Below are responses to various posters. Thank you for your thoughts. Look for your name below.
The Mighty Stu
Stu said: “For bodybuilding purposes…”
I think I’ve posted in the wrong forum. You, and many others (as Yogi suggested) use the word bodybuilding to mean Competitive Bodybuilding. I’m using the term in a more general way. Everything you have said about being competitive makes perfect sense to me. Thank you for taking the time to post.
JGF said: “If you get stronger you will get bigger”
I’m being overly general here. It’d be more accurate to say that there are a variety of rep/set combinations that will produce fair amounts of strength and size at differing ratios. E.g. 5x5 and 3x10 are fairly similar. But 6x1 would be produce a high ratio of strength to size. I accept, and agree with your statements about strong people who are small, and that size can be gained with minimal increase in strength. Have I got this right?
JGF said: “Favour exercises with transfer to each other, and to the world outside of the gym”
Stu said: “While this may be fun for athletic types, for dyed in the wool gym rats who train solely for asthetic purposes, this is of no consequence.”
We are using different aesthetic criteria. You are right for the purpose of winning significant BBing comps. I’m interested in how useful my muscles are outside of the gym, and off the stage. So whilst my shoulders may get bigger by doing seated presses, the rest of the body would lag - making it difficult to apply that strength. Hence wasteful for my purpose. Clean & Press might be less efficient but whatever is gained has transfer to more activities outside of the gym.
JGF said: “Tempo is bollox”
Stu said: “check out Compensatory Acceleration Training by Hatfield”
Will do.
Spidey22 & Plain Pat
John said: “IFBB pro … Even for the food only… Bent Pressing…”
Spidey said “… You do know IFBB pros still rely on ‘food’, right? … I’m not sure why you’d think drugs would effect the ability of a particular lift to promote hypertrophy.”
PlainPat said: “Pro Bodybuilder that they are wrong and that they don’t rely on food”
Switch “food only” for “natty”. Food has everything necessary for growth. Drugs make the food work better. Natty’s use Food, enhanced lifters use Food+Drugs.
I’m know little about drugs. I do know that they work very well, and that elite athletes in many codes use them, can’t win without them. That some drug combinations mean a lifter might use different programming from a natty. That a lowered threshold for growth may mean that changing how an exercise is done, or different exercise choices may result in superior results. I have no idea how useful Bent Pressing may be for such a person.
Chris Colucci
JGF said: “Pressing builds triceps. More pressing builds more triceps. Pressing works better than various tricep extension exercises.”
CC said: “When you start stalling at lockout, I think you’ll come to a different conclusion.”
Possibly. I suspect I won’t encounter this. I only do overhead pressing. The lockout portion of the movement is overloaded heavily by:-
- Always pausing at the top for a few seconds on all lifts and lowering the weight to the shoulders under control.
- Two Hand Waiters Walks
- Push Pressing
- Bent Pressing, if I can lockout 55kg with one hand then I can lockout 110kg with two. My best Push Press is 70kg.
Re: NASA million dollar pen
Ran my mouth on that one.
Re: Library
Some of those books contradict each other as well. They place differing levels of importance on different lifts, on how to train, and how to execute a lift. E.g. Pavel talks abot KBs, Everett almost exclusively C&J and Snatch, Rippetoe Barbells. I’ve read Saxon, and Calvert as well, also Bob Hoffman and Sig Klein… Their titles are out of copyright on the net. I first learnt about Bent Pressing from Pavel’s book Beyond BBing. I thought it was a silly little lift at the time (he had photos of a small KB, and only a few sentences describing it). You’re right, owning the books doesn’t mean understanding them. Verkhoshansky’s writing is heavy stuff!
Re: Bent Press
There is a possibility that some of the benefits I associate with BPing actually come from the One Hand Clean I use for shouldering the bar for moderate intensity reps. It is a pet lift because I’ve progessed faster in this lift then anything else. Ever. I find it quite exciting to be lifting 75% of my bodyweight overhead with one arm.
