Before lifters added weight with plates, they poured it in by hand.

I once spent a few days training with the legendary Mr. Olympia winner Frank Zane. One of the best purchases I ever made, I was always struck by Zane’s observation that our bodies are, in many ways, the sum total of the equipment we have access to. If your gym has machines and no free weights, your body will look different than if you only had access to free weights and no machines. What we train with, simply put, matters.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, adjustable resistance rarely meant sliding iron discs onto a bar. More often, it meant opening a hollow dumbbell or barbell and adding loose material directly into the implement itself. Shot, sand, or small metal pellets were poured into chambers and then compacted. This practice shaped not only how weight was added, but also how training routines were organised and progressed.

A useful entry point into this system is the 1902 US patent for a barbell filed by Alan Calvert, founder of the Milo Bar Bell Company. The patent describes a barbell with hollow heads designed to receive loose weighting material. Access was gained through a small opening closed by a screw plug. Inside each head sat a screw-driven follower which could be moved inward or outward to adjust the usable volume of the chamber. Once the desired amount of shot had been added, the follower was tightened against it, compacting the contents into a solid mass and preventing movement during use.

This was not an unusual design for the period. Adjustable dumbbells, Indian clubs, and early “globe” barbells commonly relied on internal fillers rather than external plates. What Calvert’s design makes unusually explicit is how closely the method of loading structured everyday training.

How weight was actually added

In practical terms, adjusting resistance was a manual, multi-step process. The lifter removed the plug, poured shot into the chamber, adjusted the follower, and resealed the opening. This took longer than adding a plate, but it allowed for extremely fine changes in load. Calvert noted that weight could be increased by fractions of a pennyweight, something impossible with the solid dumbbells still common in many gymnasia.

This matters because it shaped how routines were written and followed. Exercises were kept constant while resistance changed gradually. Rather than rotating movements to suit the limited weights available, lifters could repeat the same exercises week after week, adjusting load in small increments.

How did they know what the barbell weighed?

This is the obvious modern question, and the answer is straightforward once we stop looking for markings on the bar itself.

Early shot-loaded barbells were not weighed as a complete unit each time they were adjusted. Instead, lifters weighed the material added to the bell. Shot was measured externally using ordinary scales: balance scales, beam scales, or hanging shop scales, all of which were common domestic and commercial tools in the period.

Historical accounts of early Milo equipment confirm that users were expected to measure shot separately and then pour a known quantity into the implement. The barbell itself did not display graduated markings indicating total weight. Knowledge of the load came from knowing how much shot had been added or removed. This practice is documented in historical analyses of early adjustable barbells and Milo equipment held in museum collections .

In some cases, shot was kept in pre-weighed bags (for example, five or ten pounds), making adjustment easier without repeated weighing. Manufacturer catalogues provided approximate total weight ranges for their barbells, allowing users to estimate overall load without precision measurement every session. As strength historian Jan Todd notes, early adjustable barbells relied on external measurement rather than built-in calibration .

By the late 1900s, Calvert and others began experimenting with hybrid systems. The Milo Triplex barbell, for example, combined internal shot with removable iron plates, allowing coarse adjustment with plates and fine adjustment with shot. This transitional design illustrates how lifters moved gradually toward plate-based systems rather than adopting them all at once .

Routines and progression

Calvert’s later writing in Super Strength from the 1920s aligns closely with these practices. He gives specific starting weights based on bodyweight and condition, recommending that beginners under 135 pounds begin with 20 or 25 pounds, while heavier or more experienced men might use 30 to 45 pounds for many exercises. He advises against rigid progression schedules and suggests increases of approximately two and a half pounds per month.

Such figures only make sense in the context of pour-in equipment. Monthly increases of two and a half pounds were trivial to achieve with shot but impractical with fixed dumbbells or early plate systems offering only large jumps. The equipment made this form of progression feasible, and routines were built accordingly.

Because resistance could be adjusted so precisely, lifters were encouraged to maintain a stable exercise selection over long periods. Progress was achieved by altering load rather than constantly changing movements. This is a clear contrast with earlier nineteenth-century gym practice, where limited equipment forced lifters to organise routines around what weights were available rather than around specific developmental aims.

Why the system declined

By the 1910s and 1920s, plate-loaded barbells began to dominate. They were faster to adjust, easier to share in public gyms, and far better suited to emerging competitive environments where standardisation mattered. European manufacturers and weightlifting federations increasingly favoured externally loaded, clearly marked plates, and shot-filled systems gradually disappeared from mainstream use .

As that shift occurred, routines changed with it. Progression became more discrete. Weight jumps became larger and more visible. The logic of weighing loose material externally gave way to trusting the stamped number on a plate.

Why this matters historically

Looking at how early lifters added and measured weight clarifies how training was organised in practice. The pour-in barbell was not simply an awkward predecessor to modern equipment. It supported specific routines built around gradual adjustment, repeated movements, and individual control of load.

Before calibrated plates became standard, strength was adjusted with a plug, a funnel, and a scale. That system shaped how often weight was increased, how exercises were selected, and how progress was understood. Recovering these practices helps situate early twentieth-century strength training on its own terms, rather than treating it as an underdeveloped version of what came later.

As always… Happy Lifting!