Today I am going to rip off a little old man rant on Something I Just Don’t Understand, but maybe you do.
This makes no sense to me.
What the eff are you rambling about old man?
The use of bars at Powerlifting meets.
Nope.
No coaching wisdom here, just a rant.
To me, Powerlifting is about lifting as much weight as you possibly can.
And doing it as safely as you can.
The thing I don’t understand is two fold.
1. Not using Monolifts in all federations.
Yes, I get that the “purists” say you have to walk the weight out and that is 100% cool.
But why can’t we walk the weight out and be safe?
Using a Mono with safety straps will save your ass.
I’ve seen it.
And you can walk the weight out from a mono if the rules require it.
Using a mono also makes the meet run quicker.
You can adjust one a lot faster than the squat stands.
I also understand they are expensive and not the easiest thing to move around.
But to me it is worth it when there is 700, 800, 900 pounds or more on the bar and it comes crashing down. The straps save the lifter if the spotters miss, which they do sometimes.
Nope, not blaming the spotters, sometimes you just can’t save it. Although, I do question the giant clamshell style of spotting……..
And the expense is of no concern to me.
Look at it like this:
Let’s say your meet costs $75 to enter (a bargain these days) and there are 150 lifters.
Not a huge number, I’ve been to countless meets with many more lifters than that.
$75 x 150=$11,250 in the meet directors’ pocket before expenses.
The cost of a few lifts can be recouped pretty quickly over the course of a meet directors time in the game. And the chance that someone will be saved from a catastrophic injury is worth the cost from my perspective.
2. Using the same bar for all three lifts.
I really don’t get this.
Why not use a high quality squat bar for squats?
They are bigger and thicker and whip a lot less than a standard power bar with big weight on it.
Look at Dennis Cornelius’s IPF 378 kg squat. That bar is pretty whippy.
Or, Ray Williams’s 438 kg IPF squat-it took hm a good 3 seconds just for the bar to stop whipping up and down after he walked it out before he could settle into the weight. And at the top after the lift it was up and down like crazy.
Even lighter lifters like John Haack’s Squat of 298 kg bounced a LOT at lockout.
A squat bar does not do this anywhere close to the level of a power bar, therefore making it SAFER for the lifter to control the weight.
More control leads to less risk.
Seems like a no brainer to me.
Bench presses are the same.
Watch a few videos of really explosive lifters. You’ll see the bar whip up and down. Not to the same extent as a squat but it moves.
I’ve been in the room with 800+ pound benchers exploding the bar off the chest to lockout and watched it whip at lockout.
A badass bench bar eliminates this.
AND they are extra long on the sleeves so the spotters have something to grab if it goes South.
I am leaving Deadlift bars out of the discussion because there is too much interent crap on it being a cheater bar.
I get it. You can pull more on a deadlift bar.
Wait.
Lets throw it in the discussion.
Why use a Deadlift bar besides the fact that you can lift more?
No knurling on the center means less blood on the bar.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather that we all keep our bodily fluids to ourselves.
Using specialty bars and mono’s at meets only makes sense to me.
I don’t expect the federations to change their rules because a guy in Malden thinks some rules are dumb.
This is just a rant and food for thought I figured I’d write about after a few recent discussions on this subject.
Agree/disagree?
Leave a comment.
Keep it classy.
This is not an indictment of any federation. Just something I don’t understand.
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Vincere vel mori
C.J. Murphy
April 4, 2019
1 Comment