http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/index/ en stef@startingstrength.com Copyright 2013 2013-05-22T22:09:43+00:00 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/george_ernie_pickett_pt_6 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/george_ernie_pickett_pt_6#When:22:09:43Z The Senior Nationals Powerlifting Contest by Bill Starr “In the 1968 Senior Nation Powerlifting Championships there were 38 entries from all across the country. Carl Snitkin came all the way from New London, Connecticut, Allen Lord and John Dzurenko from New Jersey, Felix Gomes and Joe Weinstein from Staten Island, New York, and Ronny Ray and Jim Witt from Dallas….With the sport in its infancy, it came as no surprise that some of the athletes would go to far extremes to gain an edge…” Read More Discuss “In the 1968 Senior Nation Powerlifting Championships there were 38 entries from all across the country. Carl Snitkin came all the way from New London, Connecticut, Allen Lord and John Dzurenko from New Jersey, Felix Gomes and Joe Weinstein from Staten Island, New York, and Ronny Ray and Jim Witt from Dallas….With the sport in its infancy, it came as no surprise that some of the athletes would go to far extremes to gain an edge…” Ernie’s idea of a pre-meet meal was a quart of milk. I offered to give him a B12 shot but he declined, saying that he had tried it before and couldn’t notice any difference in his lifting. This was not unusual for someone his size. Most true heavyweights have to take a huge dosage of any drug or vitamin for it to have the desired effect. Ernie was also going to pass on taking any amphetamines for this meet. He said, “I don’t need to get keyed up for this. It’s nothing more than a heavy workout. Besides,” he added, “those uppers make me cramp something awful.” While Ernie stretched out on his bed in the hotel room, I walked across the street to the Embassy Auditorium. This had also been the site of the 1965 Senior Nationals in Olympic lifting. I had several reasons for going over to the auditorium early. I wanted to talk to the meet director, Don Haley, from Manhattan Beach, California. I wanted him to give me a copy of the results to carry back to Grimek. He would use them in the next issue of Muscular Development. That magazine carried results of powerlifting while Strength & Health handled Olympic lifting. Next I sought out Cliff Swan, who was the West Coast correspondent for S&H and MD. He said Grimek had already contacted him to take photos of the lifting and the physique contest. I told him if he wanted me to take the rolls of film and have them processed in York, I would be glad to do so. He replied that he would rather develop them himself and would ship them off to Grimek by express mail on Monday. Then I spent time visiting with old friends. My first stop was Jim Witt. Jim had started Olympic lifting at the same time I had, in the fall of ’59. I had just moved to Dallas to enroll at SMU. We began lifting with Sid Henry, Gerald Travis, Linwood Gillian, Homer Brannum, and the other members of the Downtown Dallas Y team. We were both rank beginners, but there was a big difference between us. I was 21 years old and Jim was 42. Even though he did the hard work, it was clear that he simply did not have the necessary flexibility to do the quick lifts with good technique. But he got considerably stronger and began going to odd lift contests in various parts of Texas. I often joined him just to see how I would do. They really were odd lifts. While there were always three lifts contested, what lifts were selected depended entirely on the meet director and were usually lifts that the meet director was especially good at. I lifted in contests that consisted of curls, jerks off the rack, and back squats. And overhead presses with the heels together, front squats, and Zerchers. Even Hack lifts, pullovers while lying on a bench, and deadlifts. Slowly but surely, the meets began to be more standardized with the bench press, back squat, and deadlift. Jim was the driving force behind getting powerlifting accepted as an official AAU sport. He succeeded in the mid-sixties and became the sport’s first national chairman. Its popularity took off like a rocket. There were a lot of strength athletes out there who were in the same boat at Jim. They were extremely strong, but were unable to master the form on the snatch and clean and jerk because of a lack of flexibility in the shoulders, back, and hips. Or they just didn’t possess the athletic qualities needed to excel in Olympic lifting. It didn’t take that much coordination, timing, and foot speed to do the three power lifts. Another plus for powerlifting was that the exercises could be done in a limited space with basic equipment and there was not any need for a coach. All that was needed to train were an Olympic bar, flat bench, and some sort of squat rack, and lots of hard work. Most of the powerlifters in the country trained at small gyms in garages and basements, and of course, YMCAs. I also got to visit with Peary Rader, publisher and editor of Iron Man magazine and Lifting News. While Jim Witt spearheaded the movement to make powerlifting a legitimate sport, Peary had been his number one supporter, using the influence of his two publications to get the sport accepted. Peary was one of the great gentlemen of physical culture. He printed articles by authors in the same magazine that totally contradicted one another. He let anyone and everyone express their point of view on a wide range of subjects and presented training pieces of rather absurd routines. He was extremely liberal and fair, and his readers appreciated his attitude. In the 1968 Senior Nation Powerlifting Championships there were 38 entries from all across the country. Carl Snitkin came all the way from New London, Connecticut, Allen Lord and John Dzurenko from New Jersey, Felix Gomes and Joe Weinstein from Staten Island, New York, and Ronny Ray and Jim Witt from Dallas. Yet the high cost of travel kept many of the top powerlifters from attending. Those in the South and Midwest were conspicuous by their absence, but there were a half dozen more contestants than there had been at the Seniors Nationals Olympic Meet in ’65. With the sport in its infancy, it came as no surprise that some of the athletes would go to far extremes to gain an edge. I’d heard about lifters in Texas who wore several pairs of cut-off jeans under their lifting suits that enabled them to squat heavier poundages. But I was in for a shock when Tom Overholtzer of the Zulver’s Hall of Fame team, came out for his first attempt in the bench press. This was the lightheavyweight class. His arms from wrist to arm pit were wrapped in ace bandages. I don’t know how many ace bandages were linked together, but my guess was about 15’ worth. He couldn’t bend his arms. When the spotter handed him the weight, he slowly lowered the bar to his chest, then once he got the signal to press, the bar shot up as if it were attached to a spring. Which it was. Those wraps acted just like a spring. There was really no pressing involved. The entire up and down motion consisted of controlling the weight so that it stayed in the proper groove. Peary and Jim Witt were both judging the 181s, and they were all over Tom as soon as he got up from the bench. They told him he had to get rid of all those wraps. Tom stood his ground, arguing that there was nothing in the rules stating how long the wraps could be. He was right. Wraps were not allowed in Olympic lifting unless there was a serious injury to the athlete. But they were allowed in power meets. Of course, when those rules were drawn up, no one thought of some lifter coming up with such an outlandish notion of using them to such an extent. Tom had broken no rules and they had to pass his lifts. He ended up with 410 and took a healthy 45-lb. lead over favorite Jack Barnes of the Phoenix YMCA team into the squat (the bench was contested first at early power meets). If the judges had been flustered in the bench, they were furious in the squat because Tom had yet another trick up his sleeve. As expected, he had wrapped his knees in enough ace bandages to stretch to San Diego, and he had tucked tennis balls in behind his knees. The idea was for the tennis ball to help him kick out of the bottom. It was rather insane because it placed all the attachments of the knee under a tremendous amount of stress, especially the patellar tendon. When Jim and Peary saw the tennis balls when the wraps came off – and they had to come off quickly to allow some blood to get into his lower legs – they hit the fan. When Tom contended that there were no rules against what he was doing, Jim told him they were not going to be allowed. As chairman of the sport, he was making the ruling. If he used them again, he would be disqualified from the contest. Peary and meet director Don Haley stood behind Jim’s decision, and that was the end of the tennis balls. But those excessive wraps still gave him a big advantage in the squat. All Tom had to do was control his downward movement to the bottom, then he popped right up with little effort. He made a meet record 655, actual weight 666, and picked up another ten pounds on Barnes. Even though Overholtzer was a local product, the crowd really got behind Barnes. They felt that Tom had gained an unfair advantage over Jack by using the excessive wraps, and encouraged him loudly when he came on stage. Unfortunately for Overholtzer, he hadn’t come up with any gimmicks to boost his deadlift and Barnes came through with a strong 585 deadlift to beat Tom by five pounds, 1595 to 1590. He needed that extra five pounds because he was heavier than Overholtzer. Jack got a standing ovation when he accepted the trophy for first place. To me, it was poetic justice and proof that cheaters never win. {pagebreak} Ernie and Bill St. John showed up in time to see the finish of the lightheavyweight division and I told them what had happened. They were as amazed as I had been. Ernie weighed in at 307 ½, the heaviest he had ever been and he was very pleased. There were only three heavyweights: Ernie, Tom Veller from San Francisco, and Dan Cundy, the favorite, from Minnesota. Dan weighed in at 280 ½. Veller promptly bombed out in the bench so it was just Ernie and Dan. Ernie only did three warm-ups for each lift: 225, 315, and 405. He made every attempt on the platform and could have done reps on all of his final lifts. But as he had said before the contest, this was to be no more than a heavy session of training. A large part of the crowd had come to see him perform. Don Haley had used Ernie to publicize the contest. A lot of people came expressly to see a World Record holder and a heavyweight on the Olympic weightlifting team. They weren’t disappointed. While Ernie didn’t have the showmanship and flare of Bednarski, he did have a style all his own. He exuded power and confidence. At 6’4” and 307 ½ pounds, he was the prototype of what a strongman should look like. He blew up a ridiculously easy 450 bench, squatted 600 as if it were 135 lbs, and made a smooth 750 deadlift on his second attempt and declined taking a third. It was an effortless 1800 total, and I believe that if he had seriously made a run at beating Cundy, he could have because he was extremely strong that night. Cundy took the early lead with a 480 bench, then sealed the deal with a 700 squat. He made 755 on his second deadlift, then called for 800. Dan had been doing his very best to befriend Ernie all night. Ernie was an easy-going individual so he played along, while in fact he didn’t like Cundy. Neither did St. John, Hirtz, or myself. Dan was loud and demonstrative when he was on stage, acting like a pro wrestler with a 1ot of screaming and yelling. Ernie hated show-offs. So after Dan called for 800, he asked Ernie to take a weight less than that to give him more time to rest. He figured that Ernie would be more than happy to do that since they were now buds. “No,” Ernie told Cundy, “I’m through for the night” and started packing his gym bag. “But,” Dan quickly said, “You don’t have to actually attempt the lift, just call for the weight so I can have more time to rest.” “I don’t think so,” Ernie replied as he stuffed his belt in his bag. Then he stuck a knife in the wound by saying, “And Dan, I think you have lots of good years ahead of you in the sport, and after that you can start pursuing women.” The look on Cundy’s face was priceless as the four of us walked from the warm-up room, grinning in delight. Cundy missed his final attempt, most likely because he was trying to determine what had just happened. When we got into the auditorium, we were met by Mr. Hise and four of the LA Y lifters: Bobby Hise, Jack Hill, Walter Gioseffi, and Dan Cantore. All four had competed with Ernie and me in the Olympic Trials and all had done well. Dan had come in second in the 132-lb, class, Jack had won the 148-lb, division, Walter had taken fourth in the light heavies and had pressed 341 ½, and Bobby won the silver medal behind Puleo and was named an alternate on the Olympic Team. Tom Hirtz had arrived just as Ernie was starting his warm-ups. He had gone to the Downtown L.A. Y to get in a workout. After the meet we gathered in the lobby until the awards were given out, then walked over to the hotel and huddled together in my room to talk weightlifting for the next few hours. Then our guests left and we walked down the street and ate at a cafe that stayed open all night. Hirtz stayed over and slept on a pallet he created from the comforter on my bed plus one of my pillows. At eight o’clock, we were dressed and once again slipped through the hotel lobby unseen by Hoffman, and were on our way in the Chevy El Camino. This was to be a strictly sightseeing day with little walking since I was lifting in the afternoon and Bill was to take part in the physique competition that night. When Hirtz asked us, “Where to?” and no one answered, I suggested that he drive us by some of the famous sports venues. No one objected to that idea, so off we went. First stop, The Forum, home of the Lakers, next the Coliseum, home field for the USC Trojans and L.A. Rams and the site of the 1932 Olympic Games. Next, Dodger Stadium then to Westwood for a look at the Pauley Pavilion on the campus of UCLA, followed by a long drive to Pasadena to look down on the Rose Bowl. We stopped and went in Bill Pearl’s Gym but he was out of town so we didn’t linger. The gym was in a house and reminded me of the one Schemansky had in Detroit, although Pearl’s facility was much better equipped and was cleaner. Whenever we got hungry, we stopped and ate. Or more correctly, we stopped and ate whenever St. John got hungry, which was often. However, he only ate small portions and just protein foods. He shunned all carbs and drank liquids sparingly. I ate about a third of what he did and followed his example of eating just protein and taking in a minimum of fluids to make sure I stayed under the weight limit. We were back at the hotel by 2 p.m. so that Bill and I could rest before our respective competitions. I laid down for a half an hour, then started getting my gym bag packed before going over to the weigh-in. Someone save the secret knock, I opened the door and Bobby Hise and Jack Hill stepped into my room. The night before, Bobby had asked me how I was feeling and I remarked that my left shoulder was dinged and I was having difficulty lifting it past horizontal. In fact, I couldn’t lift it any higher than that. I had hurt it at the Trials. He told me to show him where the pain was and I pinpointed it on the crown of my left shoulder. He took out a small bottle, soaked the liquid in it onto a cotton ball and rubbed it all over my shoulder. Then he broke open a Darvon capsule and sprinkled the drug onto the spot that I had indicated was causing me pain. I knew what the Darvon was, but asked him what was in the small bottle. “DMSO,” he replied. “Stands for dimethyl sulfoxide. Works just like an injection. Lift your arm.” I thought he was kidding but when I lifted my left arm, it climbed right up over my head to a full vertical position. “Wow! That’s amazing! Where can I get some of that and what’s it called again?” “DMSO. It’s used by vets on animals. It’ll carry whatever is on the skin right into the tissue and bone. You can have this,” he said, handing me the bottle. “It’s cheap and they sell it on roadside stands out here.” I thanked him profusely, still a bit stunned, gave myself a B12 shot (I like to wait until just before weigh-in to take the shot), finished packing my gym bag, and walked over to the meet site. Bobby and Jack said they would hang out in my room watching TV and would be over when I started lifting. I made weight all right and was just starting the warm-ups on the bench when St. John and Tom showed up. They did all the loading and Bill kept track of the attempts at the scorekeepers table. “Where’s Ernie?” I asked them. Hirtz answered, “Out front. Signing autographs and allowing his adoring fans to kiss his ring.” That broke us up and it took a few minutes for me to refocus on the task at hand. Like Ernie, I hadn’t done any benches or deadlifts since the power meet in mid-July, but unlike Ernie, I was going to have to exert myself if I wanted to make at least the qualifying total, which was 1525. If I were able to do that, it would justify my being a part of this championship. Just before the bench press competition for the 198 division was about to begin, Hoffman walked over to me and said in a loud enough voice for all the other lifters to hear, “Bill, I’m the head judge in your class, I’ll do everything I can to help you.” {pagebreak} Great! I thought, just what I needed. Some of the contestants were already grumbling about Olympic lifters treading on their territory. Now Hoffman had announced that he was going to provide me with an advantage. I looked over at Bill and Tom and said, “That man is a piece of work.” I figured that he was going to give me a quick clap and I was right. He clapped the very instant that the bar touched my chest. But I had planned what I was going to do, I had done it before. I ignored his signal and counted to myself, one-thousand one, one-thousand two, then drove the weight up. I didn’t mind a long pause because that was what occurred in the overhead press most of the time. Now no one could say that I took advantage of Hoffman’s attempt to assist me. Hirtz had handed me the weight and when I got up he smiled and said, “Sweet move.” I made what I had planned on making in the bench, but fell short in the squat. I had to gear up a notch for the deadlifts if I wanted to make that qualifying total. On my second attempt with 630, I had the total I was after and decided to pass my final attempt just as Ernie had done. Hirtz wouldn’t allow that. He jumped all over me to take that third attempt, “You just stood up with that last attempt. Go after the highest lift in the class. You’ve got a lot left in the tank. Do it for Olympic lifters.” I knew he was right and decided, Why not? I’ve got nothing to lose. I waited until Paul Wachholz made a solid 650 on his final attempt, then Bill went to the scorers table at put me down for 655. The bar had been weighing heavy all through the meet so I knew I would be trying to lift more that what was announced. It climbed up without a hitch and when it was weighed, I had a new National record of 666. It always seemed ironic to me that I got more recognition for this lift than any other I had ever done, and I hadn’t trained for it. People like to point out two things about that lift. One, I lifted the Devil’s number. Two, I was wearing penny-loafers. I can’t explain the first one, but the reason I wore the loafers was because I had only brought two pairs of shoes, my lifting shoes and my good-luck penny loafers. The lifting shoes had built-up heels. For the deadlift, lower heels are much better and that’s why I wore them. I finished fourth behind some very strong athletes: Ronny Ray, Joe Weinstein, and Peanuts West. I was satisfied. I went back to the hotel, showered, changed into shorts and a York Barbell t-shirt, and got back to the contest to see the 242-ers compete. The favorite, Mel Hennessy from Minneapolis WLC, jumped out to a 30-lb, lead in the bench, then bombed in the squats. That left two athletes from Phoenix, Arizona, to battle it out for the title: Jon Cole and John Kanter. It came down to the final lift. Cole came through with a 720 National record deadlift, actual weight 724, to tie Kanter and win on bodyweight. During the break, while the staff was setting up for the physique portion of the show, Tom, Ernie, Bobby Hise, Jack Hill, and I sat in the back of the auditorium and talked about the upcoming Olympics. The conversations centered around the effect of altitude on the lifters and whether the team should go to Mexico City early or just before the opening ceremonies. Ernie said he would prefer to go in as late as possible. He didn’t look forward to bunking