Congrats

[KCSTRONGMAN]

Congrats

I'm the lyrical Jesse James

[Tom Ryan]

I can certainly relate to your comment on the Jefferson lift, ET. Some of us have a hard time with that lift. The first time I did one in competition was at one of the Zercher meets, in either 1987 or 1988. Me and the bar would turn a lot when I did the lift, prompting Bill Clark to say I was doing “an airplane propeller lift”. 🙂 I believe I did 400, which I guess was a fair poundage under the circumstances, but certainly I could have done a lot more if I could have pulled the bar straight up.

[Al Myers]

You guys will like todays Daily News Story then!

Tom – That Jefferson Lift of yours was done at the 1987 Zercher (I looked it up). That had to be one of the best Zercher Meets of all time. The competition looked fierce! I also saw that was the meet that Stan Frenchie put up those huge MO Valley Record lifts – 700# Jeff, 700# Hack, and 600# DL HT (only took his opener here). It had him listed at 27 years, 206 pounds. Do you know what happened to him? He never really lifted much in all rounds after that? Al and PS Why didn’t you take a picture of Ed Zercher doing the Zercher that day so Thom would have THAT PICTURE?

[Joe Garcia]

Who knows? He may still be inside.

[Steve Angell]

I always tried to keep as straight on to the bar as possible when performing the straddle lift. My mind set was to treat it as close to a conventional deadlift as possible, This always stopped the bar twisting for me.

Al, i was interested to read about your 6 week DL rotation. How does this work for you mate?

My 310kg Straddle from 1994

[Al Myers]

Steve, HUGE JEFFERSON LIFT!! Thanks for sharing that video with us. Your technique is perfect for it, and exactly what I was trying to describe in my blog as the correct way to do this lift. It is also obvious that your body type is perfect for his lift. Gotta wonder – what was your deadlift at the time you did this record Jefferson??

As I’ve got older my training has changed dramatically. I no longer push myself through those progressive training cycles like I did when I was powerlifting, hitting lots of reps, and trying to “peak” for a meet. I only do singles in training with the pull now, and change my max pulling exercise every week, on a 6 week rotation. These four pulls are always in my 6 week program: Deadlift 12″ base, Deadlift heels together, trap bar deadlift, and the Jefferson. Depending on what meet is coming up, I might add in a Hack Lift, 2 bar deadlift, a fulton bar lift, or some other type of pull in one of the other two weeks. I work up to a max (or near max) every workout in one of these lifts. It is always exciting because of the layoff since the last time I did the lift, and use that as “my gauge” as to what I want to get for the night. I do everything I can now to make my workouts fun!! Al

[KCSTRONGMAN]

Nice Jefferson, Steve
ET

I'm the lyrical Jesse James

[Tom Ryan]

Al,

As Joe said, Frenchie may still be “inside”. As you know, the Zercher Meet that year was held at the prison in Moberly, MO. The lifters who could go home when the competition ended were me, Steve Schmidt, Ed Zercher I and Ed Zercher II, and Al Springs. (Bill Clark weighed in but did not compete.) The other competitors were already “home”.

So the reason you don’t see Frenchie’s name in subsequent Zercher meets is that the only way he could compete would be if the meet came to him, and that didn’t happen after 1987.

Yes, that 1987 contest was quite a meet. Sid Littleton was a rather quiet guy who let his lifting do his talking and he was an outstanding lifter. Pound for pound, he and Steve were just about evenly matched.

Frenchie was a pulling machine! It was quite a sight to see him do a straddle lift. There were 16 lifts contested that year so pacing oneself was imperative. If Frenchie had participated in a record day and had performed only a straddle lift (or a hack lift), I think he could have made a really huge lift. Frenchie was a bit brash, unlike Littleton, but he was certainly strong!

I have wondered about him over the years and I just did some further checking. On 8/25/04, Stanley L. Frenchie was charged with violating the conditions of his supervised release by committing a burglary at an apartment complex in St. Charles, MO, for which he was sentenced to serve 22 months.

Where is he now? Good question. I think he may be living in a house in St. Louis, but he is not the owner of the house. Al, I think you and Thom should find him and interview him for a story, which I’m sure would make interesting reading. 🙂

That Zercher Meet was somewhat of a misadventure for me. I was a faculty member at the Univ. of Iowa at the time and I drove down from Iowa City. I was scheduled to give a seminar talk on the day that I was to depart. Some graduate students would not have been able to attend at the scheduled time, however, so I agreed to give my talk later in the day.

