Does anyone think the new Rogue Mono Stand is a terrible idea?

[Cody]

Ok, you made me go check. What's your opinion on these safeties versus the pull-pin style?

Swing ins/quick adjust/flip down/drop ins are the bee's knees. That rack has other things going that I don't love, but the safeties are my favorite style.

[idlehands]

School me. Why do you prefer swing ins? My brief experience with them resulted in a slight dislike.

the swing/in drop/in on the rogue rm-4 are a bear to change. course i think the thing is not quite square.

[Cody]

School me. Why do you prefer swing ins? My brief experience with them resulted in a slight dislike.

Sure. First, not every design is identical, and some bands do things better than others. The L-bracket style drop-ins are the best, IMO.

This style of safety is gentle on your bar, won't mess up your knurl, and is less likely to bend a bar when used. This is due to the flat shape and the use of UHMW lining. The L-bracket ones will even rock inside the slot so that if one side of a bar lands before the other, it rotates so that the bar is still landing on a flat surface. They will also never bend themselves, like sabers so often do. This class of safety is very quick to adjust irrespective of the rack's depth, with individual designs making a big impact here. Finally, I find them to be aesthetically pleasing.

[idlehands]

Sure. First, not every design is identical, and some bands do things better than others. The L-bracket style drop-ins are the best, IMO.

This style of safety is gentle on your bar, won't mess up your knurl, and is less likely to bend a bar when used. This is due to the flat shape and the use of UHMW lining. The L-bracket ones will even rock inside the slot so that if one side of a bar lands before the other, it rotates so that the bar is still landing on a flat surface. They will also never bend themselves, like sabers so often do. This class of safety is very quick to adjust irrespective of the rack's depth, with individual designs making a big impact here. Finally, I find them to be aesthetically pleasing.

Also rack pulls in them vs pin pipe or sabers seem nicer

[Tom Campitelli]

My position is that neither the walkout or the unrack is an essential part of their respective lifts, and eliminating them both increases safety and allows more focus to be placed on the actual lift, the part that counts. Apparently, Rip doesn't.

I, not surprisingly, agree with Rip on this. I don't think there are any data to show that walking out a squat is less safe than taking it out of a monolift. In fact, the converse could potentially be true. If injury potential in the squat scales upward with increasing load, then walking it out probably encourages people to pick weights they can better handle. Despite Matt Bickford's perhaps insensitive tone, the monolift was indeed developed for geared powerlifting. When your knees are wrapped, you are wearing a squat suit, and you are attempting to squat a weight that is beyond your capabilities to lift without those pieces of equipment, walking it out becomes a near impossibility. You are at risk of getting pancaked by the bar. Mark Bell's video is instructive here. Watch how they lower the bar on to his traps to help him get set up and note how he loses control of the weight and suffers a knee injury.



If Mark had to walk the weight out would the same thing have happened? We cannot say for sure, but perhaps not. It is likely he would have had to choose a lower weight, one that he could control. I do not agree that walking the weight out is inherently less safe. The argument to the contrary is probably more compelling. If you can walk the bar out, the chances that you can successfully squat it are higher.

Having to walk the weight out and displaying control is an (admittedly small) display of athleticism in a sport that is almost entirely focused on one aspect of human physical performance – force production. Watch Bell's video again. Then watch this:



Both men are squatting near the same weight. Christansen is wearing a single ply suit, but the gear is similar. Which one displays better control of the weight, let alone gets proper depth? Walking it out, even by just a step, demonstrates a degree of athleticism that a monolift removes from the contest. Not only do I think there is no safety benefit, using a monolift removes an element of coordination and visual interest from a sport that is already pretty damn dull to watch. Christansen walks up to the bar and dominates it. Bell gets an assist getting under the bar from the operators of the monolift. To be fair, I have seen this done for other lifters, too. The monolift kind of looks silly and, for lack of a better description, it feels wrong. The squats in these videos are not comparable. They are different movements. The walk out imposes an element beyond knee and hip flexion and extension. It requires control and coordination. Whether you care about that or not is a matter of taste. Christansen's squat has fewer asterisks next to it.

With respect to the idea of work in the squat, it is obvious that Rip is not using the strict physics definition of work. If that were the case, then, yes, vertical displacement is the only factor with which we are concerned. However, if we really care about physics, then the work done on the bar in a successfully done squat is precisely 0 Joules since the bar ends up in the same place it began. Walking it out requires more force production since you are countering the force of gravity as you manipulate your skeletal segments during the walk. Does this take weight off the bar? Yes. If you can articulate why you should walk around with the bar between each rep on a set of five, I would be interested in hearing it. I do think you should be able to walk it in and out between the start and the finish of the set for the reasons I detailed above.

If you take away the monolift, do people squat less weight? I would argue "yes." Does the monolift make the squatting a given weight easier? Once again, the answer is probably "yes." In a sport, if a key component of that sport gets easier thanks to a piece of equipment, controversy will always ensue. It is not only being hidebound to tradition, but it is also an attempt to make performances comparable. Gear continues to improve. Is it reasonable to say some pieces of gear change the sport in a way that makes it something different and therefore less interesting or enjoyable? Probably and that is the crux of the argument.

So, there you go. At least someone made an attempt to address your questions. Fire away.

[Tom Campitelli]

I should clarify. I am not suggesting you won't fail a walked out squat. I, too, have failed many a walked out squat. I am suggesting that walking it out is no more dangerous than a monolift. It may be less dangerous since it forces you to use a weight that you can control for a walk out.

I don't have much of an opinion on the bench. However, since there is a risk of dropping the bar on your face, getting a lift off seems like a necessary compromise.

[hollismb]

If Mark had to walk the weight out would the same thing have happened? We cannot say for sure, but perhaps not.

I dunno, man, would the girl in the sundress still be there?

[Cody]

My phone died out, so I'll type a more articulated response later, but I welcome you to work on what you've said.

First, the context of my question was about a guy training alone in the garage, not competition. I really don't care about competition at all. On the bench, that means a power rack with safeties, and no liftoff or spotter. For the squat, I will agree that triple ply super wide squats are stupid. That's also not what I'm talking about. Form won't change between a j-hook and the monolift hooks in this context. This also means I'm not concerned about a "display of athleticism," just getting stronger in the most efficient manner.

That's all I've got time for at the moment, but I would love if you clarified your stance within this context, since most of what you typed is about competing.

[idlehands]

I dunno, man, would the girl in the sundress still be there?

Didn't mark bell say he gained too much weight for that competition and wasn't able to recover his breath between attempts. He got too fat man !

And didn't Chris duffin say his "narrow Scottish" hips made his walk outs way sketchy and bouncy" between training with walkouts and training in a monolift he felt better on his hips when not walking out.

If I had a rack at home I'd get a monolift attachment cause why not. Toys are fun !

[Les Hahn]

I think most raw lifters can walk the weight out if they wanted to. I know I can walk out a lot more weight than I can squat, as can every gym bro you see quarter or 1/8 squat a shit ton of weight. For geared lifting, I think a really wide stance would be hard to get into without the monolift. Geared lifting is now super fringe, so I don't think it should be a big concern. To address the safety issue in the event of a catastrophic failure (knee blows out etc.) the monolift is much safer. The safety straps catch the load, vs a competition squat rack means you might eat it, unless you have top notch spotters.

The comparison of the two vids really isn't fair, since they aren't even the same class of lifters. :-)