with the team and eating strange food. We kept on talking even after the physique competition got under way, except for when Bill came on stage. Then the five of us shouted, screamed, and applauded like teenagers at an Elvis concert. Despite not having time to really get ready for the show, Bill was in tremendous shape. At 5’10” and 210 lbs. he was all muscle. Bill lived in Glassboro, New Jersey, and worked at the Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia. He was a pipe fitter by trade and the job was often very physical. At 24 years of age, he had an abundance of energy that allowed him to handle heavy workloads in the gym every week. He was basically a strong athlete with a powerful physique. Our small group thought he had the best build of any of the contestants, but the judges were looking for other aspects of a well-constructed body. Bill finished fifth, behind Chris Dickerson, Boyer Coe, Ralph Kroger, and Ken Waller, all elite athletes in the sport. Bill was definitely in the higher echelon of bodybuilding and he was pleased with his placing. So was Hoffman. All of the athletes who represented the York Barbell Club had performed well. Roman Mielec had beaten Phil Trujillo, representing Colorado State College, by virtue of being the lighter man and had taken second in the bantamweight division. Ernie had also won the silver medal and Hoffman was delighted with my record and Bill’s showing, so he was happy. Which meant that the four of us left the Embassy Auditorium with some spending money in our pockets that night. I got the lifting results from Don Haley, said goodbyes to Peary Rader and Jim Witt, then joined Bill, Tom, and Ernie and walked back to our hotel. Bobby and Jack had left right after the winners of the physique contest were announced. They told Ernie that they would see him in Mexico City. They were painting houses to make enough money for the trip. After the two departed, Ernie said, “I sure hope those homeowners have plenty of insurance.” We all laughed because we knew exactly what he was talking about. That pair were known for pocketing anything that wasn’t nailed down. I once wrote that Hise was the living embodiment of John Dawkins, the Artful Dodger, and Hill was the spirit of Fagan, from Dickens’ Oliver Twist. I related that when Jack and Bobby said they were going to stay in my room while I weighed in, I went and got my wallet and stuffed it in my gym bag and gave Bobby what was left of my B12. “He would have taken it anyway,” I said. “And if I didn’t let them hang out in my room, they would have found a way to get in.” All of us were tired, so we decided to hit the rack and get an early start the next day. It would be our last day in sunny Southern California and we wanted to make the most of it. Tom camped out on the floor of my room again, and by the time I got snuggled under my sheet, I could hear him snoring. Everyone was up at 8 a.m. We were going to spend the day at the beach. We ate breakfast at the cafe in the hotel. We no longer had to play hide and seek with Hoffman. He and Roman had flown back east that morning. After a brief tour of Santa Monica and Venice, Tom parked his El Camino in a lot right next to the beach where Santa Monica meets Venice. We left our shoes in the car and with hotel towels in hand and swim suits under our shorts, we strolled along the beaches, taking in the new sights. What impressed me the most, other than the sheer beauty of the setting, was the fact that every person we saw, male or female, young or old, was physically fit. Nor did I see any ugly women. Which was in direct contrast to being in York. It was a pleasant change. We found a spot on the Venice beach where we could watch several beach volleyball games at the same time. We sat on our towels, leaned back and took in the sights while soaking up the deliciously warm rays of the sun. We went swimming in the Pacific Ocean, mostly so we could say we had, then grabbed our towels off the sand and strolled along the triple-wide sidewalk that ran in front of the various stores and vendors selling souvenirs, t-shirts, surfboards, ice cream, pizza,etc. It was similar to the boardwalks on the Jersey Shore, but here, it was a year-round enterprise. Extremely fit women of all ages walked past, most wearing teeny-weenie bikinis. Our necks grew tired as we tried to get a look at every one of them, but it was impossible because there were just too many of them. Ernie declared, “There are no fat people in California.” “That’s right,” Hirtz said. “When someone gets overweight, they have to move to Oregon or Nevada.” I was thinking, wouldn’t it be great to live in Venice and train at one of the many gyms close by? Little did I know that in just three years, I would be living just a block from the ocean in Venice. So it goes. {pagebreak} We walked along the pier that jutted out over the ocean in Santa Monica and when we came to the slide, Hirtz insisted that we take a ride on it. Bill and I were all for that idea, but Ernie balked. “Don’t be such a girl!” Hirtz admonished him. “It’s a kid’s ride. It’s not scary and it’s safe.” Naturally, Ernie couldn’t refuse. After we purchased our tickets and started up the stairs to the top, Ernie turned to Tommy and said, “I don’t want you behind me. Go over and stand behind Starr.” When we reached the top of the stairs we could see that there were a dozen slides and when they ended at the bottom, there was a long stretch of what appeared to be outdoor carpet extending to a chain-link fence. There were also a half dozen husky young men stationed close to the fence. Their job was to stop anyone that was moving too fast at the end of the ride from crashing into the fence. Bill and I went first, at the same time, side by side. It was exhilarating, especially the first hump I shot over. Riders sat on thick mats, the size of large bath towels, and held onto the sides of the mats to maintain balance and to keep the mats from slipping out from under them. Bill and I slid to a halt about ten feet across the carpeting, stood up and Bill shouted up to Ernie, “It’s easy Ernie! Nothing to it! Come on down!” Bill and I moved back to the fence and watched as Ernie settled himself down on his mat, then we saw him change his mind and start to get up. But before he stood all the way up, Hirtz leaped in behind him, pushed him back down to a sitting position, and shoved him as hard as he could. Ernie shot off the top of the forty-foot slide like a rocket, went airborne at the first hump, and appeared to be picking up speed as he came down the slide. The husky person who was responsible for stopping those coming down the lane that Ernie was in called over to us, “How much does that guy weigh?” There was fear in his voice. Calmly, Bill informed him, “Three hundred five and a half pounds.” When he looked back at Ernie, who seemed to be getting larger and larger and moving faster and faster as he neared the end of the ride, he muttered, “Holy shit!” Ernie was gripping his mat for dear life and when he came to the end of the ride, it looked as if he was going too fast to be able to stop before he hit the fence. When he was within ten feet of the fence, the stopper decided that his life was worth more than his job and he dove out of the way. The carpeting slowed Ernie down enough so that all he had to do was lift his legs and plant his feet against the fence. Even so, the force of the impact caused the fence to bend backward. If it had given way, Ernie would have found himself in the Pacific Ocean. But it held and Ernie quickly got to his feet, angry as a wet hen. He screamed up at Hirtz, “I’m going to kill that little bastard!” Hirtz just grinned down and him and waved. While we could have gone down the slide as many times as we liked, one ride was enough. Hirtz knew enough to keep away from Ernie for the next hour, but with the warm sun, carnival atmosphere, and steady parade of stunning, bikini-clad damsels, Ernie couldn’t stay mad for long. Ernie, Bill, and I weren’t used to sun this potent, so we decided we had had enough of the beach. Bill wanted to see Gold’s Gym in Venice so we went there. It was nearly empty. Just two older men doing arm work. Nothing to write home about as far as I could see. The equipment was old and the place was not clean. Hirtz challenged me to an incline bench press contest and did an impressive 340, beating me by five pounds. He has never let me forget that. Then we drove to a smorgasbord in Santa Monica. All-you-can-eat for five bucks. The place lost money on St. John, but came out ahead on Ernie. He really did eat like a bird. Tom told us that the Muscle Beach Gym was in the building right around the corner from the restaurant, but it would be closed on Sunday. He said it was a co-op. The members paid fifteen dollars every quarter and they all had a key. The money was used to pay a Mexican to clean the place and to buy more equipment. After Bill had finally consumed enough food to feed the population of Cuba, we headed out. Unfortunately, our timing was bad. Everyone else had also decided to go home too. It was bumper to bumper out of Santa Monica. As he had been for the entire trip, Ernie was sprawled out on the mattress in the bed of the El Camino. Hirtz was impatient to be on his way and since this was impossible, he decided to entertain himself while we were stalled in the heavy traffic. He started slowly backing up toward the car right behind us. The driver of the car began blowing his horn to get Tom’s attention. Hirtz ignored him and continued to back up, ever so slowly, forcing the car to back up as well. Now the driver was leaning on the horn and he and the passenger in the front seat were leaning out their windows screaming at Ernie, as if he were the one responsible for this irresponsible behavior. After taking some of the abuse Ernie started banging on the window of the cab and shouting, “Cut it out Hirtz! You’re really pissing them off!” And all their anger was being directed toward Ernie. Which was exactly what Hirtz wanted. The traffic moved and so did we. But only for a short distance, then the El Camino came to another halt, and Hirtz pulled the same stunt again. The reaction of the two passengers in the Mercedes Benz behind us got more pronounced. They were cursing Ernie and threatening to do him bodily harm. Ernie, in turn, was getting more and more frantic, hammering on the window and trying to reach around the cab to get his hands on Tom.  When Hirtz saw what Ernie was doing, he hit the gas pedal and Ernie went flying back to the bed of the car. Then he would back up again, almost touching the Mercedes’ bumper, but not quite. I’m sure if one of the men in the car had a gun, they would have shot Ernie and probably everyone one of us in the cab. Meanwhile, Bill and I were laughing so hard tears were running down our cheeks. After the third, of maybe it was the fourth of fifth, time Hirtz did his backing-up ploy, I said to him with a hoarse voice, “Maybe you should let up, Ernie’s already pissed off with you.” “I can handle that big sissy,” Tom said in a serious tone. The absurdity of that remark sent all of us into another giggling fit. Suddenly, the gridlock ended and Tom sent the El Camino up the ramp and onto the freeway. The Mercedes pulled up beside him and the passenger leaned out of the car window and began calling Hirtz ever vile name under the sun, throwing in nasty things about his mother and his propensity for having sex with farm animals. Tom just grinned at the furious man, waved and said, “Have a nice day.” The angry individual shot Tom the finger and the Mercedes roared past us and was soon out of sight. Our plan was to go back to the hotel, get cleaned up, and then take a long nap. We were going to hit the nightlife on Sunset Boulevard and wanted to be well rested since we intended to stay there until the wee hours. When we parked, Ernie got out of the back of the car and walked towards the hotel, not saying one word about the backing-up deal. I imagine that he figured if he got started, he wouldn’t be able to control himself, and he didn’t want to be the one to spoil the good times we were having. After Tom and I showered and laid down, it took us a good half an hour to stop laughing about Ernie’s expression going down the slide and his frustration at bearing the brunt of the verbal abuse from the two men in the Mercedes. But we finally did fall asleep. {pagebreak} We got to Sunset Boulevard soon after the sun went down. After driving along the strip, Tom said, “It’s too early. I’m going to take you up to the top of Hollywood Hills. It has an amazing view of the coast.” The drive up to the summit was a twisting road with sharp curves and Tom seldom let off the gas. Bill and I were hanging on for dear life and still were being tossed from side to side like rag dolls. We could hear Ernie screaming from the back for Hirtz to slow down as he was being knocked from side to side even more violently than we were. When we reached our destination, we all got out and right away, Ernie told Tom to slow down on the way back. He said it was all he could do to hold on to the sides of the truck bed to keep from being thrown out. Tom just grinned. The view was everything and more than Tom had advertised. He pointed out the lights of downtown LA, Santa Monica, Marina del Rey, Malibu, and on the far southwest horizon, the islands of Catalina. We all stood there for a full fifteen minutes, enjoying the experience which in all likelihood, none of us visitors would ever see again. Before we started back down the steep, twisting drive, Ernie made it a point to remind Tom to take it easy. Of course, by now you can guess what he did. It was like being in a Le Mans road race. Bill and I braced one hand on the roof of the cab and the other on the dashboard but it still felt like we were in a blender. When we hit flat land, I looked back to see how Ernie was doing. He wasn’t moving at all and I wondered if he knocked himself out bouncing from side to side. Tom never said a word as he drove up and down Sunset Boulevard checking out all the strip joints and those advertising exotic dancers. We couldn’t decide which place to go into because they all looked basically the same. Finally, Bill suggested that we go into the Kit-Kat Klub. “It’s amateur night,” he said, “and amateurs always put more energy into their acts than pros.” With that settled, Tom parked the car and we got out. Ernie still hadn’t moved. One look at him and I knew he had a serious case of motion sickness. His skin was a shade of green seldom seen on living humans. “You okay?” I asked him. Stupid question. “I think I’m going to die,” he muttered. “Go on without me. If I move I’m going to throw up.” I expressed my concern about leaving Ernie alone with so many odd characters moving up and down the sidewalk right next to the car. Hirtz insisted that he would be fine. “Nobody will bother him. Look at him. He’s a behemoth. Let’s go check the place out.” The three of us paid the cover, went inside, and found a table close to the stage. Everything appeared to be fairly new and it was surprisingly clean. But none of us were really interested in the decor, we were here to ogle the dancers. As one after another took their turn on the stage, I turned to Bill and said, “They’re all nines or tens. Even the waitresses are foxes. I’ve never seen so many beautiful women in one place before.” Bill nodded in agreement and said, “We would have to go to fifty joints back east to find this many hot chicks.” After about twenty minutes, I said, “This isn’t right. The main reason we came to this place was so Ernie could enjoy it. This is his kind of place. C’mon, let’s go get him, even if we have to drag him in here.” When we got to the El Camino, we found that Ernie was now sitting up and had regained his normal skin color. I said to him, “You’re looking better.” He just nodded, so I went on, “You have to come in and see these women, Ernie. They put the dancers on the Block in Baltimore to shame. They’re absolutely gorgeous and they’re dozens of them.” We watched as Ernie ran that vision through his brain and he went through an amazing transformation. He started climbing out of the bed of the car. We helped him get to the sidewalk and led him back into the Kit Kat Klub. After he ordered his drink (two-drink minimum) he settled back and took in the sights. Soon he was smiling like a Cheshire cat and the motion sickness was a distant memory. Ernie adored attractive women and he was surrounded by a host of them. He thought an extremely beautiful female to be a work of art, so he was thoroughly enjoying himself. And now Bill, Tom, and I were as well because we were all together again. It felt right. When the announcer got on stage and said that the amateur show would be next, he also asked for volunteers to judge the competition. Without the least hesitation, Hirtz shot out of his chair, ran up the steps to the stage and shook the announcer’s hand. “Wonder what he’s up to now?” Bill asked the question that was also what Ernie and I were thinking. We soon found out. After the ten contestants lined up in front of the stage, we watched as Hirtz, wearing shorts and a tank top, began going through a series of poses much like the bodybuilders at the Mr. USA Contest had done. He was off to the side and behind the ladies, but we could see him clearly. He was playing the fool for our benefit and it got the response he was seeking. All three of us were howling and the longer he went through his silly routine, the louder and harder we laughed. It was a fitting climax to the most enjoyable trip I have ever taken. St. John says the same thing and I’m certain that Hirtz had a great time. But I’m not sure that Ernie had quite as much fun as the three of us. Next: The Olympic Games in Mexico City. Thanks again to Bill St. John for his help with the details. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 :: To be continued in Part 7… Articles, 2013-05-22T22:09:43+00:00 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/joe_weider_part_ii http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/joe_weider_part_ii#When:01:14:17Z California, the Go-Go 60s, Arnold, Franco and the “Fitness Revolution” by Marty Gallagher “Joe had access to an inexhaustible talent pool.  The world’s best bodies were available locally and he used them like the conductor of an orchestra. His over-the-top ads had flair and zest, and he created a myth, a vision: the reader could transform himself physically using Joe’s products and Joe’s methods.” Read More Discuss “Joe had access to an inexhaustible talent pool.  The world’s best bodies were available locally and he used them like the conductor of an orchestra. His over-the-top ads had flair and zest, and he created a myth, a vision: the reader could transform himself physically using Joe’s products and Joe’s methods.” Joe Weider relocated himself, his trophy wife Betty, Dave “The Blond Bomber” Draper and his entire business organization to Los Angeles just in time for the tumult and turmoil that accompanied the countercultural revolution of the 1960s.  The mid-to-late sixties was a golden time for the Weider Empire.  Joe gained traction. He had always been an outsider and he naturally developed a kinship with the youthful counterculture and its antiestablishment stance. Joe had always been shunned by the same WASP establishment these kids were railing against: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Joe’s youthful mindset and preferences put him in far greater touch with the demographic he was seeking to sell product to. He spoke the language of the young.  His arch-rival Bob Hoffman had zero interest in speaking the language of the young. Further, in magazine editorials, Joe’s nemesis warned against communism and Weider in the same breath. He told the young to “grow up” and “start acting right.”  The entire nation was splitting apart over values, old and new, and while Hoffman and his York/AAU axis-of-evil effortlessly aligned itself with the Nixon establishment and “traditional American values” (as defined by old white men), Weider, always an outsider, effortlessly aligned himself and his fledgling empire with the antiestablishment counterculture.   Bob Hoffman had made millions in business, and despite his innumerable quirks and flaws, he was no dummy. Bob was not someone to be trifled with and was a serious enemy to have. Both men were intent on winning the hearts and minds of America’s young men. Hoffman would appeal to the young by telling them to respect their elders and practice Olympic weightlifting.  Hoffman’s Aryan ideal was patriotic, disciplined, clean-cut, honest and forthright. His American Man went to church and practiced Olympic weightlifting, a true man’s sport. Joe Weider simply staked out the exact opposite position on anything and everything that Hoffman said or did. Joe appealed to the hearts and minds of American youth with a message of sex, surf, rock n’ roll, and bodybuilding. In the end, it was a rout; but for many years Hoffman and his allies battled Weider and his allies tooth and nail. At stake was the lion’s share of a single key demographic group: males between the ages of 12 and 29.   