Double Ply

[Sumo]

Metal Ace briefs under a super centurion would be a pretty lethal combo - quite literally - thats a lot of suit all up you would need a lot of weight to break parallel

 

[Sherro]

So you think i should put the briefs under the super centurion?

You'd probably need a new super cent as the Ace briefs are big and bulky. Ace under Ace is the combination most guys in Metal gear use. It may take a while to break in and learn the grove but it will give you insane carryover.

 

[PTC]

On the shirt thing, I was watching a Mark Bell video & he was saying he does not know what he benches raw, In his opinion they are two different lifts.

Now, I have been training in my single ply for my next meet, Is it a different lift? No. Do you train it differently? Yes.

This may help explain why Minh is getting 75KG carry over on his gear (BTW I think that number in slightly exaggerated to try & sell more shirts )

Minh benched a pretty hard 90kg x 3 at PTC last week. He said his best raw bench is 100kg. I have no reason to doubt him, everyone that watched his 90kg x 3 agreed. I wrote a newsletter about it.

November 2010 he made 162.5kg in a PA comp, then missed 167.5kg. So thats 62.5kg right there. He tells me he is now good for 175kg.

Seeing how his bench was 122.5kg at Nats in June, then 162.5kg in November, a mere 5 months later, I have no reason to doubt his 175kg claim.

His arch is insane. His Katana wont allow him to touch without his arch.

 

[GHOSTrun]

I honestly don't see the point in lifting when the shirt or suit does all the work for you. It's like pulling your dick on the internet and claiming you lift 'xxx'kg. You clearly didn't lift the weight, the gear did. Why does this even exist?

 

[PTC]

Once you realise its a different style of lifting Mike, its easier to accept.

Minh has mastered a new skill. He has not gotten any stronger. In fact, I asked him if he had any interest in getting strong, he just flat out replied no.

His interest, his sport, is in lifting more weight, best done by improving your leverages, and moving the weight over a shorter distance.

We have raw comps that cater to a different type of lifter.

Both can and do exist. The skill amazes me with equipped, the strength in raw.

 

[GHOSTrun]

I can just picture the next evolution of the monolift....it lifts the weight for you too lol

/lame joke is lame i know i know

 

[jonnie_sfw]

The lads are spot on the money in saying that using equipment is a skill....especially a bench shirt which is the hardest to master....you can't just throw on a shirt and expect to lift xxkgs more....you have to be spot on the money with technique (which again is different to raw) because if you miss the sweet spot especially with a Super Kat you are either going to wear the bar on your head, wear the bar on your gut or possibly get choked out by the shirt (yes as in passout) and wear the bar where ever it lands.

Those who say the equipment does the lifting for you, should go try on a squat suit and try it out for themselves.

 

[daiki]

And hence why raw lifting is gaining more interest and support.
When I first started Powerlifting it was to become stronger on the three lifts and over time it seems that more emphasis has been placed upon the use of equipment. I am all for improving one's leverages through technique, but when a lifter can gain a 75% increase from the equipment, then I believe its really time to reconsider the use of such equipment. The bench shirts were originally introduced as supportive measure to protect the lifter from injury, but in recent times, it seems the equipment manufactures have moved well away from this to the determent of the sport.

 

[catastrophic]

Those who say the equipment does the lifting for you, should go try on a squat suit and try it out for themselves.

I proved this point at my mates weight lifting club, One of the guys stated 'Your not squatting that, the suit is' So I put the said lifter in my suit, straps down he could not get much past his walk out

 

[Totalstrength]

You'd probably need a new super cent as the Ace briefs are big and bulky. Ace under Ace is the combination most guys in Metal gear use. It may take a while to break in and learn the grove but it will give you insane carryover.

That sounds unreal! My super is tight enough as it is I'm gonna go Ace Ace

 

[GHOSTrun]

I proved this point at my mates weight lifting club, One of the guys stated 'Your not squatting that, the suit is' So I put the said lifter in my suit, straps down he could not get much past his walk out

You proved the point because he'd never practiced in it? How about you prove the point by taking the suit off and squatting the same weight.. didn't think so.

Apologies for my attitude I just think it's a joke. What are you lifting for if you have no interest in getting stronger? Getting 'strong' in PL gear has zero carryover to anything real world other than those lifts in those conditions. Pointless?

 

[GHOSTrun]

The lads are spot on the money in saying that using equipment is a skill

So is catching a fly with chopsticks. What does it mean though?

 

[jonnie_sfw]

So is catching a fly with chopsticks. What does it mean though?

.....it depends.....does the fly have 2, 4 or 6 chopsticks?

