To All The Gear Haters

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
1

I just bought myself a z-suit, some titan thp wraps, and a belt from American belt; and it was the most amazing weight lifting experience ever. The suit fit perfectly, the groove was easy as hell to learn, and I got 100 pounds the first time every squatting with the gear.

It feels like you’re in a suit of armour (and I’m only using single ply) when you put on all your gear; you feel like you could squat a mountain. Plus the intensity level goes way up: All your lifts feel so official and important with all your stuff on, plus the pain in your legs from the knee wraps makes you wanna tear a hole in something. Finally I felt way more stable, and it was much easier to squat with decent form: it’s way easier to sit back correctly with my gear on.

Seriously, just try it. It’s fucking intense. I know I won’t be going back to raw anytime soon.

2

ok first off, i hate that raw vs. gear people cant talk without arguing, cuz when it comes down to it, i really dont care either way, do what you wanna do. I also hate how raw lifters type it in RAW like its holy or something. Or like a recent poster on T-Nation who said he had a 175lb squat and then added “all done RAW of course”. Who the F$%^ cares if your 175 lb squat was RAW.

But given that, and I’m not trying to REALLY argue with you cuz like I said, i dont care either way and I’m glad you got that intense feeling you were going for and im happy you are having fun in the gym. But given all that, my main problem with gear is that when people say its cheating and others say “you try putting on gear and benching as much as rychlak” its so hypocritical cuz we have others (including yourself) say you got “100 lbs in your very FIRST TIME squatting with gear” thus, IT IS NOT YOU lifting the weight. Now again, dont take this too much to heart, just tell me to f$%^ off if you want, because im glad you had fun in gym and if I enter a powerlifting competition soon I’ll probably throw on the gear to get the advantage, but there was my 5 cents worth of opinion rant in all its glory. Have a nice day

3

P.s. I still think guys like rychlak and kennelly and lattimer and mike miller are all still savage as hell even with the gear and anything over 900 lbs in any lift would crack my body in two, but im just voicing my opinion.

4

Nice… I’m still trying to break in my new Metal V-type (single-ply)… last week was the first time I could get the suit on by myself although my partner has to pull up the straps…

5

by the way, I tried a little experiment this morning - I took my squat suit down to the basement gym, and put it under the bar. I didn’t use any plates at first so I could get a good baseline. I helped it out of the rack so that it got a good walkout, and when I let go, the bar crashed to the ground and it got pancaked… I was expecting that it would’ve at least been able to do 45 lbs…

6

[quote]offroadbiker wrote:
by the way, I tried a little experiment this morning - I took my squat suit down to the basement gym, and put it under the bar. I didn’t use any plates at first so I could get a good baseline. I helped it out of the rack so that it got a good walkout, and when I let go, the bar crashed to the ground and it got pancaked… I was expecting that it would’ve at least been able to do 45 lbs…[/quote]

Nice touch!

7

alright dude, look, you had to go there, you know good and god damn well that you could slap it on a manneguin and as long as that mannequin could stay balanced and upright, it WOULD lift it on its own with a squat suit on. Also, you know damn well the majority of lifters dont ask “hey, what equipment will keep me the safest?” you know that they ask, “what bench shirt gives me the most hundreds of lbs on my bench?”

Or if i am completely wrong, you EXPLAIN to me, please, i am not being sarcastic, you explain to me how a lifter throwing on a suit, and the very FIRST day doing 100 lbs more is still themselves pushing all that weight on their own. DOnt give me crap about how an empty suit under a bar got squished, you tell me how a lifter lifting 100 lbs more the first day he throws on that rubber armor is now pushing with 100 more lbs of force of his own free will.

Hell, i can sit in an decline bench press machine and if i slide the seat up to the point where i barely have to extend my arms, i bench 5 plates each side. Afterward when im done I dont go around yelling how i can bench 5 plates.

Now like i said, the biggest guys in powerlifting would still be the biggest guys without gear because of their drive, my qualm is with people who have no fear of personal injury (thus, thats not why they use equipment, because if it truly is for their safety, so be it), those who just want to be able to say, “i squat xxx lbs or i bench xxx lbs” without working for it, so they buy some gear, that hurts them just as much as not using gear (the pain in his knees from wraps, or various lifters ive seen missing their grooves in bench and dropping it or breaking their arm or crap), and the next day they tell someone they benched 100 more lbs and they dont IMMDEDIATELY say “but with my gear on”

Also, im just prefacing this with, lets be civil about it, I didnt flame anyone else, dont reply with name calling or crap, you just explain to me why im wrong, cuz hell, i might be. I know the analogies about a bottle of steroids and a bench shirt sitting in your gym and neither one have lifted a single pound on their own yet (louie simmons said it).

But i want you to explain to me how you can tell yourself in the mirror “i bench xxx lbs” when you know its 100 lbs less without your shirt on, and it had nothing to do with learning technique, it happened the first day.