Both camps believed that there was a finite universe of potential customers. The commercial “pie” included magazine sales, supplement sales, fitness gear sales, barbell and dumbbell sales and bodybuilding show revenue.  Joe and Bob would contest one another in each of these arenas.  Joe was now located at the epicenter of the bodybuilding universe and this enabled him instant access to the world’s best bodybuilders. Weider thrived and grew and gained traction in a wide variety of bodybuilding-related pursuits. The Weider brothers seemed schooled in the PT Barnum carnival barker school of business, the one that proclaimed, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Yet Weider was no bumpkin; he was a well-read sophisticate – a highly-informed individual capable of conducting complex simultaneous undertakings in a wide variety of ongoing business ventures.   Yet despite his sophistication, his marketing approach was unethical and flabbergasting: lie your ass off about results, and promise the buyers impossible results easily obtainable just by using Joe’s latest magical product.  Joe created and micro-managed every aspect of his empire; his various magazines pushed product and generated newsstand sales and ad revenue; he created a nutritional and supplement division and began making equipment and fitness gear.  Joe invested heavily and wisely in California real estate when it was cheap. His antique collection was deemed priceless and heralded internationally. His overflow of priceless antiques was stored in a massive warehouse.  Joe was into art and had an artist’s eye. He used that artist eye as he personally supervised the never-ending photo shoots for his ever-growing fleet of magazines.   Joe established a stable of “contract” bodybuilders. He purchased their exclusivity, and this ensured steady access to the world’s best bodies for his magazines and ads. Joe was smart enough and insightful enough to take a chance on an unintelligible, slightly brutish 19-year-old Austrian man/boy named Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold had won his division at the NABBA Mr. Universe and Joe fronted the dough Arnold needed to relocate to LA. Once there, Joe hired Arnold and in short order Arnold had convinced Joe to fund the relocation of another non-English speaking European bodybuilder: the short and stocky Sardinian, Franco Columbo.   Between Draper, Arnold, Franco, Betty and a revolving cast of local bodybuilders and buxom beach bunnies, Joe had access to an inexhaustible talent pool.  The world’s best bodies were available locally and he used them like the conductor of an orchestra. His over-the-top ads had flair and zest, and he created a myth, a vision: the reader could transform himself physically using Joe’s products and Joe’s methods. The “Weider Principles” were proclaimed in articles with titles such as, “Bomb and blitz your biceps into total submission using Weider drop-set cheating Principle #53!!”  Joe made bodybuilding synonymous with the southern California beach culture and surfer scene. Needless to say there was considerable resistance from many sides towards what appeared to be a Weider takeover of organized bodybuilding. The entrenched establishment was run by unsmiling, humorless older white men – men that wore suits and ties every day of the week.  The Amateur Athletic Union, the AAU, had a virtual stranglehold on bodybuilding competitions run in America until Weider appeared. Not that any other organization wanted or was fighting for bodybuilding anyway. The AAU was comprised of all the governing bodies of all the Olympic sports. Bodybuilding was the red-headed stepchild of weightlifting and only tolerated because it generated cash money. For that reason bodybuilding was joined at the hip to its uglier, older stepsister, Olympic weightlifting. There was an odd love/hate relationship between the weightlifting and bodybuilding communities. The weightlifting power brokers hated bodybuilding and bodybuilders, but they needed the cash they were able to generate by making bodybuilding an integral part of all weightlifting competitions. The bodybuilding show would be conducted whenever the final lift had been pulled, and in my regional hotbed of lifting back in the 60s, often the last clean and jerk wouldn’t hit the platform until 11 pm. It was nothing for bodybuilding shows scheduled to start at 9 pm to start at midnight.   Weider’s message was seductive: Bodybuilders of the World, Unite! Stop groveling! Stop belonging to organizations that offer you, The Bodybuilder, second class citizenship and sneer at you behind your back. Who needs the weightlifter’s snide remarks? Who needs the AAU and their uptight old-man set of values?!  Join the Weider Bodybuilding Organization dedicated to bodybuilding, bodybuilders and nothing else! Joe put on contests that blew away anything the AAU could come up with. There was a very real economic war, a hot war of nasty words; charges and countercharges flew back and forth between Hoffman and Weider and their surrogates and allies. At stake was control of the magazine/supplement/equipment market: both sought the same demographic and they fought each other ruthlessly on all fronts. {pagebreak} Weider sold exotic pieces of exercise equipment: Joe was ahead of the curve with his isolative Arm-Blaster, so ably and effectively demonstrated in the ad by Arnold. Joe marketed clever and quite effective Peak Contraction devices. He was an early proponent of the E-Z curl bar.  Joe was far more in touch with the training tactics of the LA bodybuilders than Hoffman was with the training (or even the names) of his stable of lifters. The two men waged war over supplement and exercise equipment market share. Bob was a behind the scenes puppet master and had the authoritarian AAU famously ban any bodybuilder that dared compete in Weider’s fledgling International Federation of Bodybuilders – the IFBB – an organization that at the time barely had 100 members. Eventually Joe wore Hoffman down and Hoffman slunk away into retirement in the early 70s, and that was that. The AAU Mr. America went from meaningful to meaningless and the IFBB routinely began attracting the finest physiques in the world. Game, set, and match to Weider. By the early 70s Joe Weider had become Joe Almighty. Every rival was vanquished and all knees bent and all heads bowed to Joe in the Kingdom of Bodybuilding.  Weider was an opinion shaper. He did much to glamorize and make legitimate bodybuilding and bodybuilders. To the youth of the day, Arnold and Franco were cool and enviable; they trained and ate and napped on the beach in the afternoon getting sun tans while being massaged by playboy bunnies in bikinis. Later, they would have sex. This was the mythos Joe created. He made money hand-over-fist and plowed it back into each of his ever-expanding and ever-improving ventures. Not that there weren’t potholes and difficulties: I was told by a Weider insider that Joe was on the precipice of bankruptcy on three different occasions. Yet he weathered it all and stood poised to reap an unprecedented financial bonanza that occurred with the arrival of the great American fitness revolution. Joe Surfs the Fitness Revolution Wave An amazing occurrence took place in the early 1980s.  There was a sudden and widespread increase in interest and participation in all things fitness-related – by women. For a variety of reasons, there was a huge influx, a tidal wave of female fitness participants. Suddenly, 50% of the population unexpectedly decided in unison that working out was cool, beneficial, and could be feminine and distinct from the classical grunting, swearing, off-putting male brand of fitness. Now women could segregate themselves in dance classes and step aerobics class, and don’t forget pump-and-sculpt classes and yoga. Posh, upscale fitness clubs sprang up in every affluent neighborhood to cater to the mobs that accompanied the Fitness Revolution. Suddenly fitness was hip for all segments of the population. Joe Weider was well attuned to what was going on, and was an early and vocal proponent of women in fitness. He began catering to women’s fitness needs very early on. He sanctioned women’s competitive bodybuilding and was a pioneer in creating a magazine strictly for women’s fitness.  Joe powered through the 1980s and into the 1990s. In his final genius move he sold his magazine empire for a reported $250 million dollars.  At their peak, many of his magazines were amongst the best selling of their type and genre worldwide. There was a long stretch where Muscle & Fitness magazine had a 500,000 monthly subscriber base and triple that in newsstand sales. M&F was the King of bodybuilding magazines. Flex was M&F’s wilder younger brother; more hardcore, less mainstream – and extremely popular. He had a fleet of magazines that covered everything from muscles to golf. At the Weider peak, Joe had no less than fifty athletes under annual contract. These contracts were highly sought after and fought over amongst competitive bodybuilders. Having a Weider contract meant the bodybuilder wouldn’t have to work a day job; they could devote 100% of their time and effort to actualizing their genetic potential. On the downside, these contracts would be ruthlessly terminated if the athlete placed poorly at national or international events.  Contracts could run as low as 20K per year and well into six figures for the Olympia winner. At one point in time, powerlifter Ed Coan had a Weider contract, one of the few non-bodybuilders to ever so be honored. Of the fifty athletes, 35 would be men with 15 contracts reserved for women bodybuilders. Drug testing was and is scrupulously avoided by the IFBB. It is the freakish physiques that fill the auditoriums to overflow capacity, not cleanliness. There was a short time when the IFBB became righteous and actually instituted drug testing. This lasted for a year. This was back in the 1980s and when the physiques deflated almost as fast as the box office receipts, quietly, and without any fanfare, drug testing was dropped. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been particularly hypocritical on the issue: as the Governor he was the chief law enforcement officer of the State of California, yet the contest with his name on it awards its highest honors to the most drugged men on the face of the planet. The female bodybuilders look like cyborgs and it is obvious that all Arnold competitors were, are, and forever shall be gassed to their blood-shot eyeballs. Joe and his brother Ben Weider tried for years to get the International Olympic Committee to include bodybuilding in the Olympic Games.  This would be the brothers’ crowning glory and final bequeathal to bodybuilding: they would legitimize bodybuilding – get it adjudged a sport by the most prestigious sports body in the world. In the Weider Brothers dream scenario, Olympic gold medals would be awarded to the world’s most perfectly built man and woman. This was their dream and they found some receptiveness within the IOC. The Olympia was held for several years in Atlanta as a favor to IOC officials. It was farcical from the beginning. The IOC would never add bodybuilding to the roster of sports. If anything, the IOC was dropping “at risk” sports, not adding them. In the end, the brother’s dreams were never realized. It was one of the few times they failed to succeed. When it came to business, Joe had an uncanny knack for timing. He was in LA real estate when it was cheap and (reportedly) got out at its peak. Joe sold his magazine empire right before the widespread introduction of the internet. This bit of timing was critical: within an 18 month period magazine sales plummeted by 40% across the board. Joe got out right before this occurred. Magazine ad revenues plummeted just after Joe bailed.  He later (reportedly) sold his equipment division and supplement division for between 200 and 400 million dollars. Those he leaves behind are well taken care of. By all accounts Joe stayed sharp and alert into his 80s. Regardless whether you think of him in a negative or positive light, he was a towering presence in bodybuilding and fitness.  He made bodybuilding a permanent part of popular culture. He successfully mainstreamed bodybuilding, and for that alone he stands alone. Part 1 Marty Gallagher has been a national and world champion masters powerlifter and is widely considered one of the best writers in the iron game. Since 1978 he has written over 1000 articles published in a dozen publications. He has authored more than 100 articles for Muscle & Fitness magazine and produced 230 weekly live online columns for the Washington Post. Gallagher has coached some of the biggest names in powerlifting and witnessed some of the greatest strength feats of the last half century. If you like his style pick up a copy of his masterwork, The Purposeful Primitive. Articles, 2013-05-07T01:14:17+00:00 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/a_theoretical_approach_to_the_coachs_cue http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/a_theoretical_approach_to_the_coachs_cue#When:22:28:13Z by Nicholas Soleyn “Effective cues come from the coach’s and lifter’s shared understanding of the lift, which is based on the coach’s explanation, the lifter’s development, and the coach’s own familiarity with the lifter’s perspective.” Read More Discuss “Effective cues come from the coach’s and lifter’s shared understanding of the lift, which is based on the coach’s explanation, the lifter’s development, and the coach’s own familiarity with the lifter’s perspective.” As a coach, teaching a lifter to perform potentially complex, multi-joint exercises correctly and consistently is a skill. Although in barbell training, the core exercises are natural expressions of loaded human movement, to understand, analyze, and influence the lifter’s movements the coach must have a firm grasp of the model for each exercise, comprising its mechanical (movement against a loaded barbell), anatomical (the generation and transmission of force in the musculoskeletal system), and physiological (the resulting adaptations of the exercise) aspects. The coach’s role is to help the lifter translate the model for each lift into movement. Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training puts forth, in detail, the model for the core lifts as well as instructions for translating the models into loaded human movement. As a tool for coaches and lifters, it is unparalleled in this respect. However, the lone lifter often misses something in this translation. Processing a textual understanding of how a lift should look and feel, without external feedback, and executing it correctly carry some inherent challenges. Under the bar, the lifter’s senses are tuned toward the proprioceptive input created when one is trying to control the body in space. The lifter responds to changes in how the movement feels, developing a kinesthetic sense of the movement over time. The lifter may struggle to reconcile the understanding of a lift developed visually, through text, pictures, and video, with the proprioceptive input to which the lifter is required to respond and make adjustments while lifting. Without external feedback, the lifter may not know whether the movement he produces is correct or how to fix obvious mistakes. Even through video analysis, the lifter will not receive immediate feedback that would better develop a kinesthetic sense of the movement. These challenges are not insurmountable, but they may require a lot of extra work on the lifter’s part, translating different kinds of information into movement, usually forcing the lone lifter to “work on form” substantially longer and harder than a coached lifter. A good coach helps the lifter overcome the challenges of translating a model into movement. The coach and lifter share a common goal: Correct execution of the lift as defined by a model the coach knows and understands, which is achieved by the lifter’s accurate kinesthetic interpretation of the lift. The coach adds another perspective to the lifter’s efforts. With a working understanding of the model for any given lift, the coach provides feedback, helping the lifter analyze the proprioceptive input of a lift and make adjustments. A good coach can fix individual quirks, adjust the lifter’s understanding of how each lift should feel, and help the lifter develop more consistent correctly executed lifts. The coach’s primary tool in this role is the coach’s cue. The coach’s cue is some form of communication that the coach employs during a lift, or part of a lift, that is designed to produce a physical response from the lifter, usually in the form of an adjustment or correction to the lifter’s movement. Cues take various forms. They tend to be mostly verbal, though visual and tactile cues are also effective when used correctly. Cues may be specific to the adjustment the coach desires (“Knees Out!”) or may be non-specific (“Now!”) and equally effective. Ultimately, the form and efficacy of the coach’s cue depends upon the nature of the interaction between the coach and the unique lifter. The coach’s cue is fundamental to teaching loaded human movement, and becoming an effective coach requires that one consciously develop the skill of its use. Developing the Coach’s Cue The following is a theoretical outline for developing the use of the coach’s cue based on the nature of the communication between coach and lifter and their differing perspectives (i.e. the coach observing and analyzing, and the lifter lifting). This is something to consider for coaches or aspiring coaches who want to improve their performance on the platform. The purpose of this outline is to provide some insight into where coach’s cues come from, why, and how coaches might go about improving their own usage of them. The coach must consider the differing perspectives between himself and the lifter. The coach’s perspective is visual. The coach’s job is to adjust the lifter’s movement based on a generalized model applied with specificity to the individual lifter. The coach observes the lifter, interprets the lifter’s movements according to the model, and communicates instructions back to the lifter. The lifter’s perspective is more internal, based on feel. The lifter interprets the coach’s cues according to the feel of the movement and makes bodily adjustments, developing a kinesthetic sense of the correct movement. Accordingly, the cue is effective when it tends to cause the lifter to move closer to the model and minimizes other, undesired, responses. Cues that merely communicate the coach’s observations are not useful to the lifter, though they may be accurately descriptive of the problem. For example, telling the lifter who is first learning to squat, “you’re not deep enough,” has little chance of causing the desired correction, particularly if the coach recognizes the depth problem as caused by the lifter’s knee and toe angle (see Rippetoe and Bradford, Active Hip 2.0: The Director’s Cut, Jan 2010). The coach must communicate so that the lifter can understand the needed adjustment according to his awareness of his body-barbell system. The command “shove your knees out!” is the much more effective cue, because it is based on the coach’s understanding of the lift and communicates information relative to the lifter’s current proprioception. The coach must communicate the cue in a manner that accurately anticipates the lifter’s response. For the purpose of examining the coach’s cue, one can think of the interaction between the coach and lifter as a developing conversation, one where each person communicates in a different language toward a convergence of understanding. Using cues, the coach is attempting to impart a previously developed understanding of the model for a lift as it is applies to the individual lifter. The cue may be verbal, tactile, or visual, specific or non-specific. The lifter responds out of a developing sense of how the correctly executed model should feel, gradually acquiring a competence in the lift through movement. The forms that each person uses to communicate – various cues from the coach and movement from the lifter – come from two different perspectives of the lift: 1.) the coach’s visual observations, analyzed through the coach’s understanding of the model, and 2.) the lifter’s physical responses to the coach, analyzed and executed from the lifter’s “perspective” of being under the bar.