A muscle can grow through isometric, or limited ROM, with progressive overload. How efficient this is will depend on the lift. E.g. the muscles of the back move little during deadlifting, cleans, or squats. Yet those lifts help tremendously in building the back. A weak stimulus might be that the muscles of the legs contract isometrically when pressing; but don’t grow significantly. The amount of growth varies between lifts. The question is, how much growth can be gained from Bent Pressing.
The Bent Press is a game of supports and this is how some muscles can be given a strong stimulus for growth. Having the support means a greater weight can be used, up until the strength of the least muscle is reached. The muscles of the forearm work hard through out the lift to keep the bar parallel to the floor, and orientated to the front. They are not supported at all. The bicep works hard from the start of the descent till the bottom. The tricep takes over from this point and works hard to lock the bar out. The muscles that control the shoulder joint work hard to keep the weight balanced, especially once the arm leaves the ribs up till the shoulder is locked out. The lats, obliques, and other muscles work hard on resisting flexion, and torsion, on the way down, and in extension on the way up (kind of like a unilateral Good Morning).
I suspect it fell from favour because it takes time to develop enough skill in the movement to lift heavy enough for growth. Also it stopped being commonly used in competition early in the 20th century. Even at the height of it’s popularity there were those who viewed it as dangerous (just like some people think squatting is bad), or as a trick. Alan Calvert notes there is a ratio of 2.5:1 between Bent Press and One Arm Press. Someone with a poor ratio wouldn’t benefit much at all… for them it’s just weighted yoga.
“Grimek was a top-level Olympic weightlifter for years before ever competing in bodybuilding … bent presses didn’t make Grimek Grimek.”
Grimek did do Olympic Lifting. Many BBers of his era did. Many comps of that time awarded points for the competitor being involved in an athletic activity. Oly Lifting was very compatible. There was no PLing back then. Also consider that OL meets he did had more lifts than today. Some of his meets had The Press, One Hand Snatch, One Hand C&J, as well as the two hand versions. A good role model for someone interested in building a good looking body without drugs. He also Bent Pressed near 300lbs. It’s impossible to say what impact BPing had, but it was important to him that he do it.
T-Nation has bio of him at:-
T3hPwnisher
“His unwillingness to even provide some basic stats in turn makes me unwilling to entertain the ideas.”
I posted my stats above. Nothing stunning. The numbers (except for the Back Squat, which I haven’t videoed), can be verified by searching my name on YouTube and watching the most recent video for a given lift. I don’t do any closeups of the plates. But the bumper plates use the standard colour coding from 10kg up, and I use a standard 20kg bar.
Ecchstang
“Pretty soon we will start comparing each other’s Kelly snatch”
Oddly enough I have tried this. Failed miserably. Certainly a gimmick lift. Though I wouldn’t mock Grimek, he has been photographed doing the lift. I imagine this lift being invented whilst having a few beers after training. “Mate, can you do this?!?!?!”
“Is the OP a member of USAWA?”
No. I live in New Zealand. I have been to their site. Some of the lifts are useful (Bent Press & Get Up). Some are just a bit of fun, like the Kelly Snatch. They do have a collection of rules that I find useful to judge if I’m lifting correctly. I am considering competing in an IAWA comp. Hopefully we have one in NZ this year… and that they include BP and OAS.
Confusion
C said: “p.s.have a look at strongman Paul Anderson”
Watched a doco, and read a few articles on him. One of the great figures in weightlifting history.
C said: “do you consider the amount you have eaten that day?”
I eat best when I’m working. The structure of the working day means I eat regularly, train regularly. I’m on holiday at the moment and it’s all up the wazoo. I eat when I’m hungry, stop when I’m not. I cook up kilos of beef mince every couple of weeks and store it in the freezer, along with frozen vege, and big bowls of rice in the fridge, also I boil trays of eggs and store them in the fridge as protein snacks. I’ve found this the cheapest, and most convenient, way to eat well. I eat six times a day, out of habit… not for any scientific reason. I used to measure my food, I don’t now. If I get a little tubby I eat a little less for a while.
C said: “Keep in mind regarding your training journal”
The journal is gold. The numbers tell the truth. I’m hoping to sit down next week. Draw a few graphs and mine the data for what works. My gut feeling is that I need to squat more, that squatting will drive everything else up.