[quote]Professor X wrote:
FightingScott wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Nothing gets past you, huh? But, what if no one was using a BENCH before later in the century? In the early 1900’s people were still doing push ups and floor presses.
Well, they clearly weren’t doing pull-overs or ribcage expansion techniques either aside from maybe breathing techniques, vaccume poses, and other unweighted techniques.
Oversized ribcages didn’t start appearing before the advent of the Bench Press. They started appearing around when the Flat Bench was created.
Sorry, but a few of the ribcage expansion pictures I see are just too drastic for me to chalk up their freaky-big ribcages to genetics, posing, abdominal training, and every other possible explanation besides some amount of ribcage expansion.
Are you saying you refuse to accept that BENCH PRESSES weren’t regular parts of training before Sandow or even during most of his lifetime? Are you saying you refuse to accept that most of the poses seen in bodybuilding were started by people in his era?
It takes practice to do a Vaccuum pose correctly, also. Does this mean you think there was some real shrinkage going on as a direct result?
NONE of those guys walked around like that all day long. Are you claiming you actually believe the guy in the picture you posted walked around with his chest stuck out like that even after the picture was taken?
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Sandow didn’t have a big-ass ribcage. I get that he didn’t have access to a Bench. I knew that before.
Sandow didn’t do Pullovers either. He didn’t have a bench.
No one had thought of it, yet. You already mentioned that Sandow and other barbell men of those times didn’t have huge pecs because they weren’t Benching. I totally agree. But you can’t ignore the fact that back then people also weren’t resting glasses of water on top of their chests or trying to expand their ribcages through weight training (because, once again, the equipment wasn’t available).
EDIT: Ok, the water glasses were available but the 17’ high Weight Benches were not.
Then some guy decided to build a Flat Bench and start Bench Pressing to improve his Clean & Press. Suddenly a whole new world of exercises were available. Chest development was emphasized more. People started trying to expand their ribcages and get huge pecs with this new equipment. Even if ribcage expansion wasn’t possible, you suddenly had people trying to expand their ribcage and get big chests BECAUSE of the new piece of training equipment available: the Flat Bench.
You can’t flex fat. Some people have Ribcages so big and thick they can’t just be from good genetics, good posing, practice. I have trouble seeing how these two concepts fall into the category of utter bullshit.