{pagebreak} The different perspectives of the coach and lifter, conceptually, are two different models for approaching any lift. The coach possesses an understanding of the model prior to engaging the lifter, a “coach’s model,” that encompasses everything the coach can draw upon to analyze the lifter’s efforts. In comparison, the lifter develops a “lifter’s model,” under the coach’s direction, comprising the lifter’s understanding of how the model for the correct lift applies to this lifter, personally, and a developing kinesthetic sense of the lift. The coach’s model is developed through three basic pursuits: Information. The coach acquires the technical knowledge necessary to build the theoretical aspects of the model. One can acquire information in many ways, but the individual should assimilate information around a specific model. Information, generally, draws from physics, mechanics, and anatomical and physiological bases. A good informational model will accommodate all lifters and, therefore, will lack some degree of specificity for the individual. Experience as a coach. Coaching provides primarily visual, but some tactile and auditory, input that the coach interprets according to a technical understanding of the model. This input further develops the coach’s model by adding movement patterns and different body types to the generalized informational understanding. Coaching requires the coach to apply the model with specificity. Experience as a lifter. Experience with lifting according to the model builds the coach’s own kinesthetic sense of the movement. Whereas coaching develops the model through primarily visual input, lifting helps the coach build the model through proprioceptive input. How the movement feels is the lifter’s “point of view.” The coach can communicate effectively to a lifter only with some understanding of what it is like to be under the bar. Otherwise, there will be very little overlap between what the lifter is experiencing under the bar and what the coach is attempting to communicate out of an incomplete understanding of the movement. The lifter’s model depends greatly upon the coach, but develops along somewhat different pathways: Explanation. The lifter’s model is specific to the lifter and is developed partially through the coach’s explanation of how the general “coach’s model” will apply to the specific lifter. This explanation will be brief in comparison to the coach’s technical knowledge. The explanation is critical because the coach controls the information, and this is the information that the lifter will initially draw upon in response to cues. Note that some cues may be explanatory to the brand new lifter – a little longer and more specific or descriptive to what the lifter should be doing with his body or the bar – but an explanation of the lift is something that occurs before the lifter performs the movement. Experience as a lifter. Beyond explanation of the movement, the lifter’s model develops through experience as a lifter. Primarily, the lifter’s model is based on how correct (or incorrect) movement feels.  This process is guided and developed by the coach, through the coach’s cue. The lifter interprets proprioceptive input, according to the explanation from the coach and the coach’s cues, continuously building the lifter’s model, through lifting. An information basis for the lifter’s model is not included here, because it is neither a prerequisite to lifting with a coach nor for effective coaching and cueing. Indeed, if a lifter absorbs information from many different sources, based on different models or theories of training, then this information may actually hinder the communication between the coach and lifter, initially. The overlap between the coach’s model, coming from three primary bases of development, and the lifter’s model, based on the coach’s explanation and the lifter’s sense of the movement, is the realm from which the coach’s cues are drawn. If the coach provides a poor explanation, then the lifter will not effectively be able to respond to cues. If the coach lacks experience as a lifter, the coach will not be able to cue the lifter from the lifter’s point of view of how it feels. In both instances, the coach will be ineffective and the lifter’s model will develop much more slowly. Effective cues come from the coach’s and lifter’s shared understanding of the lift, which is based on the coach’s explanation, the lifter’s development, and the coach’s own familiarity with the lifter’s perspective. Cues, then, serve a dual purpose. They remind the lifter to make certain adjustments with the body or bar, and they help develop the lifter’s model by providing feedback on the lift as determined by the coach’s visual analysis of the lifter’s movement. Cues change as the lifter develops a feel for the lift, becoming predominantly reminders as the need to develop the lifter’s kinesthetic sense diminishes. The coach’s discretion is when and how to use cues and what form they take, built on the coach and lifter’s developing rapport the lifter’s progress.   The limited use of tactile cues provides an example of how the coach might exercise this judgment. The lifter’s perspective is primarily one of feel, making tactile cues very useful to establish important aspects of the model efficiently. Tactile cues are powerful tools that narrow the lifter’s focus to a particular aspect of the body or movement. {pagebreak} The lifter’s model comprises the entire kinesthetic sense of the movement, and tactile cues tend to narrow the lifter’s focus. Accordingly, tactile cues are used early on to establish important aspects of the lifter’s model or during lighter weight sets as curative of specific problems, but are less common in later stages of working with a lifter or during work sets. For example, the concept of hip drive in the squat cannot be coached as effectively verbally as it can by placing one’s hand on the lifter’s sacrum and having the lifter drive up against it. This establishes hip drive by drawing all the lifter’s attention to the hips and producing a movement that the lifter can feel and, therefore, more easily repeat. This tactile cue is most effective very early in the learning stages of the squat to help the lifter develop his kinesthetic sense of hip drive, but it would distract the lifter at heavier weights when the lifter’s ability to heed external stimuli is diminished. Drawing the lifter’s attention to a single area in this way detracts from the lifter’s sense of the movement as a whole and, therefore, should not be repeated at heavy working sets, but it is very effective to train the lifter’s kinesthetic sense of hip drive. Later, the coach can bark less-specific cues to remind the lifter of the movement (e.g. “Drive it up!” or “Drive!”). This well-established method for teaching hip drive highlights the concept that the coach’s cues are more effective when they consider the development of the lifter’s model and the coach’s experience of what it feels like to be under the bar. Similarly, this framework for thinking about the cue shows why the coach will change the form of the cue over time and prioritize cues according to the concept of an expanding lifter’s model. The coach brings an already well-developed understanding of the model to the conversation with the new lifter. The lifter’s understanding of the model and ability to execute it will develop during the initial learning phase and beyond. This affects how the coach should use the cue. The progression of the coach’s cues from more specific, explanatory cues to single word reminders mirrors the lifter’s development. Cues in the initial learning phase are usually specific to something the lifter should do with his body or the bar, but do not detail the abstract model for the lift. Any explanations should focus on the information necessary for the lifter to perform the movement. The deadlift set-up is a good example of cues that are specific and somewhat explanatory, but not unnecessarily detailed as to the mechanics of the lift (e.g. “bring shins forward to touch bar”; “knees out into elbows”; “squeeze the chest up”; “don’t drop your hips!”). In this early phase, it is the coach’s job to make sure that the lifter’s proprioceptive input adjusts to align with the coach’s informational model. This process develops the lifter’s feel for the model. Clear, effective cues in this phase of coaching allow the cues to get shorter, because the lifter will have a better-developed model and the coach will know the lifter’s level of competence in the movement. Effectively developing the lifter’s model also means the coach needs to prioritize cues. A lifter needs to establish bigger, more important components of a lift first, since these will be the biggest parts of the lifter’s model. Whereas, important but less crucial adjustments can usually wait until the lifter can devote less conscious effort to the lifts’ fundamental components. Having prioritized the most important aspects of the lift, these bigger issues can be adjusted subsequently with brevity, and greater consistency in these key areas of the model will result. Cues need to become short, because as the lifter builds his model, he needs to focus more on his own body in space and less on external stimuli. For example, if the coach prioritized the knees tracking out parallel with the toes early on, then as the weight progresses, yelling “knees out!” can elicit an almost instinctual response in the lifter without diverting his attention. The efficacy of short, direct cues depends upon the coach’s ability to build the lifter’s model well in the early stages. These are a few select examples meant to demonstrate the value in thinking about the coach’s cue as involving separate coach’s and lifter’s models that affect how the coach will teach a lift. This approach suggests improving one’s performance as a coach though study, personal experience with lifting, and experience with coaching. These areas are fairly easy to pursue for the determined individual. Also, for the coach who wants to develop a basic understanding of the cue from which to approach the teaching method of any of the lifts, this cueing archetype suggests one consider how the lifter’s model will most effectively develop over time and apply the appropriate cues accordingly. A few characteristics of cues Nothing trumps a deep understanding of the model, when it comes to coaching effectively and using the coach’s cue. This includes an information-based understanding and experience as both a lifter and a coach. Developing these areas will provide a solid basis to improve as a coach. There are, however, a few conventions for the effective use of the coach’s cue. Brevity, volume, and a good repertoire of cues are good fundamentals for communicating with a lifter. Any aspiring coach who is deficient in one of these areas can immediately improve his or her performance on the platform by keeping in mind the following: Brevity. Even relatively long cues should be brief. The coach should avoid diluting the cue with extra, unnecessary information. Also, the coach should be aware that some of the positions the lifter will assume are uncomfortable, and may cause fatigue if the lifter is made to hold them while the coach presents a thesis statement on the use of the hips in the press, for example. Saturating the lifter with information may be interesting, but it is not helpful to performing the lift or developing a good sense of it. Volume. The coach should be loud and clear. The lifter should not have any cause to play “telephone” with the coach’s cues. Yelling, “KNEES OUT!” will force the lifter’s knees out; mumbling, “knees . . .” might have some interesting effects on the lifter’s back angle. A loud, clear cue is much more likely to cause the lifter to respond as anticipated.   Repertoire. The coach should build his repertoire of cues. Cues affect lifters differently. If the lifter does not respond to a cue as the coach expects, rather than explaining the cue and what it means, the coach should be able to adjust the cue itself. Rarely does a coach have only a single shot at correcting a lifter, and being able to cue something in different ways is a basic skill that will improve communication.   Cueing is a way to help the lifter develop a correct sense of any lift by taking its mechanics, physics, and biological details and helping the lifter translate that information into a consistent, repeatable kinesthetic sense of the correct movement. Coaches should constantly study, every coach should lift, and importantly, coaches must coach. The coach gains new depth and insight on all other information and experience by applying the coach’s model with specificity to each unique lifter. The coach’s cue is an important tool, but if it lacks the substance or purpose, of a well-defined coach’s model or for developing the lifter’s model, respectively, then cues become little more than the coach’s wasted breath and the lifter’s wasted time and money. Nicholas Soleyn, J.D., owns a small publishing company in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Through his study of the law, work as an editor for a legal journal, and work as a law clerk for the New Mexico Supreme Court, he discovered a passion for research and writing, which he now pursues full time. His has also trained in and coached amateur boxing, martial arts, and endurance sports. As Starting Strength Coach, Nick brings his analytical approach to strength training, and he is privileged to help people discover their athletic potential through the barbell. soleynni@gmail.com Articles, 2013-04-30T22:28:13+00:00 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/george_ernie_pickett_pt_5 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/george_ernie_pickett_pt_5#When:00:15:26Z by Bill Starr “[Ernie] sprawled out and nearly covered the entire space. Bill and I climbed in the cab. Tommy asked, “Where to?” Bill and I answered together, “Disneyland.” And we were off.” Read More Discuss The reason why Ernie and I lifted in that power meet on the Jersey Shore in July was to qualify for the Senior Nationals to be held in Los Angeles two weeks after the Olympic Trials. We wanted to go to Disneyland. Hoffman was all for us making the trip. In his mind, the more athletes that represented the York Barbell Club, the better. Roman Mielec had also qualified for the meet the previous fall and he was also going with us. I had tried to talk Kenny Moore into going to the Jersey meet to qualify. Kenny was extremely strong and I knew he would do well in the Seniors. He did reps with 550 in the back squat and only Barski and Ernie did more in that lift. But Kenny, like about 95% of all Olympic lifters, didn’t care for powerlifting at all. He considered that sport way inferior to Olympic lifting, even if it meant missing a fun trip to southern California. The York Picnic was held the day after the Olympic Trials at Brookside Park in Dover. A huge crowd showed up. Most had attended the Trials at Central High School in York the day before and took full advantage of this opportunity to visit with those athletes who had taken part in that exciting contest. When I had first approached Ernie with the idea of going to the Senior Nationals in powerlifting, I thought he might be hesitant. If he did make the team, he might want to concentrate fully on the three Olympic lifts. And most lifters would have rejected the idea of taking part in a power meet while getting ready for the biggest show in Olympic lifting - the Olympic Games. But Ernie wasn’t like the other lifters. Before the Trials, he told me that if he did make the team, the trip would be a great way to celebrate and he was a firm believer in using the power lifts to help improve his Olympic lifts. “Besides,” he added, “a power meet is not as strenuous as a heavy session in the York Gym on Saturday.” And if he didn’t make the team, visiting Disneyland would be just what the doctor ordered. A chance to regroup and to decide what to do next in regards to weightlifting. In my case, the decision to make the trip was an easy one. I knew that I didn’t have a realistic chance of coming in second against Bartholmew, Grippaldi, and Capsouras. Not to mention Gary Glenney and Chuck Nootens, both of whom had been posting big numbers going into the Trials. My goal, since watching the ’64 Trials at the World’s Fair in New York City, was to qualify for the ’68 Trials. So I had already achieved my goal. After Ernie had beaten Barski and been selected to the Olympic team, I asked him if he still wanted to make that trip to L.A. “Sure Starr. I’ve already been to Mexico City and didn’t like it all that much. I’d much rather go to Disneyland. Now I get to do both,” he said with a big grin. Bill St. John showed up at the picnic. He had helped me work with Ernie at the Trials. He was the only bodybuilder I knew who liked to hang out with Olympic lifters more than he did with his fellow bodybuilders. Bill and Ernie had become close friends when Ernie started getting treatments on the Isotron at Doc’s home office in Olney, Maryland. Bill was a regular there to also take advantage of Doc’s magical machine, and he and Ernie appreciated each other’s quirky sense of humor. They bonded. Ernie and I wanted Bill to make the trip to L.A. with us. He could compete in the Mr. USA physique contest held in conjunction with the power meet. However, Bill wasn’t one to blow his own horn. Unlike many other bodybuilders, he did his best not to attract attention. He preferred being in the background rather than in the spotlight. Since he wasn’t going to ask Hoffman to sponsor him to go to L.A., it was up to Ernie and me to convince Hoffman to include Bill on the York Team. But neither of us had come up with a good plan as of yet. Then, Bill related what he had been doing earlier that day. Doc Ziegler had asked Bill to put on an exhibition at Gettysburg College for the football team. Doc wanted to show them an example of neck strength. They set up three chairs. Bill suspended himself on two of them, heels on one and his head on another. The Doc stepped off the third chair and stood on Bill’s chest.  “Perfect,” I said and Ernie nodded, knowing exactly what I had in mind. Hoffman was always eager to have a well-built bodybuilder do some poses or other strength feats at the picnic. Ernie stood up and waved. Since he was a massive specimen he caught Hoffman’s attention. Then he pointed at St. John, and Hoffman, who was on stage talking on the microphone, called Bill to come up on stage. As Bill got up, I said to him, “Tell Hoffman about that stunt with the chairs. He eats stuff like that up.” The person on stage before Bill did a series of poses had done some push-ups with his arms fully extended. Bill did the same number of extended push-ups with one arm. Hoffman really liked that, and Bill told him about the stunt with the chairs. Bob loved that idea and the three chairs were set up. Bill fixed his head on one chair and his heels on another and braced himself. He had already done this once before today and knew that Hoffman wasn’t any heavier that Doc Ziegler. But Doc had removed his shoes before stepping onto Bill’s chest. When he saw that Hoffman still had his shoes on and was about to step on him and put his full bodyweight on his chest and midsection, Bill said “Bob, you have your shoes on.”  