The Uplifted Insider

"You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them." -Michael Jordan

The Barbell Is The Ultimate Truth-Teller

I cinch my weightlifting belt and approach the barbell. FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS, five big plates and a two and a half have been carefully loaded on each side, double checked moments before. I kneel down to tie my straps around the cold steel, no longer conscious of the weight loaded on its ends. All I see are the two spots where I tighten the straps that meld my chalked hands to the bar. As I prepare to stand up into position, I mentally suppress the distractions and doubts in my mind. Distractions, like other people in the room, are easy to ignore. But the doubts that start flooding my mind, are harder to vanquish. The only chance of success that I have is to become totally in the moment and tap into my primal being. Then, just as I have done thousands of times over the last decade; I stand, take a deep breath into my core, set my back and pull with every fiber of strength that I have.

There is a moment, right at the very start of every near maximal deadlift, where you genuinely do not know what is about to happen. The bar either starts moving or it doesn't. You are either strong enough or you aren’t. There is no in between, and there is no hiding from the answer. That half-second is one of the most honest moments in all of life. It does not care about your effort. It does not care about your intentions. It only cares about whether you can produce enough force, right now, in this instant, to lift the damn bar.

In this article, I’m going to take you on my personal journey that explains how I ended up face-to-face with my 500 lbs deadlift nemesis, whether I was successful or not and why the process is far more valuable than the singular act of lifting five hundred pounds.

From A 26.2 Mile Race To One Single Pull

Let’s run it back to last October when I ran my first marathon. Running a marathon was a proud moment and definitely was a bucket list item. But while I like running, I love lifting weights. So after months of focusing my training on mostly running long distance, I was ready to get back to lifting weights so that I could regain some strength and muscle that I lost during this time. Being the ever goal-oriented individual that I am, I needed a new goal and I needed it to be a fairly lofty challenge. This is because I feel that while goals need to be within the realm of possibility, they also need to be a hard enough challenge to keep you motivated through the entire duration of the training. Also known as, “the grind” or “the process.”

So I went to the complete opposite end of the fitness spectrum and decided to chase maximal strength again. Specifically, I wanted to deadlift 500 pounds by my 40th birthday on May 23rd, 2026. That gave me right around seven months to get it done. Now, deadlifting five hundred pounds is something that I have done before but I haven’t been able to do it in almost ten years. I also have only deadlifted that weight pulling from a sumo stance in a powerlifting competition (Thumbnail Picture), where there is always an energetic environment. But now, I’m attempting to be successful at 500 lbs for the first time ever from a conventional stance and for the first time ever from within the confines of my private gym.

For a lot of people, jumping from one extreme to another is not a great idea. However, I have built up a lot strength, durability and expertise over the past fifteen years of lifting and training my clients. I believe that testing yourself across different fitness modalities is one of the most rewarding things you can do for both your body and your mind. Endurance and maximal strength sit on opposite ends of the fitness spectrum, and I wanted to feel what both ends had to teach me, back to back, heading into my milestone birthday.

Two Completely Different Kinds Of Hard

I’ve had people ask me, “Was it harder for you to run a marathon or to deadlift 500 lbs?” The short answer is that both were very difficult challenges, but they were difficult in different ways. For me, deadlifting 500 lbs was a harder goal to achieve. Let me explain why.

You see, when you are out on a marathon course and the pain and fatigue start to set in, you still have a choice. As long as you put in enough training beforehand, you can grit your teeth, slow your pace if you need to, and simply endure. You can negotiate with the discomfort. You can break the remaining distance into smaller pieces in your head. You can dig in and find a way to keep moving forward, even when every part of you wants to stop. There were segments of my marathon where I felt like I was running through an endless quagmire and I even had to walk at certain points. But unless I collapsed, I was always going to finish. Keep in mind that my goal was to complete the marathon, not to have an elite finishing time because that would definitely amp up the difficulty. For reference, my marathon time was a couple minutes under five hours. Suffering through a marathon is real, but it is a kind of suffering you have some control over. Barring a medical emergency, you have the ultimate decision on whether or not to endure.

