Brad Castleberry Doesn’t Use Fake Weights, But He Cheats With A Spotter – Debate
With the fake weight craze trending so much, I decided to make a video covering a very relevant subject that I never see addressed.
I’m sure you’ve seen the viral videos of people using fake weights when they are attempting insane lifts with what appear to be absurd amounts of weight.
Sometimes, these are obviously fake weights, like the following:
However, sometimes it’s not as obvious, and there are even cases where I believe the weights are in fact real, but the person just has their spotter doing a significant amount of the work for them.
For example:
Brad has claimed “world record” on lifts like this, where the spotter blatantly exerts a significant amount of effort to help him lift the weight up, and then many viewers claim it must be fake weights.
Both are incorrect, as they don't realize how much just a spotter putting their hands on the bar actually helps.
Well, I’m sure Brad is aware, but he will never admit it, which is why he doesn’t show up to challenges where he knows he won’t have a spotter to lift 100+ pounds off of his weights for him.
This “super spotting” is in a lot of these fake weight videos.
I constantly see people failing to mention that the spotters in many of these videos are touching the bar and how much it helps, and they just assume that it must be fake weights instead.
This is likely the case with many individuals, but with some, I do believe the weights are real, but the spotters are just helping them so much that it makes them capable of lifting a weight they would never be able to do otherwise.
Do I think that’s the case with all of Brad Castleberry’s lifts?
I’m honestly not sure if that’s the case in every single lift he’s ever done on camera, but I do think he is strong as hell and has at least been able to max out 5 plates on the flat bench unassisted at one point (it seems like he used to be stronger than he is now).
With a spotter literally deadlifting the bar off his chest, is it plausible that he could do an assisted 7 plate bench for 1 rep?
I think so.
The problematic thing with him is that he will never be able to perform these absurd lifts in person because he has spent so much time trying to convince people that he can actually do a 6 or 7 plate bench, and he knows if he shows up to an event and tries it, he would get destroyed.
Here is an example of Brad Castleberry incline benching 4 plates without a spotter there to help him:
And here is an example of him incline benching 4 plates with a spotter blatantly giving a significant amount of help, despite it apparently not being obvious to most:
I think the difference speaks for itself regarding how much your spotter touching it can help.
He would get so much more respect if he never tried to be such a showman and hype himself up, and just straight up showed how legitimately strong he is.
DOGGCRAPP Discusses The Legitimacy Of Brad Castleberry
DOGGCRAPP (Dante Trudel) is the creator of “DC Training”, which you have probably heard of at one time or another if you’re in the bodybuilding community.
He is a very well respected coach in the industry, and is a veteran bodybuilder who is an extremely credible source of information.
He even thinks that the weights Brad uses are real, because he literally goes to his gym and has seen them hundreds of times.
Another Example Of Exactly How Much A Spotter Can Help (Without Looking Like They Are)
Here, we have my buddy Chase (shoot him a follow for helping me out with this video).
He has 3 plates on the bar, and he benches it for 6 reps unassisted, and can probably hit 7-8 reps completely fresh.
After already going to failure on 3 separate sets, he gets back on the bench and lets me super spot him (put my hands on the bar and cheat for him).
You can see in the super spotting set, he knocks out 17 reps, even after pre-exhausting his chest with several sets to failure unassisted prior.
So, just by me lightly guiding the bar up and down with him, I tripled the amount of reps he could do with 3 plates on the bench, and I’m sure if I really went out of my way to deadlift it like these spotters are doing in these fake PR videos, I could quadruple or even quintuple the amount of reps he could do.
You'll commonly find people doing commentary on these absurd lifts in videos talking about how it must be fake weights, but oftentimes they don't account for the 100+ pounds of extra help you get just from the spotter touching the bar.
Even just having a spotter’s fingers lightly resting on the bar helps a ton.
If you've done several PR attempts before, or trained for strength in general and have had someone give you a garbage spot and touch the bar way too early, you know as well as I do how much that really helps, and how it totally ruins the integrity of the lift.
Anyway, I thought it would be cool to exemplify the difference between what you can actually do versus what you can do with a spotter lightly touching the bar during a PR attempt.
It can be pretty shocking to some just how much a light touch can really translate in overall assistance.
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