Iron Icons: John Kuc & Jim Williams, II

[Mark Rippetoe]

Excellent info. Thanks.

[djl236]

I knew John Kuc personally.

I grew up in Wilkes-Barre, PA (god help me). Kuc owned a donut shop two blocks from my childhood home so I had quite a few opportunities to pick his brain. I asked the guy many of the same questions you’re all asking here so I wanted to comment when I saw this article.

There’s confusion over what “his routine” was. Basically, the guy tried everything at one time or another just like everyone else does. The different routines people are posting are from different times in his career. It's misleading.

This is basically the gist of what he told me:

(His “Assisted” Routine)

Early on he made most of his gains by ramping up to heavy singles in the lifts once or twice a week. He’d do something like:

Monday - Bench, Curls
Tuesday - Squat, Row, Shrugs
Friday - Squat, Bench, Deadlift to maxes

He'd work up to the heaviest weight of the day using 10,8,6,4,2,1,1 or some variation thereof. He would do something like 3,3,,1,1,1 in the deadlift.

He didn’t like assistance work. He did experiment with box squats and rack pulls at certain times in his career but didn’t think they helped much.

I showed him some early Louie Simmons articles in PLUSA and he thought they were bullshit. He urged me to keep it simple.

He used simple linear cycles early on, dropping the weights back after a peak and working back up. He didn’t use percents, he just went by feel and added a bit week to week. Simple as that. (That JV Askem cycle is misleading. It makes it look like some sophisticated mathematics when there was none.)

That being said, Kuc was also very frank about his use of “currently outlawed ergogenic aids“ which I greatly appreciated as a young lifter.

He told me that the linear cycling only worked while he was using. He would come off cycle for a little bit after a meet, lighten the weights, and then gradually start back, increasing the dose as the weights got heavier. That's how me made most of his progress, by upping the dose.

He also force fed himself to get up to super heavy. He and Jim Williams would go out for banana splits after their heavy session every week. That was their “post workout smart bomb“.

He dropped from super heavy by eating around 2,200 calories a day and walking. He also got off the “supplements” for a while until his doctor gave him the OK. He said his lifts went to shit and he was miserable. He was also pissed that he lost so much hair. LOL

(His “Clean” Routine)

Once he started lifting in the ADFPA he had to change his training. He wasn’t able to progress in a linear fashion anymore, so he started doing smaller 4 week wave cycles. His theory was that dropping back to light weights (like 60%) as a “natural” is a waste of time, and that nattys need to back off and rest for a bit, but should keep the weights higher to maintain their strength.

He also started using sets of triples and fours instead of singles. He would have kept doing singles if he could have, but he burnt out too easily without the "supplements".

This is basically the approach Bob Gaynor outlines in his article. Bob used to run "Kuc's Fitness" (later the "Fitness Headquarters") and used to promote contests in the area. He and his wife Geri actually got me started in lifting. Good people.

(Other Crap)

Kuc hated deadlifts. He did them grudgingly and never liked training them. I shit you not.

He pulled 925 in training as a SHW.

He only got to train with Jim Williams ("Chimsey") once a week in Scranton. He loved doing assisted bench presses (forced reps) with Williams and thought it was the main contributor to his 600 bench.

The assistance work people list in his routines is basically bodybuilding work he threw in to keep up his physique when he dropped down from super heavy. He enjoyed bodybuilding and when I first met him (96) he was in his late 50’s and still had a massive baseball bicep (actually more or a cantaloupe bicep).

He seemed to be a bright individual but very low key. Someone would probably think he was shy or slow if they talked to him. Very much the “strong silent type”, though I know exactly what Mary Gallagher says when he refers to his “Scary” psych up. Everyone knows a nice guy who will rip your head off and shit down your throat if you piss them off. I got that gist from Kuc. Very introverted.

The most poignant thing I can think of about him is that none of his coworkers even knew what the man had accomplished. My neighbor worked as a waitress at his shop. When I told her he was one of the strongest men to walk the planet she looked at me like my head was on sideways. He never talked about it, no trophies at the shop, nothing. To her he was just “John”, a very humble nice guy. It would be like working for Michael Jordan and not knowing he ever played basketball.

I can also tell you all is that when Kuc quit powerlifting he was DONE with it. After a local YMCA meet I took Tony Succarotte (former IPF WR holder in the bench) to meet him. Tony remarked that Kuc should come back to power lifting as a master's lifter and asked him if he missed it at all. Kuc’s reply was a simple “No, not really”, and that was that.

