Gear Reality

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
21

[quote]Professor X wrote:
RickJames wrote:
Professor X wrote:
When someone just casually asks you how much you bench, which is almost daily for me so I assume the same of others, what do you all tell them? Do you give them some number that matches the day you used gear or your raw number?

I’m with KBC on this one. It is best to just avoid these questions, because no matter what you tell them - 400, 600, 800, whatever - they will have a friend’s brother’s uncle’s next door neighbor’s husband that has done more. If it is a girl you’re talking to, it is likely her boyfriend or brother that accomplished the strength feat, but he no longer “goes heavy” because of a hurt shoulder/back/knee.

“135” is a great answer, because it is true - you CAN bench 135. You can bench a lot of other things, but they don’t need to know that.

I have actually never had anyone tell me they knew someone who could lift as much. I do get some guys say that they used to be really into powerlifting or bodybuilding, throw out some huge body weight they “used to” be up to of solid muscle and how much they used to bench. All of them have somehow shrunk massively since then.[/quote]

Prof, interesting comment about your Bench. Would you be willing to post a sample or PM a sample of your workout?

22

[quote]btm62 wrote:
Professor X wrote:
RickJames wrote:
Professor X wrote:
When someone just casually asks you how much you bench, which is almost daily for me so I assume the same of others, what do you all tell them? Do you give them some number that matches the day you used gear or your raw number?

I’m with KBC on this one. It is best to just avoid these questions, because no matter what you tell them - 400, 600, 800, whatever - they will have a friend’s brother’s uncle’s next door neighbor’s husband that has done more. If it is a girl you’re talking to, it is likely her boyfriend or brother that accomplished the strength feat, but he no longer “goes heavy” because of a hurt shoulder/back/knee.

“135” is a great answer, because it is true - you CAN bench 135. You can bench a lot of other things, but they don’t need to know that.

I have actually never had anyone tell me they knew someone who could lift as much. I do get some guys say that they used to be really into power-lifting or bodybuilding, throw out some huge body weight they “used to” be up to of solid muscle and how much they used to bench. All of them have somehow shrunk massively since then.

Prof, interesting comment about your Bench. Would you be willing to post a sample or PM a sample of your workout? [/quote]

x can speak for himself, but a while back he posted his chest workout, and i don’t believe he benches much. very heavy on hammer strength machines and dumbbells i believe.

IMHO, bench is a great tool for building upper body strength for athletes, and a necessity if you are competing in PL, but for bodybuilding purposes, there are other options that are just as good and maybe better that are perhaps safer for the shoulders. just IMHO i repeat.

i am sure others here will not agree with this and have good reasons.

23

Man, if i could get 200 lbs out of a shirt, I’d brag the hell out of it. Frankly, for every lifter that gets 200lbs out of a shirt, there’s a whore with a heart of gold. If you get that kind of carryover, you are doing something very right. I train with a group of two dozen elite lifters and I know of one who gets that kind of carryover.

Besides, how is a meet lift in a shirt any less legitimate than these raw gym maxes people talk about. While there are some real clean benchs done out there, a lot of these non-competing, king-of-the-gym-lift types will count an excessively-spotted, bounced-like-a-check-from-Enron, butt-way-off-the-bench, see-sawed, never-locked-out benches as good lifts. As least most shirted meet lifts (I did say most, not all) are controlled, paused, and evenly locked out in a manner sufficient to convince two out of three guys that they are good lifts.

[quote]Professor X wrote:

At my size, most people don’t think I am in the military as their first thought. Yes, I do get that daily. I also haven’t done a barbell bench press in years so my response is either “a lot” or whatever number I put up on HS bench press. In the end, it doesn’t matter. However, I would never wear gear, get an extra 200lbs out of it and then claim that was my real bench when asked.[/quote]

24

[quote]btm62 wrote:

Prof, interesting comment about your Bench. Would you be willing to post a sample or PM a sample of your workout? [/quote]

http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=651079

I haven’t changed much at all since this thread.

25

We’re also dealing with an issue that isn’t ever talked about. The guys at the top of powerlifting have obviously been in the game for a long time (5, 10, 15+ years). So up until recently, even the guys in the heavily geared feds had had to work up through different kinds of gear. As they got stronger, the gear seemed to as well.

