To Be Ogre: Bad Bobby Backlat's Big Back Blaster

08 Feb, 2026

A man is the strength of his back—that’s what Bobby Backlat used to say. We called him that because his berth-wide back blocked out the sun, when he deadlifted it registered on the Richter scale: boom, boom—where he walked with those heavy boots of his was a state of emergency. Bad Bobby hit good men, bad men—women too, if you believe his ex-wife. His back was a tyrant, it'd make you swallow hope and fear fast to the throat. Gulp.

Well, he chilled out after all those years. Quit his smoking, quite his drinking—even quit lifting—, and took up the Buddha. Yup, nowadays he prattles on about Avilokites-whatever and Nagarju-huh?; it’s been a long, long time since then. Hell, they say he hasn’t missed alimony in years. Still, I remember the old days. He and his boys used to be the terror of the Meat Factory.

Maybe he was bad back then, sure, but he was big—damn big: that’s worth something. He never wrote down his training techniques, and it’d be a shame to see them disappear. Lifting is more popular than ever, but the modern boys are soft; some of them have wide lats, but their backs lack density, so that when they turn to the side they look like paper men. If anyone knows how to build a back it's Bobby.

When I turned up out of the blue he greeted me with a soft smile. “You look better than ever,” he said. “You leaned out—you take up running?” He was all mellowed out, eyes like a calm cloudy sky.

I nodded—yeah, over the years I’d turned from hardcore lifting to a more balanced approach, some calisthenics, some jogging. I’m still a barbell-man at heart, just more diverse: I’m pushing 40 now, you’ll do the same when you grow up. As ever, my job is to write for the kids. As ever, the young guns are insatiable for size and mass.

He showed me around—his place looked like an Oriental movie set. A big belly Buddha carved perfect from oak sat with us in the living room. Its smile made me uneasy.

“Let’s get some fresh air.” I chuckled nervously, and offered a glance to the Buddha.

He led me out back to a Zen garden. Rocks and boulders, all plucked from mother nature, were placed with a certain staccato: they rose in gulps, like mini Dolomites, above waved pebbles.

“Since I don't gym anymore, I need some way to pass the time,” he gestured at the garden. “You like it?” Bobby poured me tea—cup and pot both Yixing clay, he told me. I didn’t know how to carry myself. Bobby sat in front of me and sipped his tea with the poise of a Dalai Lama.

“This tea’s just swell,” I said. We gabbed for a while, traded stories. Then I produced my notebook.

“I knew you had a motive,” he shook his head in mock disappointment. “Got an article brewing?”

“Yeah, uh,” I felt nervous all of a sudden. “I’m writing about the Meat Factory.”

His eyes lowered, he breathed in long and smooth. Bobby reached for the oolong, but his hand rumbled. I saw a change in his eyes: like the ninth wave before a tsunami.

“The Meat Factory.” He repeated the taboo slowly, weighing the words in his mouth. Then the waves crashed—his eyes turned dark, his teeth ground against one another, his hands twitched—right rolled over, left under—like he had an invisible bar primed to grip and rip held tight, hard, just right: like there was nothing else to hold in the world, not a beer, not a woman’s waist.

Back in the day I visited the Meat Factory a few times. Normally, I’m the biggest lad in the room, but there? A gust in a tornado. The Factory boys were hardcore—rough and tumble blue collar types clanked and banged weights hard, steel machines ground themselves to death under 900, 1000 pounds of pressure. Rust clung to every bar, every plate—dried blood and old callouses ripped and discarded dressed the floor. A real man guzzler—you come out changed, or die trying.

I found my courage and spoke straight, looked him in the eyes. “Yeah, the Meat Factory. Back then you had the biggest baddest back I’d ever seen. How’d you and the boys train to get wide like that? Walk me through it.” As I flipped open my notebook his thick eyebrows descended like black storm clouds. “Well, if it’s not too—”

“What? Too much trouble?” he interrupted, his voice all hard steel. “I left that behind. I’m no pussy, scared of shadows. So shut up and listen—jot your damn notes, because I won’t repeat myself.”

Alright, I gave him my full attention.

“First is pull ups—that’s how you get the lats growing. Bulk up, gain as much damn size as you can, but don’t for a minute lose the ability to do at least 10 pull ups. If you rock up to the gym, can’t pull your own weight, then you’re better off at salsa class .”

“You’re gonna do the pull ups once, twice a week. Pair ‘em with your pressing work: you hit heavy bench, heavy overhead press: wham!—follow it up with pull ups, and be explosive. Don’t grind it, hit 3-5 sets and fly when you pull. I’d rather strap on a quarter and hit 8 explosive reps than grind heavy with two plates. Pull ups will help you grow but they aren’t the main course, they don’t make you thick, dense, hard—I’m talking like a damn stone—don’t overdo it.”

“For the trimmings—I’m talking rear delts—you hit those with your pump work. Whenever you get your pump on—I’m talking laterals, talking bicep curls—throw in some hard rear delt raises. I did ‘em the Mountain Dog way: put a bench on an incline and lay your chest flat, then hit as many rear delt raises as you can with a heavy weight—I’m talking 40s or higher—, these are gonna be little quarter reps, but just grind it out. Drop the weights, snatch up some 25s and hit those with the fullest range you can manage: when that shit burns like agent orange drop it and snatch some lady weights—talking 15s—and hit it till your body quits it. It’s a gnarly drop set. Try it out.”

“Swell, I’ll give it a go,” I said. “But what about the main course? Pull ups, rear delts—that's the basics, everyone knows that.”

Bobby leapt to his feet—he didn’t seem to care that his chair fell backward and knocked over a perfectly balanced tower of stones. Now he talked loud, his hands wringing an invisible bar. “Progressive Pulls—that was the real name. You know, ha, I’m so fucking old I first got ‘em from John McCallum. Marty Gallagher wrote about ‘em, too.”

