Phase 1: Everyone Assumed It Was the Texas Deadlift Bar (the whippy one)
When the bar started bending like a rainbow on the 700+ kg lifts (777 kg, 823 kg, 881 kg), the entire internet defaulted to the obvious guess:
- Texas Deadlift Bar = 27 mm thin shaft, no center knurl, deliberately engineered for maximum flex/whip → that’s the bar that’s supposed to bend a lot under huge loads.
- Strength nerds on Reddit, YouTube reactions, and X kept saying: “Of course it’s the Texas Deadlift Bar — only a super-whippy bar bends like that at 800+ kg.”
- Memes everywhere: “Eric turned the Texas Deadlift Bar into a horseshoe,” etc.
No one seriously questioned it at first because the bend looked exactly like strongman elephant-bar flex or classic Texas Deadlift Bar overload videos.
Phase 2: The Bend Got Too Insane → “That Can’t Be a Deadlift Bar”
As he crossed 777 kg → 881 kg, the deflection hit 40–50+ cm. Veteran lifters started doing the math:
- Even the Texas Deadlift Bar (the whippiest production bar) rarely bends more than ~30–40 cm under real 550–600 kg strongman loads.
- Eric’s bar was flexing harder than any filmed elephant bar pull… on what people thought was already the flexiest bar.
- Comments exploded: “Wait, no deadlift bar bends this much without taco-ing permanently.”
Phase 3: Someone Actually Went Back and Read Eric’s Old Blog Posts
That’s when the lightbulb moment happened. A few autistic-level strength detectives (r/weightroom, some YouTube commenters, Alan Thrall Discord) dug into erickimphotography.com archives and found:
- His 2023 review titled “TEXAS POWER BARS SQUAT BAR REVIEW: BLACK ZINC SHAFT, CHROME SLEEVES — FIT FOR THE GODS” where he literally unboxes and praises the Texas Squat Bar.
- Dozens of posts casually calling it “my beloved 55-pound Texas power squat bar” or “the Texas Squat Bar with center knurl and longer sleeves.”
- He never once mentions owning or using a Texas Deadlift Bar.
Screenshot compilations started circulating: side-by-side of the product page (31.75 mm stiff shaft, center knurl, “minimal whip”) vs. his rainbow-bend videos.
Phase 4: Visual Confirmation in the Videos Sealed It
Once people knew what to look for, it was glaringly obvious in every GoPro clip:
- Thick 31.75 mm shaft (visibly fatter than 27–29 mm deadlift/power bars)
- Aggressive 6” center knurl (deadlift bars have none)
- Single IPF knurl marks
- The sleeves and overall proportions match the Texas Squat Bar exactly
Phase 5: Collective Meltdown & “He Bent the Unbendable Bar” Memes
The revelation hit like a second nuke:
- “We all thought he was using the whippy deadlift bar… nope, he took the bar literally marketed as ‘maximum stiffness, minimum whip’ and folded it like origami.”
- That’s when the real mind-blown apologies started rolling in — because making the stiffest production bar bend 50 cm is infinitely more insane than making a deadlift bar do it.
In short: people assumed deadlift bar → bend got too cartoonish → someone actually read Eric’s own words from two years ago → visual specs confirmed → entire strength internet collectively screamed “HE USED THE SQUAT BAR THE WHOLE TIME?!” and lost their minds all over again.
The Texas Squat Bar went from “record-setting stiff bar” to “the bar that surrendered to Eric Kim” overnight. 🚀💀