8

“so the object is to minimize the amount of effort and work to gain a few ego pounds.” - sasquatch from “yo, how much you bench” article reply
And you are supporting gear? Sorry, that was a personal attack, but i am seriously just wondering how people view gear as NOT just an ego boost

9

also, on a lighthearted note, i seriously want to know if you could throw a crash dummy into an INZER RAGE X and lay him out on a bench under a smith machine (to balance it for him), duct tape his hands to the bar and see how much he could bench on his own. Id also throw on a cool, flaming skullcap beanie thing and have some music blaring in the background to get him amped.

10

This shit is getting old.

Name me one person who has said “I benched XXX pounds raw” when they used a bench shirt. If someone thinks that they are 100lbs “stronger” than a guy who benches 100lbs less than their shirted bench raw, then, yeah, they’re off their rocker. The movements are different and need to be judged differently.

I find most people complaining about gear are those that feel like they aren’t getting enough attention for their raw…wait…RAW lifting. Gear is here. Get over it and be happy with your life. No one is making a direct comparison from geared lifting to raw lifting. Chill the hell out.

11

I use gear because my competition uses gear, and this is the only way I can compete. I use my gear leading up to a competition to become accustomed to the gear. The only exception to this is I always wear a belt and briefs on DE day. Anyone who does not like this can die from affixation from my extremely funky Viking Pro Briefs.

12

[quote]hareboll wrote:
“so the object is to minimize the amount of effort and work to gain a few ego pounds.” - sasquatch from “yo, how much you bench” article reply
And you are supporting gear? Sorry, that was a personal attack, but i am seriously just wondering how people view gear as NOT just an ego boost[/quote]

That, I believe, was one of my very first posts. I admit to its ignorance of my experience with competitive powerlifting. I apologized shortly thereafter.

I do not wear, have only ever even seen one person lift in a body type suit, gear–I do not know gear. I am nowhere near competitive level of weight training.

I simply thought it was a nice visually persuasive, out of the box type, argument. Although yours sort of changes my opinion.

My apologies for appearing to endorse gear. I am neither for nor against it. Again, don’t know much about it.

Isn’t this site about learning and getting better? Well, I’ve learned a lot about alot of stuff I didn’t know that much about before I found this site.

Gear was not even in my thought process when I posted. I was merely applauding the author

13

Rick james you are right, sorry, I do know this crap is getting old. Thats why i dont even go to another site (this got edited) anymore because thats all they ever talk about, i apologize for stirring up a raw vs gear hornets nest. I guess that was kinda my main goal as you said though, just to clarify that nobody was calling themselves “stronger” for the use of gear. But I see nobody was and i shoulda kept my mouth shut. Thats all.

14

I have never ever heard of anyone throwing on a single ply z-suit and getting 100 lbs. out of it, i think that is a bit of an exagerration. Because i have an old 2 ply hardcore and i only get 75 out of that. The z suit is really an ancient piece of shit and i wouldnt believe a 100 lb. carryover unless i saw it. Even the hardcore is a pretty crappy suit…

15

[quote]TTewell342 wrote:
I have never ever heard of anyone throwing on a single ply z-suit and getting 100 lbs. out of it, i think that is a bit of an exagerration. Because i have an old 2 ply hardcore and i only get 75 out of that. The z suit is really an ancient piece of shit and i wouldnt believe a 100 lb. carryover unless i saw it. Even the hardcore is a pretty crappy suit…[/quote]
I’m counting the weight the THP knee wraps give me.

16

I think that the problem that some guys have is that PLUSA doesn’t seem to make much of an effort to seperate athletes totals based on the type of gear they use when the rankings are put out. When Glossbrenner lists the top lifts, the one that gets me because I am a really big ed coan fan is that Ed’s total at 220 is second to Travis Mash, despite the fact the two used completely different levels of gear to achieve their totals.
You will see chuck v’s squat listed as the highest of all time at 220 without any qualification that Coans squat was done without a monolift or lesser equipment. Coan still dominates everybody on the one lift that hasn’t been really effected as much by gear-the deadlift.
I think coan is just one example of how some of the great lifters of the past are having their records swept away without consideration to the fact that the gear they used was far inferior to the gear used nowadays.
On the day coan set the original 220lbs record he:
Squatted 959
Benched 545
Deadlifted 901
of the two major gear lifts I can’t see how using a superbench shirt or the super squat suits of today wouldn’t have put a couple hundred pounds onto coan’s total. He wasn’t even wearing a bench shirt on the 545!

17

[quote]hareboll wrote:
if I enter a powerlifting competition soon I’ll probably throw on the gear to get the advantage, but there was my 5 cents worth of opinion rant in all its glory. Have a nice day
[/quote]

Why is it the people with the biggest opposition to gear are the ones who never use, or have used it? If I have never worn a shirt or suit I would probably keep my mouth shut about it. If you like raw lift raw, if you want to lift geared up, do it. It’s a free country, but trying to say something to the extent that “gear does all the work” without ever using it is pretty f***ing lame dude. Put gear on sometime and see that you don’t USUALLY get a massive PR.

Gear in powerlifting is HERE TO STAY. WHy? Because the heads of Federations (NOT internet badasses) make the rules.

