Sevs was glad that his dress sense hadn't evolved past what a typical child his age had. He wasn’t sure what made them care so little about how they looked, but was glad of his pain t-shirt and stretchy tack pants as he walked into the gym area. Looking at Markus, Sevs cocked an eyebrow. “Are you going to lift in jeans? Don’t you need better freedom of movement?”

“I’m going to teach you how to lift, not lift myself. I won’t work up a sweat.” Markus promised as he scanned them into the gym with his employee keycard. It was a relatively bare room. There were a few pieces of gym equipment and a single treadmill. On the side were a couple of doors that led to what looked like changing rooms.

Markus went to the single rack with a barbell. Next to it, a few weights were on a stand in the open area in the corner. He slung his backpack off his shoulder and left it next to the weight stand, where he started unloading weights. Markus looked back at Sevs, who had stopped in the middle of the room with an apprehensive look returning on his face.

“Hey, you can watch me first, then we will get you started. I will make sure it's not something you can’t handle,” Markus reassured Sevs. With that, he took the 2 thinnest weights that still had the largest radii of all the plates on the stand. “We will start off with just the 10’s and the bar.”

Sevs made a noncommittal noise but moved closer to the rack. Markus slid the weight onto each end of the bar, then lifted the bar with one arm in a curl motion off of the stand and set it off the ground. “See, this is 65 lbs. Now, this might be too heavy, but I can use it to show you the form.”

Finished trying to reassure Sevs, Markus decided it was better to just show him. As he moved in position, he heard Sevs gulp. “That weighs more than I do.”

“Really! You aren't that small, are you? Well, just watch kids your age have some odd strength-to-weight ratios.”

Stepping up, Markus made sure the bar was in just the correct position; he did an exaggerated slow motion demonstrating perfect form. While doing so, he explained the important parts to Sevs. “... the most important part is the hip thrust. Too many people think they need to pull with their back, but the better way to think about it is that once your shins are orthogonal to the floor, you need to push your hips under your shoulders. Not your shoulders over your hips. That's how you hurt your back.”

Markus set the bar down to demonstrate again. “Now you can only drop the bar on your last rep and only if it is heavy, just rules of the gym. The second thing is that until I'm ready to do the hip thrust. Notice how the angle of my back and the floor stays constant. Yeah, so while this will work your back, it is supposed to be mainly for your glutes and hamstrings. By glutes, I mean your butt.”

“I know what glutes are,” Sevs muttered.

“That's actually one of the more surprising things you do know. I could expect someone with a computer at your age to know about programming a bit, but anatomy? There are only so many hours in the day.”

Sevs realized he may have let his guard down a bit too much and scrambled for a convincing lie. “Well, Mother had a medical dictionary on the bookshelf. I may have flipped through it a few times.”

Laughing, Markus shook his head, “I would have thought you were too young for that…”

Sevs chose to ignore him, and once Markus finished his soft chuckle, he asked if Sevs was ready to give it a try. Cautiously Sevs approached the bar. He positioned his feet as Markus had done and bent over to grab the bar. The tip of his middle finger could almost reach his thumb. When he started pushing with his legs, the problem became apparent. Immediately, the bar slipped from his fingers before it had even left the ground. Face aflame, Sevs grabbed the bar again, gripping much harder, and yanked for all he was worth. This time one end of the bar made it a couple of centimeters off the ground before he lost his grip again.

Stepping away from the bar, Sevs lifted his head to meet Markus's eyes. Surprisingly Markus was not laughing at him. There was a considered expression on his face. “Good try. I think you can lift it, but the bar is just too large. I have an idea.”

Without further explanation, he jogged over to the men’s changing room, leaving Sevs standing by himself. Awkwardly Sevs rubbed at the back of his head. It wasn’t long before Markus returned. He was holding what looked like a broom and a roll of duct tape.

Markus dropped the tape and started to unscrew the head of the broom. As he did that, he began to explain. “See, the issue is that the bar is a bit too thick for your hands. Now there are lifts with big bars that are hard to grip, but you need a lot of grip strength for that. If you work at it, you can probably get yours up enough to lift that without waiting for your hands to get bigger, but that won’t work for today. See, what you need is just a thinner bar.”

With that, he tossed the head of the broom down next to the tape and his backpack. Raising the broomstick. “That is where this comes in.”

With a practiced efficiency to his movements, he stripped the plates from the bar on the ground and slid the broom handle through them. “See, give that a try.”

This time when Sevs gripped the stick, his hands fit just fine. Pushing with the legs, he got the bar off the ground with no issues and thrust with his hips. Slightly surprised, Sevs was left standing upright with the bar at about waist level. So surprised he just stood there. Markus let out a whoop. That broke Sevs out of his shock, and he set the bar on the ground and returned the fistbump that Markus offered him. The grin on his face felt like it was going to split his lips in half.

“Awesome! I knew you could do it. That was great. Now when you do it again I want to focus on keeping your shoulders back, that should….” Markus gave him a few more pointers, and Sevs tried again. This repeated almost a dozen times until Markus told him to take a break. “Wow, you are really picking this up quickly. How are you feeling?”

“Not bad, really good actually. It doesn’t feel very hard. Maybe that’s just because it's lightweight?” Markus let out one of his familiar hearty laughs.

“Lightweight indeed, little bro!” he agreed. “Wanna try some more?”

“Sure, why not?”

“That is the spirit!” Markus slid a few more plates on and used the tape to make sure they don’t move, “There, that should be about the original weight of the bar.”

With a lot more confidence, Sevs stepped up to the bar. With a growing familiarity with the movements, he lifted the bar off the ground to his waist before setting it back down. Sevs shook his head. “I felt the wait that time, but it was manageable.”

Markus said. “Well, let's get a baseline.” He added a couple more plates. This time, when Sevs got the bar all the way up, he had to put a little more effort in. Markus added a little more weight. Halfway up, the bar bent around Sevs hands. Leaving just a little flat spot between where his hands were. The ends were tilted enough that the weights overpowered the tape and slid off. The broomstick didn’t bend all the way back.

Sevs and Markus cringed at the noise of the plates clattering on the floor. Again when they looked at the broomstick. Wordlessly, Sevs handed the stick over the Markus, who braced it and used his foot to bend it back, mostly straight. Silently he started screwing the head back on the stick. After he had returned the tape and slightly misshapen broom, Markus finally spoke. “At least we know you are stronger than a broomstick.”

“Yeah, that's good info.”

“And, let's not mention this part to your father.”

“Agreed.”

Checking his phone, “Speaking of the devil. It’s almost time to meet your father.” Markus commented.

They quickly and quietly left the gym like a pair of thieves in the night and made their way toward the cafeteria to meet Father.