They already have fake styrofoam weights but they're very light. The idea is to make them very heavy, 250 to 300 pounds. This way they'd be huge and impressive.

Say you bench press 250 pounds. The iron in those weight plates would take up about a half cubic foot. To build a barbell weight out of styrofoam it would be about 100 times larger. That's a big set of weights.

I'm guessing the entire barbell arrangement, bar, foam plates and any necessary support cables to keep it stiff would be over 100 feet long. That's a big barbell.

Of course, smaller versions, 60 pounds or so could be fun for beginners as they begin their exercise program on day one by lifting a barbell with the volume of a small car.

Hey, it's exercise right? The world record for a bench press is about a thousand pounds. Put that guy on one of these and he'd be pressing a weight set the size of a small house.

Now THAT would be something to see.

Addendum: Make other heavy objects out of foam, houses, locomotives, 50 foot tall fake boulders and have contestants on a TV show lift, manipulate, throw them for points in a competition.
-- doctorremulac3, Feb 18 2019

Big, very heavy foam dumbbells https://www.dropbox...h/bqiD4HfQ.jpg?dl=0
Though made out of foam, this barbell might still be 800 pounds. [doctorremulac3, Feb 19 2019, last modified Feb 20 2019]

The house throwing segment. https://goo.gl/images/xm46Mz
[doctorremulac3, Feb 19 2019]

The Atlas toss... https://goo.gl/images/wwBpXZ
...you get the idea. [doctorremulac3, Feb 19 2019]

Leafcutter ant https://en.wikipedi...wiki/Leafcutter_ant
Leafcutter ants can carry twenty times their body weight. [8th of 7, Feb 20 2019]

[marked-for-metrication]
-- 8th of 7, Feb 18 2019


OK. Rather than being big, it's hella huge because to achcieve this weight you'd need a metric shit ton of foam.
-- doctorremulac3, Feb 18 2019


Use of the metric system is a yardstick for a nation's development.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 18 2019


That's funny. I would say abandoning the metric system is an even bigger sign of any one's development. It's feet, inches, quarts, gallons, miles, pints, acres, fathoms, pounds, ounces and tons for me. Even horses are measured in hands.
-- xenzag, Feb 18 2019


//I would say abandoning the metric system is an even bigger sign of any one's development.//

An indication that it's time to go into a home? Makes sense.
-- Loris, Feb 18 2019


If the bench were high enough, these could be perfectly proportional with a smaller handles recessed into the bar.
-- nomocrow, Feb 19 2019


Seriously (semi) this might make for an interesting tv show, one of those Ninja Warrior deals where they run through an obstacle course. Expanding beyond barbells for instance, rather than putting the 300 pound, 2 foot wide rock on pedestal, they put a 300 pound foam two story house on their back and carry it 20 yards.

It'd look kind of like the ant Olympics.
-- doctorremulac3, Feb 19 2019


Re: the addendum, I think the danger of lifting and manipulating heavy stuff for competition is somewhat mitigated by the fact that if the person drops a 500 pound foam house on his foot, it wouldn't cause any damage. If you've ever seen one of those strong man competitions where they collapse under the weight of the massive rock they're trying to heft it's not entertaining, it's very painful to watch. No matter how well built you are a 500 pound boulder lands on your chest you're gonna have a bad day.

Here you get the spectacle of the strength competition, enhanced by the visual aid of comically huge heavy foam objects without the horror of seeing a man's life destroyed because he misjudged his ability to put a rock on a shelf.

Addendum #2: it occurred to me you'd have to have some stiff bits to hold to lift these, like mentioned in the barbell design, so that would have to be designed so it wouldn't hurt you if you dropped in. But as these are mostly cables under tension and support rods the hard bits would be distributed pretty evenly throughout the foam piece. So basically you'd have handles that you'd stay away from if you dropped it. They'd also be situated away from the body so you'd just get hit with foam if you dropped the 4 story Atlas globe piece on your head.

Could add another element of excitement. "He's dropped it folks!! Is he OK?" A few seconds later he pulls himself out from under the actual size foam Lincoln from the Lincoln Memorial and everybody cheers.
-- doctorremulac3, Feb 19 2019


Can we use balsa wood impregnated with metal balls? That would provide structure with the weight.
-- Voice, Feb 19 2019


Absolutely, this could become a competition for makers, sculpture artists and the like.

So you'd get people, maybe set designers or makeup special effects artists making a 500 pound life sized Godzilla. Then you'd get some guy trying to hoist it on his back and run 1,000 yards.

The challenge to the makers would be to make it as huge and light as possible. Only rules would be it couldn't be inflatable. Other than that, it's just got to be awesome.

Then you've got to find a place with absolutely zero wind to do this. Like... zero.
-- doctorremulac3, Feb 19 2019


Hang on just a cotton pickin' moment. The title says "incredibly massive", but the whole point is that the weights are enormous _without_ being incredibly massive.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 20 2019


Size massive, not mass massive.
-- doctorremulac3, Feb 20 2019


<link>
-- 8th of 7, Feb 20 2019


//Size massive, not mass massive// Ah, I think you mean "sizeive", then. Massive means "having great mass". But I note the title amendation. Your scolpenity does you credit, [doc].
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 20 2019


Uhh.. thanks? Although it's probably unwise to thank somebody for a compliment you don't understand.

Re: Ant links. That was the inspiration but they don't carry big stuff as impressively as I had thought they did. Also had a hard time finding pictures of men holding up stuff 1,000 times their size. Even all the Superman pictures showed him holding up a car or something unimpressive.

Note how Superman grimaces no matter what he's picking anything up, whether it be a locomotive or something tens of thousand times heavier like a pyramid in Egypt.
-- doctorremulac3, Feb 20 2019


Usual barbells with 1) magnifying lenses in front of them or 2) managed heat shimmer to provide lensing effect by two small propane burners + propane tank.
-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 20 2019


Getting a little complex there.
-- doctorremulac3, Feb 20 2019



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