A maximal deadlift offers you no negotiation whatsoever. Either you have it that day, or you don't. Sure, if the weight is on the border of what you can handle that day, you can sometimes grind out an ugly rep through pure will. But when you load a max out attempt, especially one that you have not been successful at in years or ever, there is a real chance that the bar will simply not move at all. It can seem like it is glued to the floor. There is no slowing your pace. There is no breaking it into smaller pieces. There is just you, the bar, and a binary outcome that either elates you or taunts you.

In those moments where you are unsuccessful, and if you push yourself in lifting you will have many unsuccessful moments, a rush of questions and emotions will begin to flood your brain. Am I too old for this now? Did I program or warmup wrong? Did I eat too much or too little this morning? Did I get enough sleep last night? Did I have enough rest days so my body is at its best? Is this even possible for me to achieve? The doubts and disappointment quickly crowd into your brain and are there to linger. There is nowhere to hide from them. You simply have to live with the result. The success or a failure grade on months of training is delivered in less than a second.

But this is exactly why I wanted to chase this goal. To deal with the challenging process again. After grinding through 26.2 miles of mental negotiations that got me to the finish line, I wanted to test myself against something that offered no negotiation at all. I will either lift it or I won’t.

Reclaiming An Accomplishment From A Decade Ago

I have pulled 500 pounds before. Back in 2015 and 2016, I hit 500 and 505 pounds respectively, using a sumo stance at powerlifting meets a full year apart. This is a factor because I always have felt that competing in front of people gives me a little bit more strength. I had the adrenaline of the competition day flowing through me and a room full of people rooting for my success. Also back in 2016, I was only thirty years old.

This time would be different. I was pulling conventional stance instead of sumo, which I had only ever done 490 lbs with and that was years ago. I also was doing it in my own private gym, with no meet day adrenaline and just three of my family members there to cheer me on instead of a few hundred people. Additionally, I am ten years older, with ten more years of “life” built up inside of me that the single, thirty year old Alex didn’t have to deal with.

Accomplishing the 500 lbs deadlift goal was tough enough the first time. So the idea of reclaiming it under completely different and in some ways more difficult circumstances ten years later, made me wonder if it was a lofty goal that I was never meant to hit again.

The Climb And The Doubt

My marathon was in mid-October 2025, and then after a full week off from all training to recover from. that, I began my quest for the elusive 500 lbs deadlift. I trained hard, but in a very controlled, methodical manner, slowly rebuilding the strength and technique mastery needed to approach that number again. I knew that I had to gradually push the weights upward on both my back squat and deadlift because I have found that my strongest deadlifts always occurred during periods of time in which my back squat was also very strong. To me these are the 1A and 1B of absolute strength movements and I am certain that my view on this matter will never waver. I also knew that the volume of heavy lifts that I did in my training had to be a good bit less than what I did ten years prior. An older body performs better when it is less beaten up. I just had to find the minimum effective dose for my goal. But the actual training that I did isn’t what this story is really about so we’ll move on.

What I do want to talk more about is the self-doubt. As the weights on the bar crept closer and closer to that 500 pound mark with every session, the negative voices in my head got louder. Maxing out on a deadlift is an extremely taxing psychological pursuit. With every step towards the unknown section of my capabilities, I wondered if I was going to hit the proverbial “wall” or worse. Would this be the time that something goes wrong and my back tells me that I was not meant to be successful in this endeavor?

The Moment Of Truth (April 10, 2026)

When the day finally came to attempt the goal weight, I followed my normal routine. I chalked my hands, set my belt, tied my straps, stood up into position, took my air, tightened my torso, pushed my feet hard into the ground and pulled on the bar with every bit of might that I had in me. And then, I KNEW that I was going to do it.

The bar flexed and the weights broke from the floor.

