[Tom Ryan]

Al,

Well, Ed Zercher I is the obvious answer to the first question and that was also my guess. Unfortunately, that is NOT the correct answer. There is someone else who has been a USAWA member who was born before Ed. I don’t know if he ever competed in a USAWA meet (as of course Ed did) but that wasn’t part of the question. This person did compete in powerlifting at a very advanced age.

You may have the correct answer to the second question. Jack is certainly a good guess. There are several former USAWA members who were born before Jack, however, so the question is whether or not they are still alive. I’ll have to do some checking.

Incidentally, when Terry Todd called me several weeks ago, he told me an interesting story about Jack Lano and Jack Hughes. (For anyone not familiar with Jack Hughes, he was Senior National Olympic lifting champion in 1953 in the 123-lb. class — apparently the only lifter entered in that class — and has long been involved in weightlifting administration. Terry said he is now 90 years old.) Terry told me that when he was in Los Angeles (presumably somewhat recently), he was riding in a car with the two Jacks and Lano was driving. He said that their car came so close to clipping the side mirrors on cars on their right (which may have been parked, not sure about that) that he flinched multiple times. He told me that he was never so glad to get out of a car! 🙂 So maybe Art Montini can still drive a car safely at a very advanced age, but there are other old lifters who are quite “suspect”. 🙂

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

[b]Quote from joegarcia on February 19, 2011, 08:52[/b]
Got a list from Bill of some additional 88 members:
Bryan Briggs, Gonzalo Gonzales, Dave Hahn, Joe McCoy, Tom Morton, Ron Sisk, Harrison Skeet

Joe,

There were actually many more members in 1988, some or whom continued past that year and some who did not. Nobody has mentioned the Zerchers yet but all three of them were members in 1988, as were Carl Klem and Paul Knauer (whom I competed against), plus many, many more.

Occasionally I think about Paul Knauer, whom everybody agreed was a nice guy during those years. Paul is now 63 if he is still with us and I haven’t found any evidence to suggest otherwise.

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

Al,

There was actually a rather large number of people who were members in 1988, some of whom were never members after that year, as far as I know. The list of 1988 only members includes some names you would recognize, such as Clay Oliver, and some that hardly anyone would recognize, such as John Haynes and Dr. Alan Kirshner. Tommy Suggs was a member only in 1989. A very large number of people have been USAWA members for at least one year.

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

[b]Quote from dinoman on February 2, 2011, 11:06[/b]
Tom, You beat Meek in the Steinborn!! Not too many lifters can say that they outsquatted Brian Meek in a competition!! Al

Al,

If I were smart, I would let this thread end with your last message and let most people who read this think that I must have been a really great squatter on that day! LOL

There are some important explanatory details, however. The Steinborn lift is a big problem for many lifters who encounter it for the first time, and Meek did have major problems. For one thing, he was rather wary at the start, prompting Steve Schmidt to tell him reassuringly “It won’t hurt you”. Then when he tried to get in position to shoulder the weight, he seemed to be rather stiff and had trouble with the position.

I always had my own problems with the lift. At my height of 6-4, I was too tall to shoulder the bar in the conventional manner (which Bill Clark immediately recognized), so I had to initially shoulder the bar on my right shoulder only and then twirl the bar around so that it was across both shoulders. (That in itself was a bit of a chore.) I still had problems even with that method because I would almost have to fold up like an accordion in order to get low enough to shoulder the bar, as having plates that were just a short distance off the platform after I upended the bar created a major leverage problem for me.

After I shouldered the bar, the squat was a piece of cake. At one Zercher Meet, I squatted rock bottom and sat there for a second or two to show Bill how easy the squat portion of the lift was for me. I never did much in the lift, but that was mainly because I had such difficulty shouldering the bar.

The late Bill Fellows was a strong guy in his prime and also later in life. It was either at this meet or a later meet in which he became rather ambitious and tried a Steinborn with 350 or so, if I remember correctly. Bill was about 57 at the time, so that was a lot of weight for someone his age to be trying in that lift, especially since he also tried to use the one-shoulder method. He never came close to shouldering the bar, however, and it was quite a sight to see him repeatedly struggle trying to do so.

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

Al,

I remember that 1988 meet somewhat, although not too fondly because of the condition that I was in. I was hospitalized for a week in late November, 1987 with a nasty case of cellulitis, with the doctor worried that I might lose some skin and muscle tissue in my lower left leg. I couldn’t get out of bed for a day or two and when I was finally allowed to walk to the bathroom, moving at a snail’s pace, I noticed when I got there that my ankle and foot were purple. Needless to say, that was a “discomforting” sight!!