Somewhere in the early 00's Kuc sold the donut shop and the last time I heard he was involved in a Dunkin' Donuts in Exeter, PA. Wherever he is I hope he's well.

It's a bittersweet world where Lance Armstrong can ride his wittle bicycle and become a multimillionare celebrity but guys like Kuc are left as faint memories on internet message boards.

(p.s. - Jim Williams was a PIMP. Literally. Hell of a nice guy as well.)

I'm from Scranton....still live there, God help me lol. Nice to see another local guy (or former local guy) on here.


I used to train in the same YMCA kuc and big Jim trained in years ago. It's in Dunmore, a little town next to Scranton (I'm actually born and raised from Dunmore). The YMCA sucks now and I train elsewhere.

And yes Chimsey, pronounced chime-see (big Jim's nickname, this is what everyone in Scranton knew him as) was a pimp. I remember seeing him up until he died in 2007 riding his jazzy wheelchair at the courthouse square in Scranton. He was a nice guy. Legs were shot in old age though, hence the jazzy.

I'm gonna have to go check out the kuc routines on that message board. Sounds like an interesting read.

[Callador]

Thanks for the info. I just wanted to clarify something about the routine I posted. The actual PLUSA article just listed the weights used during the cycle. JV showed the percentages based on what he pulled at that meet. So it isn't like it originally was a percentage based routine. He did it so we could see roughly what kind of percentages he was pulling.

[Corrie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kuc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_the_plumber

How fucking sad is that? Fuck.

[Meshuggah]

Thanks for sharing that Doc_Luc. I have always been a fan of John Kuc, he is one of the all time greats of Powerlifting.
My Powerlifting Bar is a John Kuc PA Power Bar that I bought from him many years ago. It is still going strong.

[Doc_Luk]

@Rip and Meshuggah - You're very welcome.

@Corrie - I'm going to update that Wikipedia. Give it a few days.

@Djl, - Oh man, a Dunmore boy? I'm very familiar with the Dunmore YMCA, used to do judo and lift there on occasion. I even got kicked out for doing clean and jerks. Fond memories. lol

For all the readers out there, Northeast PA's lifting community was very hardcore back in the day. There were a half dozen gyms with national level powerlifters and bodybuilders within a 45 minute drive of one another. Hell, even Frank Zane came out of there. There are no bike paths or commingled recycling in the Wyoming Valley, and even the women have huge brass balls. I still remember watching Paula Kovalchik, women's national record holder in the 104lb class, double a 355lb deadlift in training. She was over 40 years old at the time and never touched a syringe.

The Wilkes-Barre YMCA hosted numerous meets that drew many great lifters and even hosted a national championship or two. Their weight room in the basement near the boiler room and was little more than antique power racks, rust, and broken platforms. It was heaven. Back in the late 90's they went yuppie and sold all of the old powerlifting equipment, everything I loved, including an original York isometric power rack, a full set of globe dumbbells all the way to 100's and thousands of pounds of deep dish York plates. They replaced them CYBEX machines, rubberized shit dumbbells, and those goofy hexagonal plates with grip holes (that whizzing sound is Bob Hoffman rolling in his grave). For as hardcore a lifting community as that area had, in a few years in the late 90's it just died when Kuc and Gaynor got out of the game. Now there are only bits and pieces left (Steve Mann in Clarks Summit for one). I was lucky enough to catch the ass end of the dying whale it before it sank beneath the waves.

It is strange to be cynical and nostalgic at 32 years old? lol

If anyone ever wants to do some real research on Kuc (hint, hint, Marty Gallagher...) call up Rick at Rick's Gym in Exeter, PA. Kuc trained there for many, many years and Rick has some great info on him and his training.

(P.S. - Djl, if you're looking for a gym near Dunmore, you need to stop by King Joe's (www.kingjoesbarbellclub.com), one of the last great "old school" gyms in the area. King Joe is an awesome old SOB.)

[Calvo]

Some guy posting as "Ghost of John Kuc" put up a bunch of Kuc's training logs--preparing for the 1980 Worlds, I believe--over on Power and Bulk, although you need to create an account to find 'em. Simple, heavy, low reps, a little BB style assistance.

Well, lo and behold.

Also, Doc_Luk, that was awesome. (I guess the logs linked above would be the "assisted" training you mentioned.). Would love to hear more.