The use of chalk for lifting likely shares its origins in gymnastics, since modern gymnastics far predates modern barbell training. Gymnastics, as a concept of physical development, movement, and aesthetics, dates back to ancient Greece. Modern sport-gymnastics began in Germany in the 1800s and has been taught in United States universities since about the time of the civil war. Gymnastics was an event in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, and it looked very similar to the modern sport of gymnastics as we know it. Weightlifting, in contrast, retained some of the flamboyance of its circus strongman roots even as an Olympic event. The 1896 weightlifting events involved style points and freestyle lifting, no weight classes, and no recognizable rules to current fans of the sport. It wasn’t until 1920 that the modern version of Olympic Weightlifting as a sport started to take shape and 1928 when it became (more or less) the sport we know.

However it was first discovered that chalk could keep hands dry without making them slick, it seems natural that the use of chalk would drift from one sport to another, coating barbells as readily as gymnastic apparatuses. Let’s look at how a powder can improve the safety and efficacy of training, and why it is worth the extra chalk dust in the air and the extra brushing you give your barbells.

Grip and Friction

Chalk improves contact with the bar. In each of the main barbell lifts, we want a stable, unmoving connection between our hands and the bar. For the deadlift, specifically, we want something that will help us hold onto the bar without artificially augmenting our grip strength. Presumably, chalk helps by drying our hands and increasing friction between our hands and the bar.