The 500 lbs started moving fairly quickly for that type of load and once it got past my knees, I knew I was a split second away from success. My confidence there stems from the fact I have never failed on a deadlift when the bar got higher than my knees.

I locked it out and held it for a few seconds, feeling happy and proud that I had just accomplished something that less than a year ago I didn’t think would be possible for me to ever do again.

I couldn’t believe that I had just deadlifted 500 pounds out of a conventional stance for the very first time in my life, 500 pounds period for the first time in ten years and in non-competition environment for the first time ever. I was definitely pumped up for a while after this lift.

Also, I had hit my goal in under six months, ahead of my own deadline and just ahead of my 40th birthday. 500 lbs Deadlift Video Here

What This Six Month Journey Taught Me

Here are a few lessons that I learned on the road to my five hundred pound deadlift:

1) A specific goal with a real deadline makes things happen. If I had simply told myself, "I want to get stronger again sometime, like I used to be," I am confident that I would probably never have accomplished what I did. Instead, I picked an exact load and an exact deadline, and I built my training backward from that target. That is what turned a vague wish into something I actually was motivated and obligated to show up for every training day.

2) The value is in the process. In isolation, deadlifting 500 lbs is a cool feat and something you can tell your friends and family that you did. However, the reason achievements like this mean so much and feel like extraordinary accomplishments is because of the way the path leading up to them changes you gradually over time. These changes are a direct result of the work you do and the lessons that you learn from both the good and the bad days. Especially the bad days. I believe failures are life’s greatest teachers. THE PROCESS is where you consciously and unconsciously learn, hone your skills and get stronger both physically and mentally. This is why the magnitude of the pride you feel about an accomplishment is usually directly related to the degree of difficulty of the journey. The culmination of all the positive results of the process, not just the main achievement, is actually the full reward.

3) Do things that make you feel alive. Deadlifting does put a lot of strain on the body. That is why it is so effective at building strength. To me that strain and the effort of lifting a heavy barbell makes me feel alive. I’m fully focused on the task in the moment and almost get a heightened sense of awareness. A lot of what we do in every day modern life is somewhat robotic in nature, meaning we do it without much thought, focus or feeling. The adrenaline kick and the feeling of my muscles straining with the weight of the bar is a natural high that I must admit, I love to chase. I think everyone should do more things that pump them up and get them excited to wake up in the morning. Zombie life isn’t the way.

4) Don’t stop doing physically challenging things because you think you are too old. My 40th birthday deadline was just a timely deadline for this one personal challenge. I have no plans to slow down. If anything, the last six months has motivated me even more to keep training hard and to keep setting lofty goals. I never want to be that person that uses age as an excuse for inactivity. Can bad things happen along the way that may derail a person? Sure, anything can happen, but too many excuses and mentions of “one day” will guarantee a quicker decline. That’s a fact. This is why I have always had a “training for life” mindset. My belief is that the training and good habits from my past decades will set me up for a strong showing in the current one and the more time I spend acting on this philosophy the better off I’ll be going forward. There are never any guarantees when it comes to the future, but we can do our best to put the odds in our favor.

5) Having a few people rooting for you and supporting you is essential. Luckily, the people closest to me understand the passion I have for my goals and go above and beyond to support me and root for me at all times. I can’t think of a more important thing to have or a stronger motivator. Your supporters become your “why.” To all of mine: You are all greatly appreciated, THANK YOU SO MUCH. Also, special thanks to Noelle, Alyce and Matt for being at the gym on April 10th and cheering this lift into reality. Love you guys!

Ready To Chase Your Own Goal?

If you have a number, a milestone, or a fitness goal that you have been chasing or putting off, I would love to help you build a plan to get there. Whether your goal is performance, health or aesthetic based, the principle is the same. A specific target and a real deadline change everything.

My online coaching program includes customized programming and ongoing one-on-one support to help you build your own path toward whatever goal matters most to you.

Click here to apply for customized online personal training today!

One of my favorite sayings is, “Progress equals happiness.” So set your goal, set your deadline and get after some positive change.