Technology in sports is here to stay. Does Lance need that souped up Trek cycle? Nope, they could race with a single gear bike, do they? Hell no. Technology. Why not put them all on single gear Huffy’s? Yeah, they are turning the cranks, but they go a lot faster on their bikes. EVERY sport has evolved due to technology. Powerlifting is a sport and if you want to be the best, you will have to use gear.

Just my $0.02, but if you haven’t ever worn gear, don’t talk about it.

-Scott

18

[quote]MikeShank wrote:
I think that the problem that some guys have is that PLUSA doesn’t seem to make much of an effort to seperate athletes totals based on the type of gear they use when the rankings are put out. When Glossbrenner lists the top lifts, the one that gets me because I am a really big ed coan fan is that Ed’s total at 220 is second to Travis Mash, despite the fact the two used completely different levels of gear to achieve their totals.

You will see chuck v’s squat listed as the highest of all time at 220 without any qualification that Coans squat was done without a monolift or lesser equipment. Coan still dominates everybody on the one lift that hasn’t been really effected as much by gear-the deadlift.

I think coan is just one example of how some of the great lifters of the past are having their records swept away without consideration to the fact that the gear they used was far inferior to the gear used nowadays.

On the day coan set the original 220lbs record he:

Squatted 959
Benched 545
Deadlifted 901

of the two major gear lifts I can’t see how using a superbench shirt or the super squat suits of today wouldn’t have put a couple hundred pounds onto coan’s total. He wasn’t even wearing a bench shirt on the 545! [/quote]

I think that is why they use the term “All time record” instead of federation record. All time does not take into consideration feds or gear used or drug testing etc. It is just the lifter who puts up the most weight. Is it right or wrong? Who knows. There will always be an argument though. Keeps the net “fun”!

19

[quote]cap’nsalty wrote:
TTewell342 wrote:
I have never ever heard of anyone throwing on a single ply z-suit and getting 100 lbs. out of it, i think that is a bit of an exageration. Because i have an old 2 ply hardcore and i only get 75 out of that. The z suit is really an ancient piece of shit and i wouldnt believe a 100 lb. carryover unless i saw it. Even the hardcore is a pretty crappy suit…
I’m counting the weight the THP knee wraps give me.
[/quote]

still that carryover is unreal. BTW you have no idea how much knee wraps will really give you unless you have a sadistic training partner wrap them for you. When going for a new pr i swear at him and tell him he can’t wrap for shit and about 20 minutes later i start to get the feeling back in my legs.

20

[quote]MikeShank wrote:
I think that the problem that some guys have is that PLUSA doesn’t seem to make much of an effort to seperate athletes totals based on the type of gear they use when the rankings are put out. When Glossbrenner lists the top lifts, the one that gets me because I am a really big ed coan fan is that Ed’s total at 220 is second to Travis Mash, despite the fact the two used completely different levels of gear to achieve their totals.

You will see chuck v’s squat listed as the highest of all time at 220 without any qualification that Coans squat was done without a monolift or lesser equipment. Coan still dominates everybody on the one lift that hasn’t been really effected as much by gear-the deadlift.

I think coan is just one example of how some of the great lifters of the past are having their records swept away without consideration to the fact that the gear they used was far inferior to the gear used nowadays.

On the day coan set the original 220lbs record he:

Squatted 959
Benched 545
Deadlifted 901

of the two major gear lifts I can’t see how using a superbench shirt or the super squat suits of today wouldn’t have put a couple hundred pounds onto coan’s total. He wasn’t even wearing a bench shirt on the 545! [/quote]

Actually Travis just recently completed in a USPF meet. here is what he had to say about it.

"I just wanted to say thanks for all the support. I feel a lot better about every thing now, since all you great people that really matter, let me know that you know the truth.
This weekend went awesome. I had so much fun at the USPF Meet. I was really conservative except for the Deadlift. I only took two attempts on squat 750-804 (got all white lights and only wore my single ply Metal Suit with no briefs). 804 was very easy. Bench I was even more conservative due to shoulder issues. I only took two attempts 405 raw then 500 with loose shirt. I did go hard on deadlift opening with 738 easy, then went to 804 and got it easy, but lost concentration and dropped it when I got the down signal. Repeated and crushed it. I am more confident then I have ever been in my life. I believe that I had at least 830 in me. The match up between me and Ed Coan at the Mountaineer is going to be awesome.

Thanks for the support,

Travis Mash "

Mash vs. Coan is set. The numbers at the Mountaineer Cup will settle all the bs about gear and true top lifts.

P.S.
This debate is old and worn out. If you have never lifted in gear then you truly have no clue as to how it works and the drawbacks it can have.

For example, when I first tried my Metal Pro shirt I benched 235 in it, but now that I have grown a little I can’t get it to groove right and couldn’t get 215 to go. It takes more than just putting on gear to be able to make true use of it. This guy who supposedly got 100lbs out of his suit the first time he used it is either exagerating, a total rarity or has not hit his true potential on his raw max.