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Bent Barbell Club growing stronger at new location

Photo by Jeff Baughan Tim Hagan is the owner of the Bent Barbell Club on Seventh Street in Parkersburg. Hagan said membership has approximately doubled since moving to the facility from Gihon Road.

PARKERSBURG — Tim Hagan left the Washington DuPont property around 7 a.m. April 10 for the last time. He left to put a full-time effort to make his business a full-time business.

Hagan, 33, is the owner of the Bent Barbell Club on Seventh Street. Hagan moved the business there after it had outgrown the small building on Gihon Road.

“It’s an independent gym with an old school mentality,” he said. “Weight lifting was invented long ago. You’re going to have to do the work to get stronger.”

Hagan said membership has more than doubled since the move. “I felt I would have to be here, in the gym, to feel my own freedom and be my own boss,” he said. “I felt like if I was paying staff to be here and not being able to be here myself, I still wouldn’t be experiencing those freedoms.”

There are approximately 40 stations of work within the club. There are cardio machines, weight plates and cable machines. There are dumb bells weighing up to 125 pounds. There are battle ropes, cross training and tires and sledges.

Photo by Jeff Baughan Cody Jarrell stares at the floor as he concentrates while working on the chest fly machine.

Hagan has developed his own line of nutrition products with preworkout, fat burners, protein powders and sleep formulas among the items. “It’s my own formulate,” he said. “I designed the formulas but I have it made. Anyone can get it at bentbarbellnutrition.com.”

The gym is open to members on a 24/7 basis. “Members get their own electronic key when they join,” Hagan said. “But if people want to join, they have to come down during staffed hours to register.”

The staffed hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sundays. Friday and Saturday hours are set by appointment. “The membership is simple,” he said. “It’s $25 a month. There is no contract. No registration fee and no fee for the cancellation of a membership.”

Within the building in a walled off room is a ring in which wrestling and boxing classes happen. This particular part of the facility is known as the Violence Academy.

Inside the room is a body bag normally used for training in boxing. At the bottom of the body bag support are four 45-pound weight plates. “So that’s where those went,” Hagan says about the discovery. “Hmmmmm,” he says, “looks like I should check into getting some more 45 pound plates. Mental note made.”

Photo by Jeff Baughan J.D. Stewart focuses on the lat pull down bar as he exercises at the Bent Barbell Club in Parkersburg.

Those four plates weighed in at 180 pounds. Around the Bent Barbell, that’s warmup weight for a lot of members but it makes the plates highly sought after.

Hagan turns his attention back to the ring. “The wrestling classes are designed where the wrestler gets to learn the ins and outs of the business,” said Hagan, who competed for 15 years as Vance Desmond and is an ACE certified trainer who does personal training and diet planning. “The boxing class is about boxing obviously but all the physical training knowledge that goes with it.”

The monthly tuition for the Violence Academy is $120 a month, which includes gym membership.

“The gym is not just a guys only place. All you have to do is step through the doors to see that,” he said. “There are women who are members who go at it just as hard as the guys, some maybe more.”

Photo by Jeff Baughan Steve Martin strains as he trains for a bench press competition with 505 pounds on the bar.

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