 

[Sumo]

Damn I hate those flies with chopsticks - so much more annoying than the regular ones

 

[titan au]

There are many parameters in Powerlifting as a Sport
Not just Strength
Flexibility, intelligence, mindset, nutrition to name a few
and of course equipment
Equipment is for competition
Raw Powerlifting as a Sport carries all the same parameters excluding equipment and with the exclusion of equipment you weight the various parameters differently

for example Flexibility plays a bigger part in Equipped Benches than it does a Raw Bench, where pure Strength from the Chest is weighted higher for a Raw bench then equipped

I don't jump into a suit or a shirt just to find out how much I can lift and it is not an ego thing, it is just for competition where everyone is on even ground and compete within limitations of the set rules.

 

[PTC]

Well said Minh

In the past we had no choices, now we do, raw.

Both can easily co exist

 

[titan au]

Minh benched a pretty hard 90kg x 3 at PTC last week. He said his best raw bench is 100kg. I have no reason to doubt him, everyone that watched his 90kg x 3 agreed. I wrote a newsletter about it.

November 2010 he made 162.5kg in a PA comp, then missed 167.5kg. So thats 62.5kg right there. He tells me he is now good for 175kg.

Seeing how his bench was 122.5kg at Nats in June, then 162.5kg in November, a mere 5 months later, I have no reason to doubt his 175kg claim.

His arch is insane. His Katana wont allow him to touch without his arch.

I have no doubt that my Raw bench would be up around 115-120 if I trained for it perhaps even more. When I was training for a Raw bench I could do 102.5 for 6 sets of 3
and probably 110 with a pause, maybe 107.5
that was when I hit the 122.5kg in a shirt with really no expertise.

After nationals I concentrated solely on equipped benching in a super katana -a shirt I had a year earlier said was impossible to use under IPF rules.

Things I needed to work on were:

Flexibility: in PA you have to have your feet flat on the ground when benching. this means one of two things. feet need to go forward or you have to have flexible hip flexors. I didn't like the first option so I stretched out my hip flexors 2 times a day for 3 months. Why the hip flexor and not the back? your back flexibility is restricted by how much you are willing to compress or extend your spine. Hip Flexibilty allows you to tilt your hips down towards the bench allowing more leg drive. Also the hip angle has to inversely correlate to the shoulder/trap angle in order to maintain tightness and not lose any energy stored on the eccentric phase (ie you want to use as much of the energy gained on the way down and channel it back up - efficient Stretch Shortening Cycle). It's all in the hips!

CNS: before any of this I never handled more than 122.5kg. So I had to prime my CNS to handle it. Reverse bands were good at the start, maxed out at 180 but I found they messed around with my line too much and as Jonnie pointed out before, the margin for error on a super K is 0.0000001%.
I ended up just doing partials with a perfect line and no boards, chains or bands.

Muscle recruitment: when I was training for the Raw bench it was all about speed from the stretch shortening cycle. Equipped is about control and maximum recruitment. With this I mean Lats, Tris, glutes, hammies, quads etc... of course this is important on a Raw bench too, but to a lesser extent and sequence of activation doesn't matter so much as your body will naturally activate the stronger ones.

SetUp: I work on this every day. I set my feet and hips first, sit upright straddling the bench, retract and depress my shoulder bladed then arch back while maintaining those mentioned positions. Grab the bar with a suppinated or underhand grip and dig my traps into the bench. Here I fine tune the angles of my traps to match my hips and my sure my feet a flat and flexing my calves as I dig into the ground and the bench.

LiftOut: With a shirt and arch its very hard to lift out without moving the shirt and/or your retracted and depress shoulders and also screws up the setup.

Pre Lift: Maintaining tightness, curl hamstrings, push knees out, shoulders beck and depressed, everything else tight

Pull down: Rows and chins with retracted scalps heavy weights 2-3 times a week. if you can't hold the retraction against the shirt you are going to tear your rotator cuff, a few times I got slack I would pull or strain my supra or infra or both.

Technique: i'll get back to this later because lunch time is over and sorry if I rambled on and all this doesn't make any sense

but this was just to point out that it is not easy to lift equipped, anyone that thinks they can get 75% just by chucking on a shirt
I will give them $100

 

[daiki]

PTC, you are correct and now there is a choice and it seems that lifters are moving towards raw lifting.

 

[Sumo]

Awesome information Minh and dedication to learning - how is the quad holding up?

 

[titan au]

quad is about 60%-70% i think did 125 for 3 sets of 5 last night easy
no pain

get a bit of pain on the bench still though

i didn't realise I needed 10 posts to reply to pms