Hoffman looked down and thought that Bill was concerned about him. Bob said, “Oh that’s all right,” and proceeded to step off the chair and balance himself on Bill’s outstretched body. The shoes cutting into his skin added another level of pain, but Bill acted as if it didn’t matter at all. The crowd gave them a standing ovation and when Bob stepped off of Bill and down from the chair, he grabbed the mike and announced that he was taking Bill to Los Angeles to compete in the Mr. United States physique contest in two weeks. This brought another loud cheer from the audience. When Bill got back to where Ernie and I were standing, he found us in hysterics, with tears running down our faces. Bill scolded us. “It wasn’t that funny.” Ernie stopped laughing long enough to say, “Yes it was. I’ve never seen anyone humiliate himself like that just to get a free plane ticket.” That set us off laughing again and Bill joined in. Finally, he admitted, “I got no pride.” The members of the Olympic team and alternates who did not have a valid reason to return to their homes stayed at the Yorktown Hotel in the center of York. They trained at the YBC and feasted on some of the finest prime rib east of the Mississippi every night. Some had it for lunch and dinner. Ernie continued to work at his job at Continental Can Company in Baltimore, but drove up to York on his training days and took full advantage of the free cuisine at the Yorktown. He was packing on some quality bodyweight. After the competition at the Trials, I had the chance to visit with one of my favorite people, Tom Hirtz. He was now stationed at an Air Force base not far from Los Angeles. He had lifted in the light heavyweight division and got off to a great start with a 319 press, but failed to make any snatches. Yet he was in high spirits, happy that he was able to take part in the Trials. When I told him that Ernie and I were coming to Los Angeles for the Senior National power meet, he said he would not only come to watch us lift, he would chauffeur us around and act as our tour guide. Perfect! {pagebreak} The Senior Nationals in powerlifting would be held on two days, Friday, the 13th of September, and Saturday, the 14th. On Friday evening, competitions would be held for the following weight classes: 123, 132, 181, and superheavyweights. On Saturday afternoon, the 148, 165, 198, and 242 lb. classes would lift. Then the Mr. United States physique contest would be staged that night. This schedule suited Ernie, Bill, and me to a tee. With Ernie lifting the first day, we would have a lot of time to explore the Los Angeles area. I was using the meet as a heavy workout but didn’t plan on training specifically for it in any way. Ernie was doing the same and Bill knew that he wasn’t going to be in peak condition to have a chance to win the physique portion of the show. Our goal was not medals, but to have as much fun as was humanly possible. Bill St. John, Ernie, and I flew out of Friendship Airport in Baltimore early Thursday morning. Hoffman and Roman Mielec would catch a later flight. The three of us had invited Roman to join us, but he rejected our offer. He was still very peeved at me for backing Ernie over Barski. Roman and Barski spent a great deal of time together while working in the warehouse at the Barbell and had become good friends. Roman thought I was being disloyal to Barski and had stopped talking to me after the Trials. I didn’t try to convince him why I had taking that stance. He was allowed his opinion, so I left him alone. But the simple fact was that both Ernie and Barski were my friends as well, but since Ernie had asked me to work with him going into the Trials, I felt my full allegiance was for him. Plus, I had done my very utmost to try and get Barski to gear up his training another notch, because it was obvious to many of the other York lifters that he hadn’t taken the Trials seriously enough. He was 100% convinced that he would be selected for the team regardless of how he performed at the competition. He was dead wrong, and I felt no guilt when I stood by Ernie after the meet. The reason we left early was to get into Los Angeles with plenty of time to do some sightseeing.  Our other reason for catching the 7 a.m. flight was so we could get checked into our hotel and be long gone before Hoffman arrived. We knew that if we ran into him, he would volunteer one or all of us to accompany him when he went to visit the health food stores in the area. St. John was especially vulnerable. Hoffman always wanted to take an athlete along to do some posing. And the odds were pretty good that he would want to also take Ernie to show off. Which meant I would have to tag along. At LAX, we caught a cab and gave the driver the address of our hotel, on 9th and Grand Street, right across from the meet site, the Embassy Auditorium in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. I had called Hirtz the day before we left to tell him of our E.T.A. and where we were staying. We quickly registered, took our luggage to our rooms, and hurried down to the lobby to wait for Hirtz. It was a short wait. Tommy pulled up in his freshly-washed El Camino and we went outside to greet him. For those who may not know what an El Camino looks like, it’s a car built like a pickup truck. The cab could handle three people, but those people had to be of somewhat normal size. There was no way Ernie could fit. He weighed over 300 pounds and at 6’4”, he would have had to bend over until his head touched the dashboard. Plus, the seat would have had to be pushed so far back that Hirtz would not have been able to reach the gas and brake pedals. That meant Ernie had to ride in the back. Tommy had anticipated this. In the bed of the El Camino there was a mattress, which I recognized as the type used in military bases, plus two fat pillows that looked like they had been discarded next to a dumpster. This suited Ernie just fine. He sprawled out and nearly covered the entire space. Bill and I climbed in the cab. Tommy asked, “Where to?” Bill and I answered together, “Disneyland.” And we were off. Tommy knew his way around the mazes of interstates, cross streets, and back roads. It was a picture-perfect day, temperature in the mid-eighties, with a bright sun breaking through the smog. We arrived at our destination and followed Tommy. He was proving to be an excellent tour guide. However, we were about to learn that he planned on having a great deal of fun on this adventure as well. And a large portion of his entertainment was going to come at Ernie’s expense. He found more ways to pester Ernie that I could count on both hands. For the first hour, we wandered through the expansive grounds, soaking up the various rides. I was having a great time just watching all the visitors and workers. They were a show in themselves. We took a break to scarf down tacos, chili, and orange juice at a vendor. St. John put away twice the number of tacos as the three of us did. And I had to chuckle watching Ernie devour the delicious Mexican fare, since he was extremely picky about what he ate. The next order of business was to try some of the rides. None of us, with the exception of our young friend, wanted any part of the scary rides. We watched people getting on and off the boats for the Jungle Ride and concluded that it was safe enough. That’s when Hirtz got started. Ernie was a shy person. He didn’t like being in the limelight like Barski did. Ernie much preferred to remain in the background and let others be out front. So once everyone was seated in the boat, Hirtz stood up and announced that they should be honored to be on the same ride as one of the strongest men in the entire country – a weightlifter who had set two World records in the overhead press and had recently been named to the Olympic Team. All the visitors, and even the worker manning the boat, gave him a rousing ovation. Ernie turned a bright shade of pink and did his utmost to try and get smaller. Which didn’t work very well. Hirtz wasn’t finished. All through the ride, he kept shouting out more of Ernie’s accomplishments, even interrupting the almost continuous commentary of the park employee guiding the boat through its serpentine course. Ernie, of course, couldn’t wait to get out of the boat. In contrast, St. John and I were in stitches. Hirtz had gotten Ernie in a position where he couldn’t escape. Once Ernie regained his dignity and composure, he admonished Tommy and made him swear that he wouldn’t do that again. Hirtz raised his hand and promised he wouldn’t embarrass Ernie in that way ever again. All the while Tommy had a shit-eating grin on his face, and I knew he wasn’t finished with Ernie. I had watched him tease and torment everyone at the first two Teenage Training Camps at York Junior College in ’66 and ’67, and I just hoped he would keep pestering Ernie rather than me.{pagebreak} We strolled around the grounds, which were immense, stopped to watch the parade of the Disney characters, shook hands with Minnie, Mickey, and Goofy, then Hirtz suggested that we get in line for the Matterhorn. He knew none of us were interested in any of the thrill rides, and there were plenty of those, and assured us it was a tame sort of roller coaster. We agreed and after a half and hour wait, we climbed in the rail cars, Bill and me in one and Ernie and Hirtz in another. Tommy was the model of good behavior all through the ride. He didn’t do any shouting of Ernie’s recent accomplishments, mainly because there was too much noise. Children and parents were screaming even on the slight declines and Tommy would not have been heard over those outbursts. But as the cars glided to a halt in front of perhaps a hundred people waiting for their turn and the guard bar was released, Hirtz jumped over in Ernie’s lap and began squirming around and moaning loudly. He was giving Ernie a lap dance. The onlookers responded in a variety of ways. Those with children forced their kids to look away, while the teenagers roared in delight. Once again, Ernie tried to make himself small and invisible. As for Bill and me, we stumbled out of the Matterhorn doubled over in laughter, then had to hustle to catch up with our companions. Ernie was somber. Never had he faced an adversary like Hirtz. He was usually the one getting something over on another person and he was stumped as to what to do about Tommy. He couldn’t really get too upset since Hirtz was doing us a great favor. Hirtz told him he could relax, he was through playing pranks for the rest of the day. But Ernie didn’t relax, kept his distance from Tommy and stated that he wasn’t going on any more rides. We came across a live country show at one of the outdoor pavilions. Ernie and I were both big country music fans. Bill and Tommy not so much, but they deferred to our musical tastes and we sat on benches and watched the entire show, munching on popcorn and sipping freshly-made orange juice. When we got up to walk around a bit more, Ernie, Bill, and I were suddenly aware that between the jet lag and all the walking that we weren’t accustomed to was taking its toll. We decided to call it a day and headed for the parking lot. Before leaving the grounds, we took advantage of the bathroom facilities. The place was absolutely huge. I had never seen so many urinals and enclosed toilets in my life. There must have been thirty urinals along one wall. St. John, Ernie, and I waited until Tommy had selected one of them, then we moved as far away from him as possible to empty our bladders. We figured we were safely out of harm’s way. We were, but that didn’t stop Hirtz from finding a way to make us break up again. We were in the middle of the task at hand when Tommy started moaning like he had when he was sitting in Ernie’s lap. And he proceeded to moan louder and louder, which of course, got the attention of everyone in the room, including a lot of fathers and young sons. The three of us started giggling, and as Hirtz’s moaning reached a peak we were shaking so much from our laughter that we were spraying our shoes with urine. This went on for about three minutes. When he finished and zipped up his shorts, we were the only four people left in the bathroom. On the ride back to downtown Los Angeles, St. John would start remembering one of the incidents and would start chuckling again, and I would join him. I asked him to stop because my abs were sore already. He did his best, but whenever we looked at one another, and saw the silly grins on each other’s faces we were off and running for another ten minutes of uncontrolled giggling. We could have eaten at the hotel and put the charges on our rooms. Then the bill would have been paid by the Barbell, but we didn’t want to take the risk of running into Hoffman. So Hirtz took us to an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant not far from our hotel. Once again, St. John put away more food that the rest of us combined. We offered to pay for Tommy’s meal, but he wouldn’t accept. We were already covering the cost of gas and he felt that was enough. We slipped into the hotel and gathered in Ernie’s room to decide how to avoid Hoffman for the next couple of days. We would use a signal when we knocked on one of our doors: three knocks, pause, then two more. If we wanted to phone a room, we would let it ring twice, hang up, and call again. We also agreed to make Friday a less ambitious day, with very little walking since Ernie would be lifting that evening. Hirtz left with the promise that he would pick us up at eight o’clock the next morning in front of the hotel. At exactly eight o’clock, we slipped down the back stairs and dashed through the lobby without seeing Hoffman or any of the other lifters who were staying at the hotel. True to his word, Tommy was sitting in his El Camino with the motor running. Bill and I once again got in the cab and Ernie jumped in the back and made himself comfortable. Hirtz took us on a driving tour of the more popular spots in the city: Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Rodeo Drive, the Walk of Fame, and Sunset Strip. That took up the whole morning. We had lunch at an outdoor cafe and again St. John devoured more food than the three of us. Where he put it, I could never figure out. When Bill March ate mass quantities of food, every calorie was turned into bodyweight, but St. John stayed exactly the same weight even after stuffing himself with enough food to feed a Third World Country. Then Hirtz took us up Highway 101, the coast highway. We went as far as Malibu and stayed there a while, watching the surfers do their stuff. When he drove up and around a steep hill, I wondered where in the world he was going. I quickly found out. On the top of that hill was the campus of Pepperdine University and when he stopped to let us out, before us was one of the most spectacular scenes I had ever looked out upon. The hillside was a deep green and hid the highway below. Then the panorama extended out over the many blues and greens of the Pacific, and was crowned with a sky that looked as if it had been done by Claude Monet. I thought that if I had lived in California, I would have done everything in my power to attend this university just to be able to look out on that spectacular view every day. I looked over at Bill and Ernie, and from their expressions I knew that they were in the same state of awe as I was. I broke the spell by saying, “Maybe we should start back to the hotel so Ernie can get something to eat and get some rest before he lifts.” As the four of headed towards the El Camino, Bill provided us with his best imitation of John Wayne’s sidewinder swagger and gruff voice as he barked, “Well, let’s saddle up and ride partners, we’re losing light.” He got the reaction from us that he was after and that bit of silliness kept us in high spirits for the rest of the day. Next time: The Senior National Powerlifting Champions and more abuse of Ernie by the Imp, Thomas Peter Hirtz. My thanks to Bill St. John for the use of his sharp memories. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4:: Part 6 Articles, 2013-04-25T00:15:26+00:00 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/barbell_training_physical_therapy http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/barbell_training_physical_therapy#When:02:48:48Z by John Petrrizzo “[I]t was not until graduate school that I realized how much barbell training would continue to help me as I moved forward in both my education and future career.  If you understand how humans move lots of joints and muscles, through large ranges of motion under a load, for basic movement patterns such as the squat, deadlift, and press, it makes figuring out and understanding other biomechanical questions that arise much easier.  If you can then apply that biomechanical knowledge to how humans adapt to progressively increasing stress over time, it solves a lot of the problems faced by strength coaches and rehabilitation specialists every day.” Read More Discuss Hi. My name is John, and I am a physical therapist.  It feels good to get that off my chest.  Over the years, the field of physical therapy has not done much to ingratiate itself with the world of strength and performance training.  Similarly, many personal trainers and coaches have given legitimate strength and conditioning professionals a bad name within the field of physical therapy due to the number of injuries patients often incur with a silly exercise their trainer or coach told them to do.  It has gotten to the point that most “strength coaches” of note are more like quasi-physical therapists who specialize in “functional and/or corrective exercise.” Similarly, there are plenty of physical therapists who prescribe strength and performance training programs for athletes despite the fact that they have little or no background in the actual field.  However, the purpose of this article is not to dissect the problems within the field of physical therapy or to comment on the sad state of strength and conditioning as it is commonly practiced today.  My intention is to discuss how my experiences with barbell training have filled a huge void in my educational and real world application of both strength and conditioning and rehabilitation, and why I believe that everyone who practices in either field could benefit from some time under the bar. To provide a little background about myself, I am an average athlete who was fortunate enough to see the immense benefits that strength training can have on athletic performance at an early age.  Unfortunately, I also have a lot of experience with some of the silliness that Rip and others have spoken about within our field.  During my undergraduate studies, I walked-on and played football at a local Division 1 University and took part in a year-round strength and conditioning program in which we never did a single deadlift or pressed anything overhead.  While enrolled at this same university I majored in an Exercise Science program in which we never entered a weight room or learned anything about the basic barbell exercises.  When I decided to major in Exercise Science, for some reason I envisioned actually learning about exercise.  I was mistaken. Following graduation, I took my first position for a local big-box, globo-gym and worked both as a personal trainer and manager for the personal training department.  It was while working in that setting that I was exposed to “functional training.”  I learned that performing bodyweight exercises on a vibrating plate or some other unstable surface was, of course, functional, while anything that involved the use of a barbell was not.  When I quit, I was carrying my bumper plates out to my car and one of the regional managers stopped me to say that he “never wanted to see those things in the gym again.”  I said, “Don’t worry. This is the last time you’ll ever see them.”  Finally, during the course of my studies in physical therapy I was exposed to rehabilitation settings in which treatment centered on the use of hot packs and “therapeutic exercise” performed on tables with resistance bands and neoprene dumbbells.  All of these experiences have further cemented my belief in the superiority of barbell training.  I do not want to give the impression that I learned nothing during this time, or that I am ungrateful to all of the people who helped me along the way.  I have gotten to meet and work with many good people and have learned a great deal about anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, and all of the other basic foundational science that were required to be successful in both my undergraduate and graduate programs.  I also learned that there is a great deal more that could be done to help prepare and educate today’s physical educators and rehabilitation specialists. From the very beginning of my professional career, I realized that my experience with barbells gave me a unique perspective on training that most of the other trainers I worked with did not have.  However, it was not until graduate school that I realized how much barbell training would continue to help me as I moved forward in both my education and future career.  If you understand how humans move lots of joints and muscles, through large ranges of motion under a load, for basic movement patterns such as the squat, deadlift, and press, it makes figuring out and understanding other biomechanical questions that arise much easier.  If you can then apply that biomechanical knowledge to how humans adapt to progressively increasing stress over time, it solves a lot of the problems faced by strength coaches and rehabilitation specialists every day. In my experience in both undergraduate and graduate level coursework, the concepts that we encounter when training and programming barbell exercise are not present anywhere.  This is why I feel that barbell training is so important.  Think about that: the basic concepts of stress, recovery, and adaptation are not discussed in any exercise physiology or physical therapy related text that I have read.  Similarly, any attempt to explain the benefits of barbell exercise, let alone how to use it properly for best results, is completely non-existent in these programs as they are presently constituted.  For those of us who have seen how valuable barbell training can be, it must seem strange to think that these concepts are not common-place throughout both physiology and rehabilitative curricula, but having been through it, I can tell you that it is most conspicuously absent.  There are several overarching principles that I continue to find myself adapting from my experiences with barbell exercise in my everyday practice now that I have graduated and begun my career.  I was fortunate to find a physical therapy clinic that is open-minded to the use of barbell training.  While I would be lying if I told you I use barbells with all of my patients, I feel that the intelligent use of the barbell lifts can be a tremendous benefit to any physical therapist that is trying to optimize patient outcomes.  