I searched my noggin for ‘Progressive Pulls’ but came up with scratch. Pen poised, I prepared to capture the coming storm in my rough book.

“The boys called it the Back Blaster. It’s simple but tough, all you need is the bar. First you hit power cleans¹—or snatches if you prefer. You start light, a plate oughtta do it, and hit a triple. Increase the weight, hit a triple. You’ll do it like that ‘till you miss a rep, or know in your bones you can’t get the next.”

“After is high pulls. Use the weight you missed on the last lift, and hit three pulls—nice and high, just don’t hit your jaw at the top. Load it up some more, hit a triple. Load, triple. You get the picture. Once you miss, go to deadlifts and repeat the process with just one difference: when you miss the triple, keep going up and hit HARD singles. Grind it out! Grit your teeth and stake your claim—hit it or die!”

His chest heaved. I noticed I had stopped writing halfway through: the old him loomed ahead of me, a dam about to break.

“Then you go for a 5 by 5 on the bent over row—and look, do it right. Keep your torso parallel to the ground, but don’t lift like a goddamn cyborg: use some momentum and lift some real weight. The key is to use body English once the weight starts moving, don’t use it to break the floor.”

He slammed his chair upright and sat like a king: he was slouched, like he owned the whole world. The Dalai Lama was nowhere to be seen. We were silent for more than a moment.

Later on I tried the workout myself. It worked a treat, got my blood pumping, boiling—I felt like the pimp-king of the suburbs and couldn’t help but speed home in my SUV. Here’s exactly what I hit in pounds:

• Snatches: 135x3, 155x3, 185x3, 205x3
• High Pull: 205x3, 225x3, 245x3, 265x3, 285x2
• Deadlift: 315x3, 405x3, 455x3, 495x3, 545x3, 585x1 (My callous ripped when I tried for the second rep—Yeowch!)
• Bent Row: 275 5x5

Back in the Zen garden I thought he was about to go all-out Krakatoa—I saw the craving enter him: taste of iron, beer, broads, and more than anything else the taste of being the biggest, baddest, meanest motherfucker north of the Mason-Dixon line, all touched his tongue, all flitted away. It passed. He let it go, relaxed, then sipped his oolong—cool when it hit his tongue—, calmed himself.

“I hadn’t thought about that place in a long time.”

“I appreciate it,” I got up and fixed his little rock tower. “You were bad, yeah, but it wasn’t all bad, right?”

He nodded. “Well Jack, I did what you asked. Now you gotta humour me. Sit down: 30 minutes of Zazen. I need to centre myself, and you’re coming along for the ride.”

“Zazen?” I thought he stuttered. No, it’s some kind of Eastern secret: a type of meditation. We sat all half-lotus on a pair of mats he laid out in front of the rock garden.

“Ommmm.” I said.

“Shut up!” He slapped me on the back of my head. “Just sit. Let the thoughts pass through you."

What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of rocks? It was the longest half an hour in my life. Car payments, mortgage, upcoming articles, and—Oh God, I need to get Jenna a present. A torrent of worries, concerns—hell, I nearly ran to the car when I thought of the perfect ending to this very article—, battered my skull like torrential rainfall.

Then, as the cool breeze against my skin matched the rise and fall of my lungs, I accepted the numbness in my left foot, and let the thoughts go. I saw an island—all alone in the universe, yet teeming with secret life: fish of colours unseen, emerald grass—so beauteous in the light of unmoving sun—, and standing there a man like me, but not. He was unmoving, unsullied by million-a-minute impressions unheeded, and clothed in light—his white skin took the sun and, made bright to hurt, wore it like robes; he melted into the white gleam that skated on sea-surface, disappeared in empyreal reflection: was gone. A loneliness.

I reached a hand to him, then him me.

“Open your eyes, hey,” Bobby shook me awake. “It’s been 35 minutes. Not bad for a first timer. Looks like you really chilled out. Good, for an Irish prick like you.” He helped me up and gave me a hug: I felt a phantom of his old strength. “Humour me one more time, alright Jack?”

I felt ready for anything. “Sure Bob, what’s up?”

“Think about this, and put it in your article.” He walked away from me, stared at a little lion statue he had out back. It took him a long time to put his words together. “When I was Bad Bobby I used to walk by the ground beef while out shopping and really look at it: I’d run my fingers over it, like so many earthworms, feel the weight in my hands. Then meat cut from ribs, flank, I’d do the same. All that mass I built seemed on display, mannequins of myself broke to pieces, cut and fed to the masses: I saw my head for a flat iron, the sweep of my lats for a hanger. Oh God—nothing but myself. All that mass I accumulated: concentrated power, all in hands angry—ripe to break stormclouds torn lightning, a rage—where in all that bulk, those many thousands of pounds lining the shelves, was me? And then I’d think. I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t force the thought back down. 1000 years from then when I died—we all die someday—buried white, pale, sick like a ghoul, meat jaundiced by time to wet weakness, I would depart having never parsed myself between my gaps: muscle-tendon-fat-nerves-a heart beat, all a mass growing ever larger, larger. I…don’t like to say it but I still cry when I walk down the meat aisle.“

He tried to hide it, but I saw he had tears in his eyes. Then he gave a short, sharp laugh. “Forget all that,” he said, “just tell your readers to ask themselves why they do it.”

I drove home feeling strange. As I turned things round in my head, I stopped by the store and picked up some rotisserie chicken—the interview went late and I still had to hit my 200 grams of protein. Hot grease dripped down my chin as I ate alone in the dining room.

By Jackholt Gillespie