Currently we have a completely different situation on our hands. 4 plies of squat gear and a bullet-stopping bench shirt are available to everyone, including the novice lifter. So there is no reason to prove yourself in little to no gear, and we’re seeing that. I think that’s kind of what turns our stomachs a bit - we see guys blowing away numbers in their first few years of the sport that they would have NO business thinking about if it weren’t for the gear. Guys that can’t outbench the average competitive bodybuilder talking about “WR” bench presses.

And many people have forgotten why they got into the sport in the first place. I got into it to be a big, strong motherfucker. Gear carryover does not help me with that.

26

[quote]Pinto wrote:
Man, if i could get 200 lbs out of a shirt, I’d brag the hell out of it. Frankly, for every lifter that gets 200lbs out of a shirt, there’s a whore with a heart of gold. If you get that kind of carryover, you are doing something very right. I train with a group of two dozen elite lifters and I know of one who gets that kind of carryover.

Besides, how is a meet lift in a shirt any less legitimate than these raw gym maxes people talk about. While there are some real clean benchs done out there, a lot of these non-competing, king-of-the-gym-lift types will count an excessively-spotted, bounced-like-a-check-from-Enron, butt-way-off-the-bench, see-sawed, never-locked-out benches as good lifts. As least most shirted meet lifts (I did say most, not all) are controlled, paused, and evenly locked out in a manner sufficient to convince two out of three guys that they are good lifts.

[/quote]

My personal point of view is that when I am asked how much I bench, I am not giving them a ‘one rep max’. I tell them how much I actually lifted for a few reps as my highest weight. I don’t consider myself a powerlifter, however, even though I do concentrate on strength gains. In my honest opinion, I would have a hard time claiming some weight that I only got once on a good day with a suit on and a trusted spotter. If it were something I did at a meet, I suppose that would change things. However, most people I meet in the gym or on the street aren’t competing powerlifters. They just see a big guy and that is the first thing that pops in their head.

27

[quote]RickJames wrote:
We’re also dealing with an issue that isn’t ever talked about. The guys at the top of powerlifting have obviously been in the game for a long time (5, 10, 15+ years). So up until recently, even the guys in the heavily geared feds had had to work up through different kinds of gear. As they got stronger, the gear seemed to as well.

Currently we have a completely different situation on our hands. 4 plies of squat gear and a bullet-stopping bench shirt are available to everyone, including the novice lifter. So there is no reason to prove yourself in little to no gear, and we’re seeing that. I think that’s kind of what turns our stomachs a bit - we see guys blowing away numbers in their first few years of the sport that they would have NO business thinking about if it weren’t for the gear. Guys that can’t outbench the average competitive bodybuilder talking about “WR” bench presses.

And many people have forgotten why they got into the sport in the first place. I got into it to be a big, strong motherfucker. Gear carryover does not help me with that. [/quote]

I agree with every word of this. Once newbies who barely weigh 150lbs start claiming 400lbs bench presses all due to their credit and recent gear purchase, I start to lose any respect for powerlifting. Mind you, even though I am not a powerlifter, I have had the priviledge of training around some of them. Until I realized how prevelant the use of lifting shirts was, I had much more respect for the lifts…because the guys I saw using the gear were already fucking huge and could clearly lift any weight that would be considered more average all by themselves.

28

[quote]RickJames wrote:
We’re also dealing with an issue that isn’t ever talked about. The guys at the top of powerlifting have obviously been in the game for a long time (5, 10, 15+ years). So up until recently, even the guys in the heavily geared feds had had to work up through different kinds of gear. As they got stronger, the gear seemed to as well.

Currently we have a completely different situation on our hands. 4 plies of squat gear and a bullet-stopping bench shirt are available to everyone, including the novice lifter. So there is no reason to prove yourself in little to no gear, and we’re seeing that. I think that’s kind of what turns our stomachs a bit - we see guys blowing away numbers in their first few years of the sport that they would have NO business thinking about if it weren’t for the gear. Guys that can’t outbench the average competitive bodybuilder talking about “WR” bench presses.

And many people have forgotten why they got into the sport in the first place. I got into it to be a big, strong motherfucker. Gear carryover does not help me with that. [/quote]

man you just nailed it on the head rick.

i know of a few Pl/internet “toughguys”(you know who i am talking about;)) that are walking around beating there chest about the numbers they are posting, when they cant lift raw what i could lift in high school nearly 25 years ago. hell, some of these schmucks geared numbers are not much better than my high school raw numbers.yet they pile on 4 plys of gear, that “bullet proof bench shirt” you talked about, and train at a power pit gym with a mono-lift, and tons of bands and chains and think they are doing something. RAW, they could not bench as much as the average bench press monkey who comes into the typical commercial gym/meat-market every Monday and benches and curls for 2 hours and not to be seen again until the next Monday.