With that in mind, here are some lessons that I have taken from my own personal experience training with and coaching barbell exercise, and apply, to varying degrees, in my physical therapy practice. Physical Therapy Patients are the Ultimate Novices. We know that a novice trainee is someone who is thoroughly un-adapted to the stresses imposed on him by a properly designed strength training program.  This fact allows a novice trainee to make gains in muscular size and strength at a much faster rate than he will be able to as he becomes more advanced.  We also know that the process of stress, recovery, and adaptation takes approximately forty-eight to seventy-two hours for the typical novice.  Knowing this, the most appropriate program for any novice will be one in which we progress in a linear fashion, incrementally increasing the stress imposed on the system at appropriately spaced training sessions.  This is known as Linear Progression and it is how we drive adaptation in novice trainees. If there was ever a population that could benefit from a linear progression, it is your typical out-patient physical therapy patient.  I have found that most of the patients I work with fall into one of two categories: 1) Patients who are so grossly de-conditioned from years of leading a sedentary lifestyle that their bodies are just falling apart and 2) The weekend warriors who end up in physical therapy due to over-use or traumatic sports type injuries.  Either way, these patients are all very far from their ultimate genetic potential in terms of strength.  I have seen patients have great success with modified versions of a typical novice linear progression. Whether it is for a hip fracture, shoulder arthroscopy, or ACL reconstruction, the simple principles of stress, recovery, and adaptation still apply.  The only real difference between a teenage male football player and a sixty year-old female retiree, are the rates at which they will recover and adapt to the stresses imposed on them by a properly designed and implemented training program.  Intelligent exercise selection and incremental loading is the key to doing this successfully.  I have started patients post-rotator cuff repair pressing with a wooden dowel, and the leg press has proven to be very useful when working with the elderly or severely de-conditioned.  I had an eighty-eight year old male perform a linear progression on the leg press three times per week for a few months following a nasty fall and hip fracture and watched as he progressed from barely walking ten feet with a walker to walking un-aided without an assistive device.  I have seen time and again how rapidly improving a patient’s strength directly relates to improved function.  Our physical strength has, and always will be, directly proportional to how well we are able to interact with our environment.  This is true whether or not you are a physical therapy patient. {pagebreak} Barbell Training is Safe. We all know that squats are not bad for your knees, deadlifts won’t destroy your back, and presses will not impinge your shoulders when done correctly and with appropriate programming.  The caveat, of course, is “when done correctly.”  To do something correctly, we must first know what correct is.  Of the very few people who do come to physical therapy due to an injury in the weight room, every one of them could be traced back to a combination of using improper technique, coupled with injudicious loading, and poor programming.  Often times, the injuries that I see related to barbell training are minor and can be corrected with just a few sessions.  People always seem amazed that when they do the exercise correctly, they do not get hurt.  Far more frequently we see patients who injure themselves doing just about anything and everything besides barbell training.   Recently we had a college athlete that was a good example of this exact scenario.  She was returning home from school where she had been rehabilitating an ACL reconstruction with the athletic training staff at her university for the previous two months.  At the time she came to us, her chief complaint was anterior knee pain when squatting and climbing stairs.  This is a common complaint of patients who have a patellar tendon graft.  My co-worker and I watched her perform a toes-forward, knees-in, shallow bodyweight squat.  Not surprisingly, this type of squat reproduced her knee pain.  Following some basic instruction on proper foot and knee position, as well as depth, she no longer had knee pain while squatting.  She was very successful with her rehab, and we sent her back to school squatting close to her bodyweight for sets of five across.  She never complained of knee pain while performing the low-bar back squat.    The problem with this scenario however, is the fact that this girl had already spent the previous two months rehabilitating at her school with the training staff.  How is it possible that one could spend two months complaining of knee pain when squatting with nobody able to correct her form?  The reason they did not correct her technique is because they did not know how.  The fact is that the staff she was working with does not know what a correct squat actually looks like.  These are the same people that will tell their patients and athletes that squats are bad for your knees.  The sad thing is that this girl was not rehabbing in some out-patient clinic for Medicare patients – she was with her school’s athletic training and rehabilitation staff, the same people who are charged with working with the school’s athletes for all sports.  This is what we are up against.  It is our job to combat this type of silliness and to continue to ensure that our clients and patients see superior results when compared to the rest of our respective fields. Barbell Training is Functional Exercise. Currently, it is very en-vogue in both the fields of strength and conditioning and rehabilitation to promote “functional exercise” to patients and clients.  What’s more, there are numerous health, fitness, and rehabilitative gurus who can easily be found on the internet, and who will teach you how to train in a functional manner.  They will sell you programs so that you can learn to perform unilateral lower body exercises, “activate your glutes,” tell you the secrets of “core training,” and decrease your chance for injury with dynamic mobility drills.  They can even correct your “muscle imbalances.”  These people generally charge exorbitant prices for their e-books or PVC pipe evaluation kits with all of them promising fewer injuries and improved athletic performance.  I have thought about this topic a lot over the years.  Embarrassingly enough, I have even tried many of their methods and attended some of their seminars back before I knew any better.  It has been my own personal experience, and the experiences of the patients and clients I have worked with, that barbell training unequivocally produces superior results to anything these people are selling.  The reason for this is simple: Barbell training is more functional than the stuff that the functional training crowd is pushing.  If you are reading this article, then you probably already know this.    Over the last several years, I have been fortunate enough to work with a fairly large group of middle school and high school athletes.  I have had all the kids work almost exclusively with barbells during this time.  Most come because they want to get stronger for their particular sport, with baseball and lacrosse players making up a good bulk of the kids I see.  In general, most of these kids are not great athletes.  On day one, many look awkward under the bar, with skinny limbs and joints trying as best they can to conform to the new stresses being placed on their bodies.  However, after a few sessions, all of the kids perform the exercises with much more confidence and ease of movement.    The point is, all of the kids learn how to perform all of the movements correctly in just a few sessions.  They somehow manage to do this without any corrective exercise or “activation” drills.  It may seem shocking to the functional training crowd, but these kids actually learn to move better with nothing but a loaded barbell.  I do not think that these are unique cases, but rather what would be the norm if, as a profession, we put more emphasis on teaching people how to do these movements and less time trying to sell them on correcting every isolated muscle imbalance they may or may not actually have – problems that doing the movement correctly solves by itself.    More importantly, all kids who dedicate themselves enough to “do the program” see outstanding results in muscular strength, sprinting speed, and overall sports performance.  The ones that actually eat make tremendous gains in muscular bodyweight as well.  In high school sports, a well-designed strength program truly can be the difference between making the team and getting cut, riding the bench or starting, and for some it can be the difference between just being a starter to earning a college scholarship.  I have seen these scenarios play out not only in my own athletic career, but repeatedly over the last few years as well, with barbell training often being the only thing separating the success stories from the failures. In my experience, in both the fitness and rehabilitative settings, physical strength has proven itself to be the most important aspect of a person’s health and performance that we as practitioners in the field can impact.  Barbell training is the best tool we have to make people stronger.  Whether you train high school athletes or rehabilitate the frail and elderly, we owe it to our patients and clients to provide them with the best possible opportunity to better themselves.  We know the tremendous benefits that barbell training can provide and how to best use it effectively.  Now it is our job to spread the word. John Petrizzo is a Physical Therapist, Personal Trainer, and Starting Strength Coach.  John has a B.S. in Exercise Science from Hofstra University where he was a member of the football team and holds a Doctorate in Physical Therapy from the New York Institute of Technology.  He has worked in the fitness industry since 2006 in a variety of roles and settings and has helped many patients and clients achieve their health, fitness, and sports performance goals through barbell training.  In 2012, John began competing in powerlifting.  You can contact him at John.Petrizzo@gmail.com. Articles, 2013-04-17T02:48:48+00:00 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/joe_weider_bodybuilding_patriarch http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/joe_weider_bodybuilding_patriarch#When:19:32:35Z by Marty Gallagher “Joe Weider was, as Kris Kristofferson related in the song Sunday Morning Coming Down, “a walking contradiction; partly fact and partly fiction.”  For every Weider admirer there was a Weider detractor, for every fan there was a hater, for every accolade there was a lawsuit.  He was the giant, the Mac Daddy, the King, of that ever-so-weird cult of big time professional bodybuilding.” Read More Discuss Part I Joe Weider was, as Kris Kristofferson related in the song Sunday Morning Coming Down, “a walking contradiction; partly fact and partly fiction.”  For every Weider admirer there was a Weider detractor, for every fan there was a hater, for every accolade there was a lawsuit.  He was the giant, the Mac Daddy, the King, of that ever-so-weird cult of big time professional bodybuilding.  He was called “Jew bastard” by his crushed business opponents (his true genius was business – not bodybuilding) and he was loved by his inner circle. Joe was always making the right move at the right time, while simultaneously evaluating and seizing every business and commercial opportunity that came his way. He was a genius and an opportunist, he skirted the law and was deemed to have broken the law; he bamboozled the consumer with outlandish, unsubstantiated claims about his gaudy, overhyped products – seemingly without the slightest hint of remorse or regret. He was a flawed giant and he leaves behind a complex legacy. Roots Born in 1920, Joe Weider grew up in a tough neighborhood in Montreal, Canada during the hard times of the Great Depression. When young Joe left public school at age 12 to pull a small wagon 10 hours a day delivering fruit and groceries for a market, it was an act of survival for both him and his family.  –  from the official Joe Weider website Really, Joe? Pulling a small wagon ten hours a day at age 12? Yet another hyperbolic sentence that tells us a lot about Joe Weider, a man that actually had a real-life rags-to-riches story – yet the truth alone was never good enough for Joe, and he never failed to embellish anything and everything that he came into contact with.  To get Arnold Schwarzenegger a movie role (Hercules in New York) he described to producers the incoherent, unintelligible 19-year-old Arnold as, “The greatest Shakespearean actor of his generation.” Rather than get into a morass of biographic detail for a man that lived one helluva life and died at age 93, let us summarize the first forty years quickly in order to get to the West Coast Go-Go years of the 1960s when Joe Weider came into his own. Born of immigrant Jewish parents in Montreal Canada in 1920, Weider did indeed grow up poor during the Depression. He was 19 when World War II broke out and it was unclear how he avoided service. He and his younger brother Ben were attracted to the world of “physical culture” and from their teen years onward the duo published bodybuilding and “health” magazines.  Their flagship magazine was called Your Physique.  Bodybuilding was, is, and always will be a visual art, and photographing and presenting the male physique in bodybuilding poses was considered – back in the forties and fifties – “lewd and lascivious,” seedy and secretly catering to the then-underground homosexual community, all under the guise of Health. The Weider brothers didn’t help their public image by periodically publishing men wearing nothing more than a banana hammock with bare asses shown in full gluteal glory – this screamed “PORN!” to the general public of the thirties, forties, and fifties. In the obituary on Joe, on the website IMDB.com, they identified Joe as “A physical culturist who published a number of magazines catering to the perfection of the male physique, such as The Young Physique, Muscle Boy, Demi-Gods, and Muscle Teens.” These publications were homoerotic to the max – to quote Jerry Seinfeld, “Not that there is anything wrong with that!”  In the end, Joe’s good points outweighed his bad and he helped a lot of folks. In the final analysis he was a force for good and we shall certainly not see his kind again anytime soon. Weider had a genuine love for bodybuilding, and bodybuilding was gaining traction with the male general public in the late 1950s. Strength & Health, Iron Man, and Muscle Builder magazine, all were now available at newsstands. Each offered a radically different take on bodybuilding, weightlifting, powerlifting, strength training and muscle building. Strength & Health magazine staked out the “sensible right.” Perry and Mabel Rader, beatific owners of Iron Man, staked out the “middle ground.” Joe Weider staked out the “far left.” His timing was, typically, superb. He hitched a ride on the gathering tide of the hip youth movement that was just emerging. West Coast-style bodybuilding, beach-born and raised, meshed perfectly with the sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll mentality of the turbulent times. Joe would align himself with the antiestablishment. Naturally, as soon as he vanquished his arch enemy Bob Hoffman, Joe became the establishment that he so recently and rabidly railed against. Once Joe and Ben seized control of elite bodybuilding, they ruled as the entrenched establishment with an iron grip: unassailable, unchallenged, a virtual bodybuilding dictatorship that lasted for the next 40 years. Gaining Traction Joe started the mail-order Weider Barbell Co. in 1942; his magazine now offered weight sets and other equipment as well as some rudimentary vitamin and mineral supplements. In 1946, Joe and his brother Ben rented Montreal’s Monument National Theater to host the first Mr. Canada contest. The International Federation of Bodybuilders was born that night.  –  from the official Joe Weider website Joe and Ben got financial traction with Your Physique.  The magazine generated enough throw-off capital for the brothers to enter into the then-nonexistent world of nutritional supplements.  Joe sensed a change in mood and tone within the cloistered world of bodybuilding, and he changed the name and approach of the magazine: the slightly seedy Your Physique morphed into the hyperbolic Muscle Builder. He relocated from Montreal to New Jersey and began modifying the magazine to reflect the times. When Joe relocated to New Jersey he fortuitously employed a local, the man with the world’s biggest and best biceps, Leroy Colbert.  Leroy was a cool dude whose side chest/right bicep shot remains an all-time classic. Leroy brought some street cred to the rather effete (by comparison to the company Leroy kept) Weider.   Joe also hired another local boy, a big strapping kid, an 18-year-old novice bodybuilder named David Draper. Dave became the first in-house Weider bodybuilder project: Joe determined that the kid would be the face of Weider. Joe saw greatness in Dave before anyone else (including Dave) saw it.  Draper had the Nordic-blond, beach bum, hoo-dad, sex-stud vibe that Joe was looking for. Never mind that the kid had never been west of the Mississippi – Joe would present David as the ultimate hip young “Blond Bomber” beach boy bodybuilder. Dave had the look, and now he needed to build some muscle and melt off some bodyfat. Dave was big and smooth and shapeless.  Dave was encouraged to train and once he got his bodyweight under control, he indeed became the face of Weider. Dave was to become the epitome of the beach bodybuilding lifestyle. Joe was creating myths; the target audience was males, aged 15 to 25. The lure was the eternal quest for muscles: boys want muscles and girls, and the advertisements Joe created were pure promotional genius. He would pair up Dave with his trophy wife, Betty. Betty Brosmer was then the highest paid pin-up girl in the U.S.  In 1961 Joe and Betty married. She began working alongside him, now as fitness maven Betty Weider. {pagebreak} Dave and Betty were used in virtually all the Weider ads of the mid-sixties. Dave got better as he got older. Joe moved the whole organization to Southern California in yet another brilliant move. Now he was headquartered at the epicenter of all things bodybuilding-related. Joe now had access to the best and largest collection of bodybuilders in the world. He immediately caught and bottled the vibe and feel of the 1960s Southern California beach scene: the woodies with surfboards, the lingo, the surfer girls, the hot rods and malt shops, the bonfires on the beach, the beach music – and the bodybuilders. Ground zero was Muscle Beach. On weekends the Muscle Beach bodybuilders, hand-balancers, gymnasts, and acrobats would gather and ply their trade for free for passers-by. It was an innocent golden era when hand-to-mouth athletes hung out with poets and surfers and beatniks and everyone could make enough to live on. They would rent the inexpensive, ramshackle housing that was cheap and available right along the beach. Joe availed himself of a goodly amount of (then) cheap Los Angeles real estate.  