USAWA

+1

I will be there…sans bells of course!

Art Montini and I will be there unless the weather is too bad for us to make the drive.

OOPS! I think I replied about the wrong meet. Art and I are planning to come to the Grip Championships.

I’ll be there Sat

Doug and Logan are planning on it as well. Looking like it’s gonna be a good little meet – whereas my expectations were low on the turnout for this one considering the lifts.

I’m not making it. I lost my “team”….and now I find out I have a work meeting at 1:00pm on Sunday…..

But the plus side is I’m talking to my guys about coming to the grip meet!!!!!

[b]Quote from JWCIII on January 15, 2014, 11:07[/b]
I’m not making it. I lost my “team”….and now I find out I have a work meeting at 1:00pm on Sunday…..

But the plus side is I’m talking to my guys about coming to the grip meet!!!!!

You know, Thom, that’s a real convenient excuse for ducking me. I just got a new Henry Big Boy in .45 LC and I was looking oh so forward to beating your Marine self into the ground with it. But alas, just as predicted, you’d come up with an excuse. At this point I’m wondering if I may have misunderstood you, that you said you’re an ex Mariner, not an ex Marine…or did I mention that already? LOL

GO ARMY! HUAAAAAAAAAAAAAH…….

-d

The few…the proud….mostly few. But none of my friends are Marines. HAHA

Okay, Al, I observed that you noted in your write-up that Lance Foster broke my harness lift record that had stood for 23 years. And by a mere 5 pounds! It looks like he must have been gunning for my record. Don’t walk down any dark alleys, Lance. LOL

Very few lifters are average in that lift, as either a person has strong tendons and ligaments that enable him to lift well over 2,000 (Schmidt, you, Garcia, John Carter, etc.) or he does not. I watched Brian Meek struggle mightily to make 2,000 at one of the Zercher Meets at a time when he was benching over 500 and squatting with about 800 (in the 1980s).

I never made big harness or hip lifts and neither did John V., for example. I didn’t have the equipment for practicing the lift and the side rails used in competitions were too short for my height. Consequently, there was only 350 pounds difference between my competition PR hip lift and PR harness lift. It was a somewhat funny sight at the 1987 Zercher Meet at the prison in Moberly, MO to see some inmates scurrying around to find blocks of wood to boost the side rails up high enough so that they could benefit me. I did 1,560 at that meet, which was the first time I had tried a harness lift.

Incidentally, I am indebted to whomever it was (Jesse?) who mentioned the Metals Depot in Kentucky, which I found to be a good source of round steel (they will cut it to the desired length) for making an extra long dumbbell. I had them give me an 18-inch cut several months ago.

I am still doing one-hand seated (in a chair) dumbbell “deadlifts” and I got 5 reps with 223 with my left hand about 10 days ago, using a strap. That wasn’t overly difficult and I am sure that I am capable of over 250 for a single. My goal is to do 300 on my 70th birthday, which is only 15 months away.

My seated presses off the rack are improving as I got 3 reps with 110 recently (but unracking the bar is a bit of a chore), in addition to 5 reps with 67.5 on a left-hand seated clean.

I know virtually nothing about making a YouTube video but sometime in the next few months I want to make a video to show how I use a lifting strap and the type that I use, which seems to be different from what everyone else does. I will be interested in comments from the lifting fraternity.

Tom

Tom – I will only walk down well lit alleys from here on out. 🙂

And, I do not believe that I had any more than the 1605 in me; I’m well satisfied that anything heavier would have stayed on the ground.

I think that type of lifting also takes a certain mindset (as well as conditioning the “neuro-muscular pathways”). What I mean is I got a couple of 900lb RR car wheels (give or take) and with the bar and set up was somewhere around 1700 to maybe even 2000. I could not warm up much for that and I fought and fought that. My Dad was there watching and I think he was rehearsing his CPR and call 911 as my face was turning purple. Then, I seemed to reach a threshold of pain tolerance and it came up…..then I seemed to be able to lift it at will. Just my thoughts…I’m no Dan Wagman with “science” to clutter my thoughts! HAHAHA

I think there are probably several factors involved, Thom.

We all know that Joe Garcia has been a great chain lifter for the past 20 years or so, as he has the all-time best hand and thigh lift and he has also been excellent at hip and harness lifts and variations thereof. But Joe never military pressed or deadlifted with either one hand or two hands in competition as much as I did, and ditto for the rectangular fix and a few other lifts. Somewhat similarly, Steve and I were close on some lifts and I would occasionally beat him on a lift. (That happened twice and I also tied him on a lift once.)

So I believe the main thing that separates the great chain lifters from the rest of us is probably tendon and ligament strength.

Another factor is the following.

Everyone marveled at Steve Schmidt’s huge harness lifts 20-25 years ago and I heard Steve say once that he had learned how to use his body. I realized after I had retired from harness and hip lifting that I had been giving the weight too much respect, as I tried to ease the weight off the floor rather than trying to drive it, as one would do with a deadlift, for example.

This became obvious to me when I did my last hip lift in 1993 and I did drive it some. I did a relatively easy 1,250 for a PR at the 1993 Zercher Meet and I undoubtedly was good for 1,300 or so.

Of course the weight must be respected, however, as I was there when John McKean destroyed a ligament doing a hip lift and Bill Clark once broke his leg doing a harness lift in his gym. I got off balance slightly on a hip lift once in competition and the weight came down at an angle rather than going straight down. That caused my leg to bend slightly in a way that legs aren’t supposed to bend and I realized that I might have come close to breaking my leg.

Speaking of railroad wheels, as you were, I had gotten up to 720 for repetition (partial) leg presses as a high school senior and I was interested in obtaining some railroad wheels. So I called Southern Railway and I think another company or two and the people I spoke with thought I was nuts!! LOL Typical responses were “Oh, you can’t lift those” and “Do you know how much those wheels weigh?” So I never obtained any railroad wheels.

Tom

Tom,

Only “worthy” records get mentioned when they get broke. Most never get mentioned. haha So that’s a great compliment to you!

I do think tendon and ligament strength plays a big part of the heavy lifts. Along with pain threshold. Squat/deadlift strength and heavy lifting strength doesn’t always correlate.

However, with proper training and the ability to learn how to apply a lifters natural leverages anyone can improve tremendously with the heavy lifts in short order.

Al