[[ATHLETE FEATURE STORY]


“It’s just something that I enjoy. Singing is like the other half of me.”


unlikely harmony. Barnes found that weightlift- ing shaped his singing and singing improved his weightlifting. “The way I prepare myself for weightlifting is


(56KG JUNIOR ) SNATCH 111KG/244.2LB EAST COAST GOLD WEIGHTLIFTING CLUB


FOR WEIGHT- LIFTER BARNES, SINGING LIFTS HIM


By Kevin Loughery


Darren Barnes’ life is all about rhythm. When he lifts, he focuses on his breathing, timing and consistency


from one lift to the next, always staying in rhythm. Outside of the gym, he is able to get away from the rhythmic monotony of training with his other passion—singing. “It gets my mind off of weightlifting and it soothes me,” says the


56kg tenor. “It gets my mind off of weightlifting because you don’t always want to think about it; if you think too much about it, you’re going to do something wrong or you’re going to try too hard and mess something up.” What Barnes refers to as his “other talent,” singing has been a ma-


jor part of his life since high school. He joined his school’s choir and as he worked his way up through the system, Barnes became classically trained and fell in love with the art at the same time. Barnes started lifting when he was 7 and started seriously singing


almost 10 years later. His favorite lift has always been the snatch, while he is currently into the Latin genre of music called Bachata. His life is a balance of squats and scales, PRs and piano, medals and melodies. In Barnes’ life, the two seemingly opposite talents have found an


the same way I have to prepare myself for sing- ing because it’s still using muscles,” says Barnes. “If you don’t train your muscles, you’re going to lose them and you’ll lose the technical abilities. You have to keep training yourself each and every


day and try something new.” When Barnes began singing in high school, he attributed his early


success to his solid core built through years of proper technique in weightlifting. Weightlifting made him a stronger singer, and it is a hobby that, in turn, made him a better athlete. “It soothes me in the way where after a big set and I’m out of


breath, I just calm down and listen to a song with the rhythm, breathe in the rhythm and do everything in the rhythm,” says Barnes. “That’s really what it does to soothe me.” That rhythm, Barnes says, gives him consistency in his training and,


therefore, his competition. “I do have a lot of songs in my head, especially in competition,” he


says. “I mostly can’t listen to my music because I have to listen to my coaches, so I basically have to imagine a song in my head because it definitely helps me with rhythm; the rhythm in the song is the same rhythm that I lift with. You want to keep the same timing; you want to keep the same beat. It’s really cool.” Recently, Barnes has lifted to “Ooh La La” by The Wiseguys—in his


head, of course—which is a perfect song for him to focus on because it is upbeat with positive undertones. Barnes’ long-term goals for weightlifting are obvious: represent


the U.S. at the Olympics. His goals in singing, however, are not nearly as lofty. ”It’s just something that I enjoy. Singing is like the other half of me,


basically; it’s the one that keeps me sane,” he says. “When I’m having a tough day, I go and listen to music and I’m reborn. I didn’t really ever want to make a career out of it, but if it happens, it happens, just like weightlifting did. I really love performing so I would like to perform for the rest of my life.”


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