This is Marshall "Creepshow" Johnson from P-Town BB, the strongest hyphenated gym in the world! This is my first installment of The Sour Project.
My first question comes from Ericka. Ericka asks:
Just curious how it is you can have so much pride posting videos of people you know performing half squats? While I can accept geared lifting having a place, I have a hard time being a cheerleader for someone who praises half squats and barely-there benches...especially one that gets bent out of shape when they aren't recognized by their arm tattoo...
Thank you for your question, Ericka. Let’s start with the squats comment. Now assuming from your comment, "I can accept geared lifting as having a place," I can only assume that you are a raw lifter. Fine by me, people can move some amazing weight raw! But since you are a raw lifter you may not know some of the problems that come along with geared training and lifting. I will do my best to explain.
I don't remember a particular log where I said “I loved high squats!” but I have said stranger things so who knows if a "high squats rule" log slipped in there. When training in gear, a great number of things can go wrong. We usually wear gear that fits us at a particular weight. Any number of things can shift our weight from day to day. Too much sodium, too much water, eating like shit for a week, all these things can cause our gear to become too tight. When our gear is too tight it can restrict our normal squat range of motion (leading to high squats).
But one thing that most people fail to understand is that these are training squats, not competition squats. My team and I are very well known for hitting deep squats in competition. If you would like I could re-post our meet vids. I would hate for people to think we squat high based on our training vids. The only lift that matters is on the platform. I appreciate your concern that some of our high training squats might put our meets in jeopardy, but we always hit our depth in meets. So thank you! 🙂
Pride − as far as the pride goes, I don't have pride in half squats. I have pride in my team and all the hard work they put in for me and for themselves every single day. We are a very close-knit team at P-Town. As a powerlifter, it is extremely hard to get exposure. As a lifter myself, coming from parts unknown, it was very hard to get my name and face out into the powerlifting scene. No one helped me. I had to do it myself. No one in powerlifting is ever going to promote you. You have to promote yourself. Now that I am with elitefts™, I have the resources at my disposal to promote my fellow lifters. And you can bet I am going to do that every chance I get. I think it is very important to promote the up-and-coming lifters out there that work their butts off. It wouldn't feel right if I just used this opportunity to promote myself.
Barely-there benches − whew, you’re full of good questions, I should split this into two parts or something. In the phrase "barely there benches", pay close attention to the part there.
“It doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winning is winning.”
−Vin Diesel (he's so dreamy)
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, barely there. The whole point of powerlifting is to take a weight from point A to point B, and back to point A. There is nothing in the rule books, (well not in UPA at least, I might have to read the APF's rule book)… anyway there's nothing that says you need to move the weight a certain speed or with a certain velocity. I wish you would have asked me this sooner. I hate seeing lifters confused. You see you can count those lifts that you barely lock out. It doesn't have to be a smoke show for it to count. Man, your PRs are gonna come rolling in now that you know that.
And finally the infamous arm tattoo caper of the mid-2012s. I have a running joke that has been going with some of my teammates. A few months back, my right arm was on the elitefts main page. I felt like a superstar! Finally, my 15 minutes of fame had arrived! I started cutting off just the right sleeve of my shirt just so people would know it was me.
So weeks had gone by right, and no one noticed! I know right? So, I asked my good friend Scott Nutter why nobody had recognized my rise to celebrity status and he replied, “Because your a douche if you think that your arm being on a website is gonna make you famous.” It shot me back for a second. I was crushed until I realized what the problem was. It was so simple! No one recognized me because my ear wasn't in it too! So I hugged Scott and thanked him for helping me see the real picture and I went on with my day.
Ericka I thank you for your question. All I can really say is that I have a lot of pride in myself and my team. We work hard, and we always hit squat depth in meets. Thank you.
Any other questions that anyone has for me please feel free to send them to me 🙂