I don’t disagree, I find huge benches with massive arches generally unimpressive. I respect the feat of strength, I just don’t enjoy watching it, and this is from a powerlifter. There are many elements of many sports that I think detract from the ‘quality’ of competition.
That said I’d never judge or denigrate a competitor from competing within the rules. I don’t like arching, but I still do it when i compete.
There is a lot of bullshit on the internet about lifting, it’s not your fault. Arching is cheating, sumo is cheating, and if you don’t squat at least 6 inches below parallel it’s high. And belts and wraps are cheating too and it’s not raw. Meets that pass blatantly bad lifts are a different story, but you can’t change the rules because a couple guys can do something that doesn’t look right to the average person. Like some people want flat backed benching, but some girls with big asses would have to round their back to comply with that. It just can’t work.
Mark Bell was defending people squatting a foot above parallel, his opinion isn’t worth much on this topic unfortunately.
Arching is healthy for the shoulders, which is why I do it. I naturally end up with a big arch by retracting/depressing my scapulae.
People who don’t even arch complain about “Durr but you don’t get ROM by arching, so you can’t build your chest” - but that’s what close grip, duffalo, and dumbbells are for. I always walk out with a crazy chest pump off arched benching.
Every fed has its particularities. In WPC you get red lights on bench for not locking both arms out at the same time or “pronounced uneven extension”. A lot of IPF ass kissers would fail on that alone.
Need one with a lever for maximum intracranial pressure.
Weightlifting might get thrown out of the Olympics because of the amount of positive drug tests, I don’t think it would be any different if the IPF was there.
Not all of them. There are old guys benching more than you ever could, like Dave Ricks benching 450 at 60 years old, never had a serious injury either in decades of competitive lifting.
I dislocated my left shoulder maybe 10 times when I was younger, never had it operated on, just started lifting and did a lot of rehab stuff for a while. Now I’m benching over 400 with no shoulder issues at all.
No common ground, I’m not sharing with nobody and especially not you.