Most people couldn’t fathom loading up hundreds of pounds onto a barbell, stepping into a rack to put it on their back, and then squatting it, but Innisfil native and Barrie Barbell Club owner Garrett Bentley isn’t like most people.
Bentley is one of the most successful powerlifters in North America and competes all across the world. Powerlifting is a sport that focuses on maximizing your squat, bench press, and deadlift for a single rep—it’s about pure strength.
At the Commonwealth Championships in 2018, Bentley squatted 375 kg (about 826.7 lb.), which at the time had been a national record for eight years. Recently in New Zealand at the Commonwealth Championships, Bentley benched 322.5 kg (about 711 lb.), which gave him the best bencher for the competition and the best lifter overall.
“That was the first time I’ve won best lifter overall at an international event, so that was pretty cool, especially at a meet where I was coaching Team Canada as well,” said Bentley. “I had 46 athletes there I was coaching and it felt rewarding because it was a big week for the team as a whole and to contribute as an athlete and a coach felt really special.”
Bentley got into powerlifting in late 2013 after transitioning from competing in bodybuilding at the provincial level.
“I wasn’t super good at it, top-five but was never going to win,” he said. “I ended up signing up for a powerlifting meet with two weeks notice and I had a good experience, the community was really welcoming. A few older members gave me some early guidance and I took the advice and hyperfixated and ran with it.”
Since that first meet nearly 10 years ago, Bentley has participated in over 80 competitions and he’s reached massive heights in the sport of powerlifting both domestically and internationally.
“I’ve competed for our Classic Worlds Team, our Equipped Worlds Team in 2016 in Belarus, 2018 in Sweden were two world championships, three Commonwealth championships and I’ve won twice,” explained Bentley. “I’ve competed and won three North American Championships. At this point I’ve done seven nationals and medalled at six and won three.”
With the thousands of hours he’s put in working to improve his squat, bench, and deadlift for meets, Bentley said one of the biggest keys to his success has been the fact that he works in the fitness industry and it lends to extra time learning from the best.
“I took a hobby and converted it into a business, my entire livelihood comes from the sport of powerlifting,” said Bentley. “I’m full time as a powerlifting coach and I’m one of our head coaches for Team Canada. I’ve doubled down on the time spent in the sport and in the training halls."
He said getting to travel has given him so much exposure to international coaches and athletes.
"I can just pick the cream of the crops' brain and see where everyone’s at, what’s working, what’s not working. It’s akin to a peewee hockey player getting to sit down with Crosby every other weekend and getting to pick his brain. It allows me to create a melting pot of all these successful systems.”
As someone who fell in love with not just the sport of powerlifting, but the people and the community that come with it, Bentley decided to open his own powerlifting club in March 2020.
“I’m very proud of Barrie Barbell, it’s kind of a culmination of all the good things I saw from other fitness facilities and communities and I brought it all together without a lot of the negative,” he said.
“We’ve taken strength athletes across Simcoe, Muskoka, and toward the GTA and we’ve brought them together to create this strength family. You come in and everyone knows everyone, it’s a really empowering community to be a part of."
Bentley said Barbell stems from a bunch of failed clubs he’d been a part of previously because they couldn’t keep the community together.
“Gyms would be open for a month, two months, three months, and then they’d close their doors because they couldn’t foster that community,” he explained. “Look at the fitness industry, there’s hundreds of gyms and the thing that really sets us a part is are our members and the dedication of training in the sport.”
Expecting to expand to a space triple the size of the current facility this summer, a lot has changed for Bentley since opening Barrie Barbell and immediately having to close it due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We opened two days before lockdowns were imposed,” said Bentley. “It was a super sad point because we did a grand opening, sold out of memberships and training packages, and it looked like it was going to go really well. It sucked initially, so I took all the equipment in the gym and dropped it off to members and that’s what we did for the first four months. Everyone was training at home remotely, which has become a big part of our system now because we train athletes in four different continents remotely.”
Staying connected with his athlete during the pandemic was an important piece of building that community, and Bentley puts the importance of those relationships and bonds atop the list of reasons his powerlifting club has been successful.
“The club itself lives and dies based on community,” he said. “Other (commercial) gyms are 10 times the size of us and have 10 times everything we have, outside of the specialty equipment. We aren’t beating them on that side of things, we’re beating them on the community."
The sport has taken Bentley all over the world and he’s worked to give back to it through coaching and as the President of the Ontario Powerlifting Association (OPA). The OPA just hosted the largest provincial championship in Ontario, and likely the biggest in Canada, with 340 athletes competing over three days.
“We had a lot of fresh faces get involved on the executive side this term and everyone has been super motivated to see this sport return to where it’s been,” said Bentley.
“We’re a federation that was carrying just over 1,000 members and coming back from COVID-19 we were around 250. We were down bad and we’ve brought it back and are approaching almost 800 now," said Bentley. "It’s taxing, but it’s provided an opportunity to give back to the sport that’s given me more than I deserve. It's created a livelihood and it's introduced me to some of my best friends. I’m eternally grateful for this sport.”