But I recovered and by the 7th day I decided that I had had enough of hospital life, so I told the substitute doctor (it was Thanksgiving weekend) that I was leaving. I went by the supermarket on my way home from the hospital (slightly shocking a clerk in the process) and did some Zercher lifts that night as I had to get ready for the meet. (I never considered not lifting in the meet.)

I recall Meek telling me at the meet to take it easy and Bill told me a year or two later that when he saw me lifting on a leg that was still red at the time, he figured I might be on my way to becoming a one-legged lifter!

Of course I was way down in strength and bodyweight, as I believed I weighed in at about 263. I don’t have the meet results at my fingertips, so I’ll have to guess the lift at which I beat Meek. Maybe the one-hand deadlift? Meek and I did swap the record in that lift for our class back and forth over the next few years. Could be the hack lift since neither one of us could do the lift without the bar getting stuck behind our knees, but I’ll go with the one-hand deadlift.

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

Al,

I don’t know if the Zercher Meet was ever “the meet that everyone wanted to attend”. Bill felt that not everyone had the guts to compete in it, as it is indeed rough on the body. There is not much point in trying to train for about a week after the meet. I competed in the meet from 1987 through 1993, missing one year (probably 1992) when Bill advised me to not make a plane reservation because it looked like the meet would probably be canceled (it wasn’t).

There was not a really long list of entrants during that time interval (maybe 18 or so at most?). Just going from memory, I believe there were 11 competitors in 1987, when the meet was held at the prison in Moberly. I know there were more in the years that directly followed, as Joe and others started competing in it. I recall that one year there was three generations of Zerchers who competed — fitting since it was “their” meet.

I believe there was about 15 or 16 lifts used in the 1987 meet, with the Jefferson lift being one of them. In later years, various lifters, including Brian Meek, John V. and me, did not have any fun at all doing the hack lift because the bar would get stuck behind our knees.

Joe, I applaud you for surviving the 13 lifts in one day (“at your age” :-)), and making good lifts, to boot!

Since Joe mentioned Bill’s Atlanta surgeon, I will add that Bill has celebrity status in that office. The surgeon previously had a photo or two of Bill on his office wall. Now I understand there is a photo of Bill hip lifting 1,620 that is an area that is more readily visible.

I can imagine a patient coming in for consultation before surgery and someone pointing to Bill’s picture and saying “See that old guy. He’s had both hips replaced in addition to various other joint replacements and he is lifting 1,620 pounds. He is an example of what a person can do after joint replacement.” Then I could just imagine the disbelieving patient saying “Yeah, right”. 🙂

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

Thom,

I will see if I can find that DVD this weekend. If I am successful,
I’ll e-mail you with some info.

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

Did I hear someone say “token lift”? Like Al. Based on my performance in an Olympic lifting meet on Saturday, I believe that I am presently (and perhaps “inarguably”) the current world record holder in the token lift. Specifically, I presumably tied the all-time record (shared by many, I think) for the lowest total in men’s Olympic lifting with my 25-kilo snatch and 25-kilo clean and jerk, taking just one attempt in each lift. I hope the assembled throng who witnessed the first stage of my comeback after a layoff of 25 years was not disappointed, but this was planned. 🙂

I knew that I would almost certainly be lifting unopposed (and I was), and I was nursing a slight injury with either tendonitis or a strained muscle a few inches above my right knee. I have also discovered that one cannot make up for not training snatches and clean and jerks for 25 years with just 3 months of training. I had planned to use the meet Saturday (the Southern Open) to satisfy the 3-year requirement and be eligible to compete in the National Masters in April, but it will apparently take about another year of training for me to return to a level that I consider acceptable for that contest.

By doing 25 in each lift, it will be apparent to anyone who views the contest report that I was just taking token lifts, whereas if I had gone higher, it would have looked like I lifted as much as I could. So I needed to keep my current capabilities secret … for my emotional well-being!

I can tell you that when you don’t train snatches for 25 years, your top pull for the snatch disappears completely, as do your traps! I have started doing muscle snatches for my top pull, working up to a set of 5 reps, and I have discovered that I actually still have traps, they have simply been hidden for the past 25 years! 🙂

I told a friend that there are probably some housewives in the Atlanta area who could c&j 25, but I think the 25 snatch would stop them cold. Even if they got the bar to arms length, they would probably have some press out.

