plate-loading barbell into one that can have one-third of an ounce at a time in weight added to it. It has:

1. Two cylinders with screw-on caps that cover a section that you can add lead balls to, one at a time if necessary.

2. Each cylinder has a hole that allows you to use the cylinders as adjustable plates that slide onto the barbell.

3. The weight of one cylinder is 2.75 pounds. Each cylinder will hold up to 2.5 pounds of lead shot (60 lead balls). When the two cylinders weigh 5.5 pounds, empty them and add a 2.5-pound plate on each end of the bar (to replace the weight of the lead shot). I.e., you can start over with a heavier weight—as little as a one-third ounce increase.

4. The resistance of the barbell can be increased in one-third of an ounce or more increments as desired. If the lifter desires to add one pound to the total weight of the bar, he adds 24 one-third ounce lead balls to the tube section of each device. For one-half pound, the lifter would add 12 lead balls. These lead balls are .44 caliber pistol bullets originally designed for cap and ball revolvers, available at some hardware stores, gun stores, or sporting goods stores.

5. The device can be placed on or removed from the bar faster and easier than if the lifter has to engage in the tedious practice of filling up and/or removing lead shot from a large globe.

This method allows you to train using your maximum strength, just short of failure, without injury.

In eleven months of testing, here is what we found:

1. If you add less than 1 pound at a time, you will hit a sticking point (eventually). However, you will not go from an exercise to a struggle, as is so often the case with 2.5 and 5 pound weight increases. The weird thing here is that, when you do hit a plateau, your muscular size and bodyweight will begin to increase.

Our male test subject eventually got stuck (hit sticking points) with increases as low as one-twelfth of a pound total. However, at such small increases, our test subject never got stuck for more than 2-3 workouts.

What this appears to illustrate is that the human body is far more sensitive to weight increases than anyone has previously imagined. The old-timers may have known this but, perhaps thinking that it was obvious, never bothered to explain it in their 1920s era books and courses.

Our female test subject started at 115 pounds bodyweight and, with no intention of gaining weight, grew to 120 pounds doing 7 reps in the clean and press with 85 pounds.

One of the strangest side effects we noticed is that the less weight the body builder added to the bar for succeeding workouts the more bodyweight gained in a shorter period of time.

What will our Sticking Point Smashers do for you? Consider what they did for our male test subject in only one exercise, 5 sets of 5 reps in the military press twice a week. This was the only exercise our test subjects did with the Sticking Point Smashers for 11 months. All other exercises—squats, deadlifts, bench presses, etc., were done with moderate weights.

Examples:

• His military presses increased by 36 pounds, for 5 reps, in eleven months. That we expected. We just didn’t expect a 36 pound increase for repetitions in such a short period of time. This was an experienced lifter.

• His bodyweight in December 2004 was 197, waist size 40. His bodyweight increased to 214 by November of 2005. What we did not expect was for his waist size to drop to 36 at the same time.

• His chiropractor, the first time he worked on our test subject after three months on the Sticking Point Smashers doing military presses, initially thought our test subject had become deformed. The chiropractor then realized that what he was working on was not a deformed upper back—it was a back that had filled in with a large mass of muscle. Most men have a "valley" between their shoulder blades, including experienced bodybuilders. Our test subject had no "valley," it had filled in with muscle.

• The chiropractor also informed our test subject that his shoulders had become broader. Our test subject’s massage therapist complained that his arms were becoming too large and he had become harder to work on.

Some of what our test subject experienced in the gym was somewhat amusing.

One fellow asked him, "Are you going to do squats?" when he had the bar on a squat rack.

"No, military press."

Another time a young man in his twenties, at least 6' 5" and 240 pounds of what appeared to be muscle, was doing deadlifts. He slunk out of the gym when he saw our test subject doing military presses with the same weight.

We realize that a lot of you reading this have been told that, in order to make significant progress as a bodybuilder, you have to "train to failure." The old-timers, like Herman Goerner, Arthur Saxon, and George Jowett (who could lift a 160-pound anvil by the horn, overhead, with one arm) knew better. They knew that you trained to stimulate the muscles, not to destroy them.

However, we don’t need to belabor the point. Just ask yourself these questions:

Have you gained 17 pounds of bodyweight, added 36 pounds to one of your exercises, and dropped 4 pant sizes in the last eleven months? This may not seem as spectacular as some of the gains touted for using this or that "wonder supplement" in the muscle magazines you see at the supermarket or the newsstand. Try them. Then, when you realize some of them may be prone to exaggerating, try our Sticking Point Smashers.

Unlike the old method of bulking up to 30 pounds and then losing 15 pounds of fat, the Sticking Point Smashers seem to have the opposite effect. If you subtract the fat that our test subject lost in the same period of time, by weight, the muscular bodyweight gain was much more significant than it might first appear.

For example, the loss of 4 inches of fat from around a normal waistline could be anything from a 5 to 20 pound fat loss. I.e., our test subject could have actually gained as much as 19 to 34 pounds of muscle in an eleven-month period.

There were three other things we noticed.

First, our test subjects’ appetites increased. Many bodybuilders try to stuff themselves in order to gain weight. Common sense should tell you that hunger signals are supposed to be what tells you when to eat and how much. "Stuffing" normally only increases waist girth (as in storing fat).

Second, most lifters fail with a lift like the military press or the bench press within the first four to six inches of movement, the most difficult phase of the lift. With our Sticking Point Smashers the hardest part of the movement becomes the last four to six inches of the lift on the last rep. I.e., you will develop a different, more natural strength curve training with Sticking Point Smashers. You will also notice that, with increases in weight of as low as half a pound, you will even be able to tell the difference in a single rep (the last one). I.e., the speed of the last rep will increase from one workout to the next. When the last rep (say rep 4) goes up quickly and easily, you will then be able to add another rep in your next workout.

Third, we also noticed that, with extremely small weight increases, our lifter could always tell if he had the strength left for the final rep in advance. In eleven months he never started a repetition he couldn’t finish.

Where do you want to be eleven months from now?

2. At the risk of insulting your intelligence, we also need you to understand that bodybuilding is 80% nutrition. This system isn’t going to work on sugar, soda pop, pork, and white flour.

3. Our recommendation for nutrition is plenty of desiccated Argentine beef liver powder, Argentine beef thymus powder, coconut, brown rice, and Mits’ Protein. Ironically, our test subject had been a regular user of all of these. The Sticking Point Smashers seem to have "triggered" his appetite metabolism.

The Sticking Point Smashers come annodized in black, red, or blue for longer wear.

The price of a pair of Sticking Point Smashers is $150.00.

(before anodizing)