I just got a Metal V style squatter and it is a bad ass suit. It is my first suit and I didn’t really know what to expect. I tried it out and got about 125 carry over from my raw max, and I got that for a double!!! I would have got red lights for depth, but it was pretty close to parallel. I would have tried a lot more, but I had no one to spot and I had to walk them out. It took 405 with the straps down just to break parallel, and I didn’t break parallel with that until the third rep. I have a push/pull on October first. I doubt I will take another heavy squat equipped until after that. Tomorrow I pull and I plan on doing it in the suit. I hit a big raw PR pull last week, and I hope to hit some big numbers tomorrow.
Sounds like a good suit. I use a ProSquatter, but i have always wondered how the single ply gear from Metal stacked up. (Not that it matters- it’s not like there’s a lot of single ply fed meets in my neck of the woods). I am about to get my PS taken in some- should have done this after I got it but training for two meets got in the way of experimenting too much. Right now, I can get down to parallel with 415 with straps up. So, as you can see, my suit is a bit looser than yours. How hard is your suit to get on? I can pull mine up to about 2 inches short of seating in the crotch before I have to put the straps on the rack/monolift hooks and hang the rest of the way in. Then, the straps come up pretty easy. Actually, I can usually get them up myself.
My suit is really tight in the legs and hips. I had to shave my upper legs and use a fairly liberal amount of baby powder to get it on. I can get it up by myself and get one strap on. I have to have someone else put the other strap up. I DLed in it today. I didn’t hit a PR, but I pulled my max easy. I tried for a PR, but had technical issues. The gym I was lifting at has cheap bars with no knurling and chalk is not allowed. With chalk and a DL bar I think I could pull something big. I don’t think I will squat in it again until around Nov. I have a Push/Pull on Oct. 1st and I don’t want to stretch it out too much. I am going to pull in it one more time before my meet and hope that it all comes together for me there.
You know, the Metal material doesn’t seem to stretch too much. (Which is good since that bastard cost about $50 to 70 more than a Boss or Inzer’s top 2-ply poly.) I’ve had that ProSquatter since April. I lift in my suit every week, sometimes twice a week. This is usually straps down, but I have probably had ten or more sessions with straps up. It may have stretched some, but not much. You may see more stretching in the single ply though.
I have 2 Pro Squatters…identical…one I train in and one I thought I would need as the first would be stretched out in training…It hasn’t…I swap between the 2 to simply keep them active as it were…one thing I have learned with traing in the suits…I use a pair of cotton compression shorts…I keep them slipped out of the suit legs about an inch or two…it keeps the suit from fully setting a clamp on my upper thigh…this gives me the hip support of the suit without alot of the pop in the suit…it lets the suit slip and slide a bit…I feel more like I am training almost raw but the suit gives me the lateral hip support…try it sometime
I have had many suits in my time and I have to say that on a quality basis nothing compares to the Metal…it is simply a superiorly crafted product…some may get better results from other stuff but the quality and durability of the product make the extra $$ well worth it…
I tried wearing my PS backwards for deadlifting once. I can see how it might work. However, I had a hard tiem getting down to the bar in a good position. The bad set-up more than made up for any carryover from the suit. Now, I pull conventional- this may work a little better for a sumo puller.