Try snatching 25 without jacking the bar up. Your knuckles will be almost scraping the platform. I practiced from that position the night before the contest, just to make sure that I could do it. (I could.) I figured that I had better use the dive style, though, that some lifters used in the 30s and 40s because I was afraid that if I used the normal get set style and had to get down that low, I might be stuck there forever! Fortunately they jacked the bar up at the contest by turning a collar on each side on end and sitting the 2.5 kilo plate and the bar on top of those, jacking the bar up 4 or 5 inches.

It was good to renew acquaintances with my old (literally) Olympic lifting buddies, who were coaching their young lifters, as I have not been attending local meets in recent years. I can tell all of you (relatively) young guys, however, that you had better enjoy being not old as much as you can because once you hit your 60s and 70s it may take all of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men to put you back together again! One old weightlifter I know turns 68 this month and he has had both hips replaced, and one who is 61 told me Saturday that his shoulders are shot.

Speaking of shoulders, I had a long talk with Bill Clark yesterday (actually all of my talks with Bill are an hour or more) and he will be coming to my town to have his shoulder repaired, as he didn’t care for what the Missouri docs had in mind. If he flies in, I will get a chance to do some chauffeuring, which will be fine since I owe him some favors.

Tom

[Tom Ryan]

I almost forgot to give the answer to my quiz question. The hands belong to Brian Meek.

[Tom Ryan]

[b]Quote from dinoman on January 10, 2011, 08:44[/b]
Tom, haha I’m not going to argue or inargue with you on the proper use of words! After all the errors you found of mine in the Rule Book review – I fear you like I did my Sophomore English teacher!

Steve definitely has had dominance in the Hip, Back and Harness Lifts thru the history of the USAWA. But with the Neck and Hand and Thigh Lifts – others have done more even though I consider Steve pretty good at those lifts as well. Here’s my top 5 Heavy Lifters of All-Time in the USAWA:

1. Steve Schmidt
2. Frank Ciavattone
3. Howard Prechtel
4. Joe Garcia
5. John Carter

And in that ORDER! Al

I don’t think of the neck lift as being a heavy lift, Al. It certainly wasn’t for me as I never had any interest in trying a limit lift in something I didn’t consider safe, so my best in competition was only 280. There was one meet in which a lifter mentioned having a tingling in his arm after doing a neck lift. That was enough to convince me to put discretion before valor, as if I needed any more convincing! LOL Actually, Steve was also king of the hand-and-thigh lift in the very distant past. That was before Joe emerged and eventually blew past everybody.

[Tom Ryan]

No, not me, Al. You are right that the photo is from a Zercher Meet. One person here should get the answer since he was there, as I was. I’ll give the answer shortly if he doesn’t jump in.

[Tom Ryan]

Well, I have about 5 inches of snow in my yard and Atlanta has been almost
totally paralyzed by the snow and ice. It has been a very long time since Atlanta has had this much snow in a 24-hr. period. People have been advised to stay off the roads, some of which have been closed.

[Tom Ryan]

Glad you liked my story, Al. A photo could be difficult to obtain since I live alone and train alone.

Maybe I could set my digital camera (which I’ve hardly ever used) to movie mode and “make a movie”. LOL I’m not a camera buff so I’m not sure exactly what I could do in terms of “shooting myself”, but I will look into it.

[Tom Ryan]

Like Joe said, some of us are approaching the level of Al’s “forward fiction”. I will be returning to Olympic lifting next month after an absence of 25 years and I would be embarrassed to say what weight I missed on a snatch the other night. I think my top pull needs just a “little bit” of work!!

I plan to just take token lifts (I’m not sure that I have a choice!) as I need to compete in some sanctioned meet to be eligible for the National Masters in April.

[Tom Ryan]

Al,

Thanks for posting Bill Clark’s article on Howard, which is a fitting tribute to him as Howard did some truly extraordinary all-round lifting, some of which I was fortunate enough to witness.

I noticed an error in Bill’s article, however, as Howard did not finish 3rd in the 198-lb. class at the 1956 Olympic Trials. In fact, he didn’t compete there. Paul Ash finished 3rd with a 920 total. Howard was a decent Olympic lifter at the local level as, for example, he finished 2nd in the 225-lb. class in the Junior Cuyahoga County Weightlifting Contest on March 17th of that year with a 690 total. (By the way, the contest results were reported to S&H by our own Dennis Mitchell, who finished 3rd in the 181-lb. class.)

Tom

[Author]

Posts