Again, his business sense was nothing short of visionary. He settled in and really came into his own. Joe had a true artist’s eye when it came to photography and creating master photos of the elite bodybuilders of the day. Joe would supervise photo shoots and coach both bodybuilder and photographer until he got exactly the photo he had envisioned in his mind’s eye. Muscle Builder blew every other muscle mag into the weeds when it came to photographing sensational, overly-muscular, freaky bodybuilders – which were exactly what the youth of America wanted!Every story needs a villain Joe developed an arch-enemy in Bob Hoffman and the York Barbell juggernaut. Hoffman once described Weider as “The worst thing that ever happened to a sport.” Hoffman was prone to hyperbolic grandiosity and had no compunction whatsoever about inflating his lifts and his accomplishments. Bob was, according to himself, also grand in other pursuits. In true Kim Jung Il style, Hoffman was the self-described “world polka dancing champion” and the man with the “greatest chest expansion on record.” He would routinely seize the microphone from MCs at national weightlifting championships and launch into Castro-like speeches about the greatness of Bob, the “Father of Modern Weightlifting.” Clinically, the man was ego-maniacal. At stake in the ever-escalating feud between these two men was the future of bodybuilding. Hoffman hated bodybuilding but was aware that its popularity dwarfed that of his beloved Olympic weightlifting. He understood that if weightlifting were to survive, he would need to hitch weightlifting to the bodybuilding cash-cow, in some manner or fashion. Thus began a titanic struggle for the hearts and minds of bodybuilders. This was an epic tussle: Hoffman’s attitude was, “Let’s co-opt bodybuilding, clean it up, make it respectable, create a male version of the ever-popular Miss America competition, complete with a talent portion (athletic points) and points for ‘good grooming.’” The bodybuilding judges of the day would make sure that any Mr. America winner would be a wholesome representative of American manhood – as they perceived it. Hoffman was the head of an Iron Politburo that ruled through intimidation and fear. These men wore grey suits and black ties all the time. The Mr. America winner would be a fantastic representative of all that is good and decent and right about America in the Cold War times. Thus Bob would mainstream bodybuilding – make it safe as warm milk for John Q. Public. Weider, naturally and rightly, viewed this approach as a bunch of sanctimonious bullshit created by a bunch of old white weightlifters that hated bodybuilding. Joe Weider loved bodybuilding and saw his opening. He would align with the “youth revolt” movement taking place in 60s; he would position the repressive Hoffman as “The Man” (he was), and position bodybuilding as a leader in the California hip antiestablishment (it was). Joe’s message to America’s young men was, “Forget about being a fantastic representative of establishment values and morals – let’s build some bad-ass freaky-ass muscles! Let’s live on the beach and get a tan and score with the hottest beach babes, let’s fuck the cheerleaders and beat up the guys that bullied you when you were a nobody nerd. Let’s party all night long and sleep until two…” Guess which message captured the hearts and minds of young male bodybuilders?  Weider used hip youth jargon to sell his worthless nutritional products in his magazine. Joe successfully fought off the IRS when they wanted to reclassify the “magazine” as a catalog, thereby changing Weider’s tax status. Thanks to Joe, bodybuilding became as much a part of American culture as surfing, itsy-bitsy bikinis and the beach, and the surf music of Dick Dale and the Beach Boys. Racial Politics In the Amateur Athletic Union, it was an unspoken rule that a black bodybuilder would never be allowed to win Mr. America. There was a long history of incredible bodybuilders denied the Mr. A title for no conceivable reason other than race: as long as the AAU conducted interviews and awarded athletic points and awarded points for good grooming, these fig leafs could be used to deflect accusations of racism.  “Yes, the Negro possessed the best body – but his interview went poorly, he had no athletic points, and his grooming was off.” The great George Paine should have been named Mr. America on numerous occasions. Sergio Oliva was denied the Mr. America title despite scoring off the charts on athletic points (he was a Cuban weightlifting national champion before defecting.) Sergio had twice the muscle of any other competitor. The AAU’s subjective garbage was marinated in overt racism and designed to create a system whereby lesser-built white men could be declared winners over superiorly-muscled African-Americans. A transitory event occurred at the 1963 Mr. America contest where a mightily muscled Harold Poole (from Indiana) was beaten handily by the smooth-as-a-baby’s ass Vern Weaver. A smoldering Poole smashed his 3rd place trophy onstage and stomped out of the auditorium and straight into Joe Weider’s waiting arms. Now Joe had another superstar on his expanding roster. Larry Scott was Joe’s premier bodybuilder in 1965. With Poole onboard, and with Chuck Sipes in terrific shape, Joe now had enough bodybuilders of high-enough caliber to create the requisite tension and friction needed to generate fan interest. He needed a new venue to showcase the world’s best bodybuilders, so Joe came up with his latest and greatest bodybuilding idea: the Mr. Olympia. Supposedly Joe and some friends were having their post-workout replenishment shakes (12-ounce beers) after a savage workout. Joe presented his idea of a bodybuilding competition that would only be open to Mr. Universe winners. The men sat at the bar pondering names for the competition, “What’s bigger than a Universe?” Joe asked? “A Galaxy! (Astronomers they were not.) We’ll call the new contest the Mr. Galaxy!” The auto maker Ford called its top-of-the-line car the Galaxy – so to avoid being mistakenly linked to a car maker, Mr. Galaxy was abandoned in favor of Mr. Cosmos. Joe’s eyes happened to focus on the beer can he was absent-mindedly holding. It was an Olympia beer. “We’ll call this super contest Mr. Olympia,” he said with finality. Part 2 Marty Gallagher has been a national and world champion masters powerlifter and is widely considered one of the best writers in the iron game. Since 1978 he has written over 1000 articles published in a dozen publications. He has authored more than 100 articles for Muscle & Fitness magazine and produced 230 weekly live online columns for the Washington Post. Gallagher has coached some of the biggest names in powerlifting and witnessed some of the greatest strength feats of the last half century. If you like his style pick up a copy of his masterwork, The Purposeful Primitive. Articles, 2013-04-08T19:32:35+00:00 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/the_year_in_strength_science_2012 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/the_year_in_strength_science_2012#When:01:59:16Z by Jonathon Sullivan “A review of the strength science literature for 2011, the first in this annual series, was conceived in the Autumn of that year, gestated quickly, and got pushed out in early January 2012. This second review has had a year to incubate, and in the interim I’ve tweaked my search parameters and expanded my net. ” Read article: Discuss Articles, 2013-03-28T01:59:16+00:00 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/is_powerlifting_undergoing_a_resurrection http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/is_powerlifting_undergoing_a_resurrection#When:20:50:54Z After years of disintegration, malfunction and fractionalization, gear-free, grass-roots powerlifting is suddenly wildly popular by Marty Gallagher “[A]t a recent power competition in my neighborhood, Columbia, Maryland, an upscale community and hardly a strength hotbed, the local promoter cut entries off at 100. He filled up his quota within 30 days. He then turned away another 100 lifters that had waited too long to sign up.” Read More Discuss ”[A]t a recent power competition in my neighborhood, Columbia, Maryland, an upscale community and hardly a strength hotbed, the local promoter cut entries off at 100. He filled up his quota within 30 days. He then turned away another 100 lifters that had waited too long to sign up.” Modern powerlifting officially bottomed out in 2012 when Powerlifting USA, the longtime Bible of the sport, officially folded.  Powerlifting had grown so feeble and anemic that it was unable to sustain its most venerated organ of communal communication.  For decades PLUSA had been the central clearinghouse for information on upcoming competitions, training, gossip and all things power-related. Without any prior warning, PLUSA vanished from the face of the earth, gone without a trace after nearly four decades as the singular source of powerlifting information. To many it seemed yet another death-blow to a sport already in perilous decline. It seemed inconceivable that the sport of powerlifting could realistically function or move forward without the magazine. One critical role PLUSA played was to act as a catalog of upcoming events; competitions were planned for based on information derived from PLUSA. The lifter could peruse the magazine and determine what competitions were coming to his area. Depending on which power tribe the lifter swore allegiance to, he was able to plot and plan the next competitive move as PLUSA cut across federation lines and a lifter could obtain a broad overview as to what competitions were scheduled where and when. The Coming Events page alone made PLUSA invaluable. PLUSA was the brainchild of Mike Lambert, editor, publisher, sole owner, and heart and soul of the magazine for nearly 40 years. Initially Lambert became a magazine publisher to fill a void; there was a definable and growing powerlifting community without a publication devoted to it.  Lifters wanted and needed a source of information; they wanted elite lifter profiles, training articles and coverage of the national and world championship events, they wanted a central clearinghouse where competition results would be published. In a stroke of pure genius, Mike Lambert went to the time and trouble to establish a Powerlifting USA Top 100 list each month. This feat of compilation was akin to Hercules cleaning the Aegean Stables; this was an epic task done monthly. There are eleven competitive weight classes and every month Mike would post the annual top 100 list for one particular weight division – this was the cross-federation annual rankings list. Each month featured a particular weight class and in month 12 they ran top 100 Master and women lifters ranking. Now imagine what a royal pain in the ass it would be to read and log every powerlifting competition in the United States; input every competition, log every lifter’s squat, bench, deadlift – we are talking hundreds of competitions and thousands of lifters. Then every month you tally up the rankings list for one weight class and post that annual top 100 lifter list for that division. Each month there would be a top 100 ranking in the squat, bench press, deadlift and a 4th top 100 category, all-important “three-lift total” category, the sum total of a man’s best squat/bench/deadlift in competition. Powerlifters would anticipate the top 100 list in their particular weight class as if they were being nominated for the Academy Awards. Making the top ten in any category was a monumental strength feat – or at least it used to be when we all squatted below parallel, wore the same gear, and used the same weigh-in times, before the advent of the insipid Monolift, the monster bench shirts that add 40% to a man’s true bench press – and don’t forget those extra-long knee wraps.  There was a time when we could cross-compare lifts and the PLUSA Top 100 meant something.  Add to this already toxic brew the curse of purposefully lax judging, and it is easy to see why we disintegrated.  Corrupt judging is artfully called “interpretive differences” and the phrase has been used to justify sky-high squats passed with brazen impunity.  We became the Tower of Babel when cross-comparison of lifts became impossible, as federations took it upon themselves to redefine what constituted a legal lift and what gear was allowable.  The degeneration and erosion has been ongoing for over a decade. Back in 1975 when Mike Lambert stepped up and created the epicenter for all things powerlifting-related, who could have imagined the trials and travails that would rip the sport apart decades in the future?  Those first tentative issues of PLUSA, done in the 1970s, were photocopied homemade crudities, technologically challenged, yet vibrant and exciting and chock full of information and passion. As powerlifting grew, PLUSA grew and eventually Mike Lambert turned a burning passion into an excellent living.  Mike deservedly reaped the financial rewards that go to a risk-taking entrepreneur that succeeds. Mike wrote and published the magazine by himself and was an excellent photographer. For decades Lambert was a regular fixture at major power competitions.  He would appear in his fishing vest stuffed full of high speed film, two or more cameras arrayed around him as he sat on the floor in his favored viewing spot, ten feet to the front and to the right of the lifter. He seemed painfully shy and was one of the least talkative people I have ever met, at least towards me. I once sat next to him on a world championship team trip from NYC to Sweden and he didn’t say five words to me, a guy who’d been writing for him for a decade. I tried to make conversation, but he was having none of it. He wasn’t disrespectful – he was painfully shy. At its peak, he likely had 30,000 subscribers and healthy ad revenues that would come close to offsetting the cost of production and/or mail-out. He did well and he did a fine job. Eventually he lost the passion and it showed. He started jobbing out the meet coverage of lesser championships to lesser writers, and eventually Mike stopped traveling to the IPF world championships.  As the old BB King song goes, “The thrill is gone.” Mike folded the magazine so rapidly and so suddenly that it caught all of us off guard and completely unawares. There had not been the usual dire editorial warnings to the readership ahead of time and there was no “Adios! It’s been great! Thanks to my loyal readership – but it’s time to move on!” message in the last issue.  It was a sad yet telling commentary on the sorry state of a once promising and vibrant sport.  PLUSA came in with a bang and went out with a whimper – or perhaps it was just a tired sigh. Powerlifting rose quickly and fell even quicker.  There was a time in the 1970s when powerlifting had a TV contract with ABC and was in the regular rotation on ABC’s number one ranked Saturday afternoon sport show, ABC’s Wide World of Sports. For a glorious decade, before the implosion, scattering and fragmentation, powerlifting championships filled halls and venues to capacity. Powerlifting was on TV and promoters fought one another to put on championship events. Having a lone national federation and a lone international federation ensured control, ensured uniformity on the rules and ensured judging strictness at the regional and national level competitions. We had a lot of charismatic athletes back then, men such as Larry Pacifico, John Kuc, Kaz, and Doug Young. All were at their awesome respective peaks and all were featured in long, extended slots on TV. Audiences liked powerlifting. Our apogee was a long WWS feature on world 242 pound champion Doug Young.  At the 1978 world powerlifting championships Doug broke three ribs on a 722 squat. He pushed through and with great drama, finished the competition in excruciating pain – all documented in a 30 minute feature segment. With three broken ribs the Mighty Texan benched 544 and deadlifted 704. His Wide World of Sports segment was narrated by a young Bryan Gumball and indeed, powerlifting seemed destined to hold down a regular TV spot, much as Lumberjack competition, or arm wrestling, or strongman. Instead, powerlifting was kicked off TV after being branded as an unrepentant drug sport.{pagebreak} Even after we lost the TV contract, powerlifting still rolled on strong. With ever-increasing momentum the unified sport garnered and gathered more and more respect – true athletes recognized and understood that pure powerlifting was the truest test of pure strength: a prestigious place in the pantheon of strength modes: no single mode or method trumped powerlifting as the ultimate strength system – flawed as the sport might be.  Mike Lambert was full of passion back in those golden days, and it came through in his informative retellings: “The greatest demonstration of bench pressing in the history of the sport (written in 1986) occurred when Mike MacDonald sweated himself down to 181 pounds and opened with a 473-pound bench press – a world record on his 1st attempt. He then jumped to another world record on his 2nd attempt, a success with 488. He then became the first 181 pounder to break the 500 pound barrier with his successful 3rd attempt bench press of 501. Mike capped an already perfect bench press day with a successful 4th attempt with 512. Four attempts, four world records. How do you top that? Rick Weil nearly matched MacDonald’s feat (done a decade later) when in December of 1985 the 180 pound Weil bench pressed 512 on his opener. He set his first world record with a 540 pound 2nd attempt, Rick followed with a 545 3rd attempt for his second WR. He finally hit a 551 4th attempt success, three world records on four attempts. Ironically Weil’s lightest bench press, his opener of 512, equaled Mac’s once unassailable world record best. Weil commenced, literally, from where MacDonald left off.” When there was a lone federation nationally and a lone federation internationally, powerlifting thrived. The judging was uniform and strict and everyone was getting better and prospering – and then we opened the Pandora’s Box of performance enhancing drugs. The once happy, prosperous, powerful and unified sport of powerlifting splintered, shattered, exploded into a thousand pieces as competing federations arose, each taking a differing stance on drugs, drug use and drug testing. At the one extreme were the anti-drug faction and at the other extreme were the steroid apologists.  Each faction immediately set up organizations. The USPF attempted to stake out a middle ground by instituting competition drug testing. The testing was deemed insufficient for the anti-drug faction and way too much by the pro-steroid faction. Monies previously used to fund US teams traveling to world championships were now diverted to lawyers defending the organization from lawsuits arising out of drug testing.  Rebel organizations sprang up from within other rebel organizations and with the each new federation powerlifting became weaker and more diluted. I wrote in an article decades ago, “Powerlifting as a craft will never die … proper squats, bench pressing and deadlifting have incredible athletic applicability and for these reasons the lifts themselves will live on in perpetuity – the sport, with its innumerable splinter factions, ridiculous supportive gear (what % of a lift is attributable to the man and what % to the gear?) could well kill itself.” That prophecy came to pass: powerlifting self-immolated, set itself on fire, it became the sports embodiment of the biblical Tower of Babel. When the lone organization disintegrated, like ancient Rome, the Dark Ages descended on powerlifting. In 2012 Mike Lambert threw in the towel. As it turns out, he may have just missed what appears to be a potential powerlifting rebirth, a resurrection that is occurring on a grass-roots level. For some strange and apparently inexplicable reason, powerlifting of a certain type, the so-called “raw” powerlifting – powerlifting that disallows supportive lifting gear (other than a weightlifting belt) – is experiencing an unexpected explosion in participatory popularity. Events that two years ago might have attracted 25 lifters are now attracting 150+ lifters; regional and national level events are cutting off raw entries at 350 to 400 lifters. This explosion appears to be nationwide and worldwide.  USAPL competitions in every region are packed to capacity.  Why this completely unexpected explosion in powerlifting popularity? The surge in lifters has nothing to do with any genius promotional ideas arising from within the powerlifting establishment; they are left scratching their heads, as clueless and surprised by this recent turn of events as the rest of us. There is a veritable stampede of new lifters looking to compete in the classical three-lift power format. And they want to do it raw, i.e. without knee wraps, without a squat suit or a bench shirt – and no need for the expensive Monolift device that eliminates the walkout phase required of a classically-performed squat.  It is as if some mysterious fitness oracle whispered into the ears of tens of thousands of trainees, “Hey! You people should train for and then enter a powerlifting competition!” And the mind-numbed robots then did exactly what they were told by the oracle. One illustrative example: at a recent power competition in my neighborhood, Columbia, Maryland, an upscale community and hardly a strength hotbed, the local promoter cut entries off at 100. He filled up his quota within 30 days. He then turned away another 100 lifters that had waited too long to sign up. This particular competition catered to both raw (no gear) and geared divisions. Of the 100 entrants, 83 were raw and 17 were geared. This disproportional imbalance appears consistent on a nationwide basis. On the national level, big raw meets are routinely drawing upwards of 400 lifters. Because of this new influx of interest in raw lifting, organizations are rethinking their approach towards the sport. The rumor mill has it that the IPF, the International Powerlifting Federation, is seriously considering dropping geared lifting all together and jumping on the raw bandwagon.  