29

[quote]Professor X wrote:
btm62 wrote:

Prof, interesting comment about your Bench. Would you be willing to post a sample or PM a sample of your workout?

http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=651079

I haven’t changed much at all since this thread.[/quote]

i especially like this post form that thread:

"I’ve trained a lot of ways. My first real routine was from a box of Cybergenics. This current “try to find the one true way to workout” fad is a fallacy. There is no one true way to train that produces the best results because your body is adaptive. That means, what works for you right now, may not work the best for you when you gain another 10lbs of muscle. The one thing that has worked is balancing strength with form. I train to get stronger. Due to that and my diet, I also get bigger. Because you can’t simply get stronger forever, there have to be periods where your focus is more on form. One of the best ways to do this is to move up to a weight that you can only get maybe 3 times at the most. Continue working on form until you can get that same weight up for about 8 times and then move up again. There is nothing wrong with some cheating.

'Some of the best advice you will ever get is to train with someone much stronger and more developed than you. Even if they aren’t the most educated, you can learn something from anyone with more experience than you…PhD or not"

change the first sentence from “cybernetics” to “DP cement weight set instruction manual” and that is my life story of lifting, lol

30

I’m not a powerlifter, so i’ll probably get some backlash for this, but what the hell is the point of wearing stuff to increase your numbers anyway? I think all lifts should be done raw and put everyone on an equal playing field. Has it gotten away from its original purpose of protecting the lifter to augmenting them.

I could bring in spring loaded bionic arm attachemts and bench press 1500 pounds, then go back in and barely hit 300 normal. Does that make me a 1500 pound bencher, i dont think so.

31

people use gear bc it gets people attenions when u see in the newspaper man benches half ton instead of 650 or w/e. it does bring people to powerlifting but on the bad side once people realize they use suits and shirts (guess what most people i know dont know what bench shirts are) they find it silly and then leave it for good

only thing that pisses me of now when i saw i bench 395 i have to say raw after so real weight lifter now it was all me but it should be that people who use gear should say i bench 450 with gear

kinda silly be i think it should be assumed raw intel said different

32

My friend had been a powerlifter in the 80’s and he gave me an old shirt that he had used a couple times (and washed in cold). I tried it once and benched 400 with a long pause.

I would never tell anyone I have a 400 pound bench press though. I have done 3 or 4 singles over 350 in my life.

Even the loose shirted bench was not a bench press. I didn’t want to rush the pause because it was so comfortable at the bottom I really recovered holding the bar on my chest. And the lift itself was much more like a throw. I knew that I could get it started, and I just wanted to push it as fast as possible to get through my lockout.

[quote]Professor X wrote:
When someone just casually asks you how much you bench, which is almost daily for me so I assume the same of others, what do you all tell them? Do you give them some number that matches the day you used gear or your raw number?[/quote]

33

No doubt that the new gear can provide an instant boost in performance that earlier entrants to the sport did not have. However, gear is a tide the raises all boats. It is available to anyone- legal and certainly cheaper than the other “gear” in our sport. That being the case, the only comptetive edge is within the lifter himself- that is, strength and technique. The only thing that has changed are the numbers, where 25 years ago a strong 220 lb. man benched 350 and a badass benched 500+, now a strong guy benches 450-500, and a badass benches 600+.

[quote]RickJames wrote:
We’re also dealing with an issue that isn’t ever talked about. The guys at the top of powerlifting have obviously been in the game for a long time (5, 10, 15+ years). So up until recently, even the guys in the heavily geared feds had had to work up through different kinds of gear. As they got stronger, the gear seemed to as well.

Currently we have a completely different situation on our hands. 4 plies of squat gear and a bullet-stopping bench shirt are available to everyone, including the novice lifter. So there is no reason to prove yourself in little to no gear, and we’re seeing that. I think that’s kind of what turns our stomachs a bit - we see guys blowing away numbers in their first few years of the sport that they would have NO business thinking about if it weren’t for the gear. Guys that can’t outbench the average competitive bodybuilder talking about “WR” bench presses.