That turned out to be an unwise decision because I then had to scurry to get to Moberly in time to get at least a fair amount of sleep. To say that it was not exactly a balmy day would be to put it mildly as the temperature was zero as I was driving through Missouri, and ice was forming on my windshield inside the car! My car was practically the only one on the road … except for the state trooper who informed me that I was going 69 in a 55 zone and proceeded to write me a speeding ticket! I had never gotten a speeding ticket before (unlike Bill Clark who was collecting them from various states during that era :-)) and I informed him that he was ruining my perfect record. Not surprisingly, he disagreed with my assessment of the situation. 🙂

Writing a speeding ticket on a night like that with the roads practically deserted might have motivated me to coin the now-famous expression “C’mon man”. 🙂

Of course I probably wouldn’t have been driving that fast if I hadn’t moved my seminar talk to later in the day. As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.

So at that point in time, a story of my meet participation might have had a title like “The Life and Times and Travails of Tom Ryan on His Way to Prison”. Something like that. 🙂

It was still cold as the devil the next morning when Bill and I arrived at the prison simultaneously. I had not met him previously, although I had seen him a year earlier when I competed in the National Masters in Olympic lifting, and he immediately said something like “What is a southern guy doing in this part of the country?”, alluding to the temperature difference when we had just gotten out of our cars.

The meet spectators were several inmates and it seemed like all of them were smoking. At times it was hard to see clearly across the room because of the smoke.

I had not practiced virtually any of the lifts before, so I really didn’t know what to expect. Of course I had done clean and jerks for years but by then I was over the hill as an Olympic lifter. So Steve beat me by 5 pounds, as I believe we had the two highest C&Js.

As was the case at every contest I entered in which the harness lift was contested, the side rails were way too short for my height, so it was quite a sight to see some inmates scurrying around trying to find blocks of wood to jack up the side rails.

The hand-and-thigh lift, which was always just about my worst lift because of my long arms, was the last lift that was contested. Being totally unfamiliar with the lift and not being sure if my grip would hold out, I used a standard deadlift grip, which resulted in me tearing my biceps tendon in my left arm, which had the underhand grip. That was on my first attempt. Bill gave me the lift because he said the weight was up.

So I “left prison” that day knowing that I had just had a unique experience … and I hoped that my arm would heal quickly.

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

Excellent lift, Steve.

[KCSTRONGMAN]

good story Tom.

Al, in the article you say that the Jefferson will be contested at Worlds this year. Have the lifts for Worlds been announced?
ET

I'm the lyrical Jesse James

[Al Myers]

ET – yes the lifts have been announced. They are:

Day 1: Curl-Reverse Grip, Clean and Jerk – one arm, Pullover and press, Steinborn
Day 2: Snatch – Fulton Bar, hack Lift-one arm, Jefferson

The dates are October 6th & 7th. (a two day meet)

I hope to have the announcement and entry forms on the website next week sometime. Al

PS AND GREAT STORY TOM!!! That is too good of story to be lost in a forum discussion. Was, by any chance, pictures taken at this Zercher Meet?

[Tom Ryan]

Al,

I don’t recall any photos being taken at that meet. Taking photos inside a prison might not have been allowed anyway.

What would also be fun to see would be a video clip of Ed doing one of his unsupported leg presses — in his 80s. I’ve seen him do that and I’m sure that Joe has also.

Speaking of Zercher lifts, I don’t believe this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hTQniUN3AE
Aluminum plates?

Tom

[Steve Angell]

[b]Quote from dinoman on January 18, 2012, 17:20[/b]
Steve, HUGE JEFFERSON LIFT!! Thanks for sharing that video with us. Your technique is perfect for it, and exactly what I was trying to describe in my blog as the correct way to do this lift. It is also obvious that your body type is perfect for his lift. Gotta wonder – what was your deadlift at the time you did this record Jefferson??

As I’ve got older my training has changed dramatically. I no longer push myself through those progressive training cycles like I did when I was powerlifting, hitting lots of reps, and trying to “peak” for a meet. I only do singles in training with the pull now, and change my max pulling exercise every week, on a 6 week rotation. These four pulls are always in my 6 week program: Deadlift 12″ base, Deadlift heels together, trap bar deadlift, and the Jefferson. Depending on what meet is coming up, I might add in a Hack Lift, 2 bar deadlift, a fulton bar lift, or some other type of pull in one of the other two weeks. I work up to a max (or near max) every workout in one of these lifts. It is always exciting because of the layoff since the last time I did the lift, and use that as “my gauge” as to what I want to get for the night. I do everything I can now to make my workouts fun!! Al

Al, So do you go for a max lift every week, but rotate your exercises?

I think the Straddle deadlift on the clip was around 20kgs over my deadlift at the time.

[Al Myers]

Steve, Yes, I hit a max (or near max) in some type of pull every week. My deadlift training is only with singles nowadays. I don’t train to “peak” for meets, but rather just try to keep my baseline strength up at all times so I can compete whenever I want. I love this training program – it allows me to train hard, yet not overtax the lower back with too much training volume.(which doesn’t recover like it used to). Al

PS And Tom – I don’t believe the weight lifted in that YouTube Video could possible be real. And if it was, we might be looking at the next Ed Coan.

[Author]

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