If the popularity trend continues it will spell the rebirth, the revitalization of a fabulous sport: fabulous when practiced in its purest, most pristine and precise way. Strict judging and no gear means we will once again be able to compare lifts, one to another, federation to federation. With an infusion of participants, powerlifting could become viable again: in our era of cable TV there is no reason why a well-run national or world championship of raw lifters could not draw excellent ratings. Seeing gigantic musclemen handling gigantic poundage in pristine fashion is always exciting. It is a fantastic turn of events when national organizations conducting national championships are cutting off entrants at 400. If the powers-that-be are smart, they will take the time and trouble to trace this newfound popularity back to its source. Is there a lone endorser so powerful and influential that tens of thousands heed their advice? Perhaps power’s popularity is traceable to a combination of unrelated events. It would be wise to find out and if possible, bottle it. Let us not fumble this opportunity. Marty Gallagher has been a national and world champion masters powerlifter and is widely considered one of the best writers in the iron game. Since 1978 he has written over 1000 articles published in a dozen publications. He has authored more than 100 articles for Muscle & Fitness magazine and produced 230 weekly live online columns for the Washington Post. Gallagher has coached some of the biggest names in powerlifting and witnessed some of the greatest strength feats of the last half century. If you like his style pick up a copy of his masterwork, The Purposeful Primitive. Articles, 2013-03-22T20:50:54+00:00 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/my_experiences_with_starting_strength http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/my_experiences_with_starting_strength#When:04:40:03Z by Colin Webster “I had read about strength and conditioning topics for years, and learned a few things at the tutelage of some legendary Steelers who really know their stuff. He reminded me of much I have forgotten and some stuff I’d never learned. Many of these things seem basic in retrospect, but a lot that is basic is also easily forgotten, even things that were well known in the past. And excelling at anything is more about being good at the basics than anything else.” Read More Discuss Mark Rippetoe was kind enough to post on his forum about the existence of my humble blog, so I thought I would try and return the favor and post about just a few of the things I’ve learned from him. Some of these things may seem obvious to any longtime devotee of his systems, but it wasn’t until I started reading his stuff that I learned them or was finally convinced to put them into practice. I had read about strength and conditioning topics for years, and learned a few things at the tutelage of some legendary Steelers who really know their stuff. He reminded me of much I have forgotten and some stuff I’d never learned. Many of these things seem basic in retrospect, but a lot that is basic is also easily forgotten, even things that were well known in the past. And excelling at anything is more about being good at the basics than anything else. 1.  Keep things simple. Programming doesn’t have to be complex, particularly for beginners. Starting Strength is for beginners. People starting (ahem) strength. I admit to having known of the title for some time from the plethora of CrossFit obsessed Marines in my former unit. At the time, I thought it had something to do with building strength for the beginning of explosive movements, strength to build up a powerful “start” on a sprint or something. Then I read the book, and it was excellent! I was thinking there would be something complex about it, but it’s really well laid out and all about mastering a small core of basic lifts. Coupled with this focus on the basic exercises using the best strength development tool ever developed is a great series of diagrams showing you how to master the lifts. To my chagrin I learned much about proper form for these lifts, which heretofore had seemed relatively straightforward and self-explanatory. Most of them I’d been doing for years, off and on, yet I improved my lifts and made the exercises feel much more friendly to my joints instantly once I started doing them right. Rip points out all the subtle things to do during a lift, but without turning a basic lift into rocket science. I’ve heard high volume advocates try and tear down the program because it doesn’t have tons of frequency and volume. If you like high volume training, well and good. But the thing people forget is that this is a program for beginners! Low volume is just what they need. Most people today are woefully out of shape, and however convinced you are that Ultimate Warrior is right, and that there is no such thing as overtraining, a beginning weightlifter is adapting to just doing actual exercise, is in fact atrophied beyond what nature intended him to be, and doesn’t need high volume to grow. If he doesn’t need it, then all he is likely to do is turn gain-time into recovery-time. What’s the point in that? Once you get through the beginner gains – the reversal of atrophy, this program of getting to where you would be if you lived a life of real effort and toil – then up the workload if you are so inclined. 2.  Starting Strength goes back to the old school. I had been trying out a lot of newer stuff, equipment and exercises, but the Starting Strength method of lifting brought me back to the way my father trained and gained enormous strength, no funky stuff required. A squat, a press, and a pull. Three exercises, hard work, and done. There is a reason this is old school. Back in the day, if something didn’t produce results, lifters usually decided not to do it. Sure, there were folks back then peddling all kinds of stuff, but how come nowadays every muscle or fitness magazine has the be-all-end-all article on developing (insert bodypart here) and then has another one the next month? It’s not because the programs are working. Ninety percent or more of the population could just do Starting Strength, as written, over and over again and meet all of their needs. But that sure doesn’t leave much to write about next month, does it? It doesn’t give someone a reason to take supplement after new supplement because they just can’t seem to make any gains doing Kai Green’s three-day split for each head of the triceps, does it? 3.  I learned that no matter how solid the information is you are putting out, no matter how simple and effective your program is, people will monkey with it. Before I bought the book, and really understood what the program was about, I googled it to try and see what exactly it was. This was years before actually talking to Rip, or I never would have done it. I found a thousand and one variations on a relatively simple program, and everyone chimed in with their two cents that made it “better”. They were missing the point. I think it’s both a hallmark of human nature to want to change something, just a little, and personalize it – make it your own. And honestly, that’s fine. Just don’t say Starting Strength does not work when your own personal version of it has you doing curls, pec deck, and BodyBlades (remember those?) while on a low-fat vegan diet. I’ve seen a ton of other trainers come out with identical, or very nearly so, programs. Some have the ingenious idea of guaranteeing you will put 110 plus pounds on your lifts, because, rather than have you start on a manageable weight and do a real linear progression (which can be expected for a rank beginner) the copycats have you start with the bar, and add five pounds a session. I am currently in a detrained state right now due to a non-weightlifting injury, but even so, I could do a version of Rip’s program by a certain Belgian guy and do a “linear progression” that would last six months or more and finally put me right at what I overhead press now! Now, at this point, a Starting Strength critic, if he’d by chance found his way to my humble blog, would be screaming, “But Rippetoe didn’t come up with this all by himself! There were plenty of lifters doing sets of 5 and all that before he wrote Starting Strength!” This is true, but sometimes the best thing one can do is go back, grab the wisdom that lifters got from coaching experience and personal experience, and compile it for you. The copycats just read Rip’s book, make it half as effective, sell you someone else’s actual labor, and somehow make a good, simple program worse. Not many people would be doing the heavy basic barbell training like they are today if it wasn’t for Rip. I know tons of lifters who only gave up on Flex magazine routines and started training full-body, basic barbell training, and are stronger and more muscular because of Starting Strength or its influence. Lots of CrossFitters who used to be metabolic junkies have realized that by getting stronger, taking three months and just doing the basic lifts, those 95 pound barbells fly up with ease, pushups seem easier, and the metabolic stuff is far less taxing because they are using a much lower percentage of their strength to do the work. The truth about lifting must be frequently repeated, because things start going all to hell the minute they don’t. Rip may not have invented the type of program he espouses, he didn’t come up with sets of 5, three day-a-week whole-body workouts, or invent the back squat, but he brought this method of training back more than anyone I can think of. In short, he most likely brought it to you. 4.  One of the best things I learned from Starting Strength was to deadlift less frequently. I had done this three times a week in the past here and there, and I always stalled or got weaker. Power cleans are now one of my favorite exercises, and all I have to do now is jump and catch. I’m not a gifted athlete in any area outside of punching someone in the face, or a similar activity, like getting punched in the face (I am a champ at taking punches, just ask any of my old sparring partners – head like a brick), and the former methods and instructions of power cleaning looked like something the cat coughed up. I read a critique by an Olympic lifter once of the jump and catch method as espoused in Starting Strength, carping about how this method of teaching the lift was too simple, ineffective, and one of the main causes for the impending apocalypse. He proceeded to lay out what sounded like the way a proper lady does a power clean, and to me it was akin to an admonition to always ride a horse sidesaddle. Now, his method may have been the way Olympic lifters do cleans, but not all who begin lifting weights aspire to a career in Olympic weightlifting. One of the main points he made was that the “proper” way of cleaning was a long and complex method of learning the lift, which in his own words, would not allow you to use as much weight, since it was so much more difficult to do the lift this way. Perhaps this is due to some deficiency on my part, but that just didn’t make sense. He didn’t have any real issues with the safety of doing it the jump and catch way, so the point made little sense to me, particularly for someone training for general strength and power. His rigid adherence to this esoteric method of cleans when there was no safety issue involved seemed akin to a classical karateka complaining to a reigning MMA champ that his success was for naught given that he did not have to wear a uniform, carry stone pitchers of water up and down an ancient temple staircase, and do lots and lots of bowing.{pagebreak} When I jump and catch, I don’t have to try and think through every portion of the lift, I just do it and it all falls in to place. Even if I were to have to do less weight, this is the method I would use for performing the lift. When you don’t have to think through every portion of the lift but do things that make your body naturally and safely take over, that lift will fall into place, rather than rapidly thinking through a series of pre-flight, in-flight, and post flight checklists. Set the bar. Pull through the hips, second pull…now! Okay, make sure I’m not pulling with the biceps! Here it comes! Turn the wrists, bend slightly at the knees to receive the wrist…Crossfit girl, 11 o’clock! Focus! Okay, racking bar on shoulders, dipping down slightly, oh no! I don’t have bumper plates! My God what will I do! Maybe I can just drop this next to the guy in the salmon colored singlet on the adductor machine, make it look like he did it, then run out of the gym and never come back! Ok, go! Maybe I got a little carried away, but the point is that the simplest way to do something safely, works. I do remember being taught power cleans, of a form, in high school by a coach that had more AC/DC albums than knowledge of technique. I am having a hard time remembering the three and a half-hour session he used to teach it to us, but he didn’t want us to shrug or pull the weight up, no use of the traps at all, basically he wanted us to do a deadlift then drop as fast as possible and get under the bar from about hip height. Using the more natural technique I could power clean nearly 300, with his method I struggled with even 185. Again, simple + easy to remember and implement + safe = BETTER! Lots of folks quibble about using Pavel’s method of sucking in or “packing” the shoulders vs. shrugging them for overhead work. I have tried a lot of things in regards to shoulders and helped more than a few others sort this issue out for themselves. Shoulder function seems to vary much with the individual, but nearly everyone can and should overhead press, but different people seem to find better effects one way or the other. I didn’t like the shrugging technique at first, until I actually got it right, and instead of just raising my shoulders a little, I did it in such a way that flexed the hell out of my traps, and then learning occurred. I hear from a lot of folks that prefer Pavel’s pack over the Starting Strength shrug. I like a lot of Pavel’s stuff, even if communism, his marketing schtick, is my sworn enemy. I’m not sure many have really tried different versions of the shrug on overhead movements, but again, people are different. What’s not different is that when holding a barbell directly overhead, the traps hold up the scapulas, and the scapulas hold up the arms and therefore the bar. Not the same thing that happens with a kettlebell that is swinging. 5.  Starting Strength made me strong. I do gain strength easily on a basic barbell program, but going back to the lifts and lowering my frequency a bit made me stronger faster than anything else I have tried. It works. A common critique many have of the program is that it makes you gain weight. Well, if you are in a sport that requires staying in a weight class or simply maintaining a very low weight, then there’s plenty of programs out there. If you just don’t want to get big ugly muscles because your fella doesn’t like it, then I think I still have a pair of 3-pound dumbbells from when I was four that I could sell to you for a good price. Most people take the gallon-of-milk-a-day thing as if it is a required part of the Starting Strength program. From what I understand, this is a recommendation for skinny guys and “hardgainers” who just can’t seem to get enough calories. If there’s any time to do a “bulk”, it’s when you are first starting out. If you have any discipline at all then any fat gains you have are easily taken off without losing your strength. Most decry the milk thing, but nothing short of steroids is more effective. I once had a friend in my first enlistment in the Marines that weighed 165 no matter what he did, and he was 6’3”. He couldn’t even gain fat, and he tried. He ate tons of food of just about every kind, bags of cheetos, tubs of sugary weight gain powder, almost everything. I didn’t know anything about Starting Strength at that point, but I remembered how much milk my Dad used to drink when doing two-a-days in the heat, lifting weights, running and driving the sled at all hours of the day and night. I suggested he start drinking as much milk as he could. He gained 20 pounds in two months. He didn’t look fat either. He eventually quit the milk, and lost what he’d gained pretty quickly. If all you want is the Hollywood look, that can easily be achieved with little more than simple pushups and keeping your bodyfat under ten percent. Most people are walking around with what would have been considered a big fat gut a few decades ago, when Jim Belushi was a fat guy instead of being ripped in comparison to your average 20-something male wandering the aisles at your local Wal-Mart. Other concerns I hear are that “People coming off Rippetoe’s are significantly lacking in rear deltoid development,” and “I did low-bar squats and they made my butt bigger!” For one, people, especially bodybuilders, tend to forget that the frontal deltoids are naturally much larger and stronger than the rear delts, and this is both natural, and actually, balanced. Look at what motions significantly involve the rear delts and you will see they are not contributing much to anything you do. Take a very symmetrically developed bodybuilder with huge rear delts, and see how much he can do in front raises vs. any isolation exercise for the rear delts. I shouldn’t have to mention that bent laterals don’t count unless you are squaring them off against dumbbell flyes, though even with that comparison the anterior deltoid will win out, whether you take someone who lifts or someone who has never touched a weight. If you think having a muscular, er, posterior chain is a bad thing, then clearly you are unaware of the preferences of the majority of the females of the species, or you don’t appreciate the benefit of having your posterior chain as strong as it can possibly be. I can’t think of a group of muscles that will do more for your athletic ability in life’s demands or any sport that really matters. If all that fails, at least you will have something to sit on. Lest I be accused of being a Rippetoe fanboy, as anyone who actually supports a program is sure to be so calumnied, let me point out a few of the things I think could be improved. For one, it should have more pictures. Pictures of freakishly muscular people flexing and screaming into the camera, preferably with bleached hair and wearing uncomfortably small loincloths. I’m not sure what that has to do with an effective workout program, but almost all the other books have these photos, so Mark is clearly missing something here. It should come with a new pair of pants and a T-shirt, at least one size larger than you currently wear. Even though my waist actually shrunk the last time I did the program, when I got back from Afghanistan (I was eating plenty of fatty meat, milk, and protein shakes, but your meals are not exactly your own and the Afghan sun is apparently much closer to the earth in that country – that, or my hatred for it actually increased the ambient temperature) I had to buy size 36 pants, even though my waist was 32. I found this inconvenient and expensive, and I blame Rip’s program for that. I got strong enough to give myself a hernia lifting the back end of an admittedly small Toyota pickup free of some rocks. Not sure if it was when I lifted it while it was stuck in the river or when it was stuck on a hill, I heard a pop one time, and the other was certain and loud. I’m having a hard time remembering which was which, now that I think on it, those days kind of jumbled together. It’s worthwhile to note I had already lost some size by the time I returned and had to buy new pants in the story above. My thighs do get very muscular, very fast. My dad had to have some custom alterations for his wedding suit. Which was heinous. It was something like maroon dress pants and a plaid-ish brown and white jacket if I remember correctly. Hey, it was the 70s. I don’t dress much better, as I am told. I hate the way Rip points out faults on his youtube videos and how to correct them. This is going to come back to bite him someday, when someone’s self-esteem is seriously damaged, perhaps irreparably. And I remain upset that he turned down my last article recommending Trap Bar power cleans and Jefferson Lift high-pulls. I really think these will catch on. Colin Webster is a former Marine and White Feather Press Author, where he writes a very different kind of western. Colin blogs at Apocalypse Barbell, a site dedicated to building the strength to survive life situations and events of a catastrophic nature, and telling stories about his dad. Articles, 2013-03-19T04:40:03+00:00 http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/jim_steel_interviews_randy_white http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/jim_steel_interviews_randy_white#When:01:26:46Z The legendary Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle and linebacker Randy White is interviewed by Jim Steel.  We’re pretty sure that this is Randy’s first in-depth interview about his training.  Enjoy. Discuss Interviews, 2013-03-05T01:26:46+00:00