And many people have forgotten why they got into the sport in the first place. I got into it to be a big, strong motherfucker. Gear carryover does not help me with that. [/quote]

34

[quote]baretta wrote:
I’m not a powerlifter, so i’ll probably get some backlash for this, but what the hell is the point of wearing stuff to increase your numbers anyway? I think all lifts should be done raw and put everyone on an equal playing field. Has it gotten away from its original purpose of protecting the lifter to augmenting them.

I could bring in spring loaded bionic arm attachemts and bench press 1500 pounds, then go back in and barely hit 300 normal. Does that make me a 1500 pound bencher, i dont think so.

[/quote]
well, its not that simple, a shirt and suit does not automatically add 100-200lbs to your lifts, actually, your lifts can go DOWN at first when using gear, until you get used to it and learn how to train in it. but i get the point of your post and i don’t completely disagree.

35

[quote]Pinto wrote:
No doubt that the new gear can provide an instant boost in performance that earlier entrants to the sport did not have. However, gear is a tide the raises all boats. It is available to anyone- legal and certainly cheaper than the other “gear” in our sport. That being the case, the only comptetive edge is within the lifter himself- that is, strength and technique. The only thing that has changed are the numbers, where 25 years ago a strong 220 lb. man benched 350 and a badass benched 500+, now a strong guy benches 450-500, and a badass benches 600+.
[/quote]

That is partially true, but not completely. For certain structural reasons, there is just so much certain people are going to get out of gear. It is not that everyone who puts in 100 hours in the gear gets 200lbs on their lift. I’ve typically noticed that long-armed benchers seem to have a much smaller carryover than short-armed benchers. Brad Gillingham, for example, only gets 10-20lbs out of a shirt. It’s not like he’s an idiot, and it’s not like he hasn’t had the manufacturers try everything in their power to get him into the best possible shirt, but he still has to watch guys benching 100-150 less than him raw out-bench him at meets.

And how much should one have to work on shirted technique in a sport that should be measuring strength? There is technique in lifting raw, yes, but not nearly to the extent that there is in lifting geared. If I wanted a technical sport, I would have chosen golf.

The gear has gotten ridiculous, and there’s no competitive reason (other than for seamstresses) to have the kind of gear we have today. But it’s what powerlifters want. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any gear companies around to take our money.

36

I’m a fan of gear, so far.

It adds an element of technical proficiency to powerlifting and makes it so that even if you’re not the strongest, you can win if you know your gear better.

37

[quote]Ghost22 wrote:
I’m a fan of gear, so far.

It adds an element of technical proficiency to powerlifting and makes it so that even if you’re not the strongest, you can win if you know your gear better.[/quote]

And that alone is why it sucks. This is powerlifting, not mechanical engineering.

38

[quote]RickJames wrote:
The gear has gotten ridiculous, and there’s no competitive reason (other than for seamstresses) to have the kind of gear we have today. But it’s what powerlifters want. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any gear companies around to take our money.
[/quote]

perhaps the sport needs a name change…maybe it would be best to call it gearlifting instead of powerlifting?

much like pole-vaulting has a completely different name than high-jumping…

powerlifting could be knee wraps, wrist wraps, and a belt…

gearlifting could be what ‘powerlifting’ is today…

anyways, just a thought…which will probably just piss most powerlifters off…I’m pretty good at that I suppose…

39

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Ghost22 wrote:
I’m a fan of gear, so far.

It adds an element of technical proficiency to powerlifting and makes it so that even if you’re not the strongest, you can win if you know your gear better.

And that alone is why it sucks. This is powerlifting, not mechanical engineering.[/quote]

Well, yeah, it is a lot like mechanical engineering. Figuring leverages, angles, etc. Good comparison!

40

[quote]DPH wrote:
RickJames wrote:
The gear has gotten ridiculous, and there’s no competitive reason (other than for seamstresses) to have the kind of gear we have today. But it’s what powerlifters want. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any gear companies around to take our money.

perhaps the sport needs a name change…maybe it would be best to call it gearlifting instead of powerlifting?

much like pole-vaulting has a completely different name than high-jumping…

powerlifting could be knee wraps, wrist wraps, and a belt…

gearlifting could be what ‘powerlifting’ is today…

anyways, just a thought…which will probably just piss most powerlifters off…I’m pretty good at that I suppose…[/quote]

i still dont understand why its “ok” to claim that a belted lift is raw. I can, squat, bench and dead more when i have something to push my abs against. it adds pounds to my lifts. period. how is this raw?