Monday is 70’s Big Females day, presenting:
Growing Up Oly
by Cori Safe

Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to grow up in a strong, loving, and quintessential “70’s Big” community since birth. While we did not define it as 70’s Big, looking back I think we can name it as such. This is a story about growing up in the strength world.

One of my earliest memories from childhood is from my play pen. I remember sitting there watching my mom pound away at the stationary bicycle day in and day out. Obviously working on her six pack and getting ready for her next bodybuilding competition. I remember squats. Big squats. Powerlifting style with large men grunting, steel plates and bars banging against the floor and the racks. I remember my dad kicking a hole through the gym wall after a heavy squat. My brother and I would scoot our big wheels through our garage gym while friends of my parents would do endless pullups, deadlifts, and bicep curls. Yes, I grew up in a powerlifting and bodybuilding gym.

Luckily, my father Scott Safe (founder of Safe USA and coach of Team Cannon Weightlifting) learned from years of dealing with his own back pain and agony that competitive powerlifting was probably not the best way to train for sport or health. He had a different idea for his children. My brother and I were going to be Olympic lifters. And the plan was that we would be really, really freaking amazing at sports. Not to sound arrogant, but it worked.




As my father held an inventory for his weightlifting supply store, my brother and I would have free reign to the bars and plates in the shop after school. I remember playing with the “kid bar” around the age of 9 and thinking how empowering it was to power snatch. I absolutely loved how loud and annoying I could be. My father would say, “Okay that looks good, now try to take that snatch into the hole!” I would practice this afterschool until the age of ten when I decided that it was time for me to do my first weightlifting meet; The Minnesota LWC Open at a YWCA in Minneapolis. I was ready to show off my 20kg snatch with perfect technique, all the way into the hole. I stepped on the platform and completely forgot about the squat. My dad had told me prior to the meet that if I did not squat the weight, the judges would give me red lights. Of course, that is not correct, but he wanted me to lift correctly and I did not know any better. After my first snatch which I powered right up I said, “Hey dad, they gave it to me and I didn’t even have to squat!” He laughed and told me that I was correct and that he was just trying to get me to do it better than the other girls. Then, of course, I squat snatched from that moment on. Must be better than the other girls!

Speaking of, I remember showing up at meets and thinking that I needed to show these other girls who was the better lifter. I would take the bar during warm ups and be as loud as possible. When I would catch the bar, I would smack my feet down like it was serious business. (I realize that you should not be jumping and stomping, but you have to realize that my thinking as a teen was not about having perfect technique.) It always worked. Girls would stare at me, filled with fear and intimidation. Win!

Luckily, we always had a large competitive weightlifting team coached by my father. One of my biggest influences was my brother Nate and his circle of friends, all of which were excellent lifters. Not many girls wanted to lift with me, but the guys would always let me play. I would watch my brother finish his pull and explosively land the heaviest weights with ease. I would play copycat. I will credit having good technique to years of watching my brother and his friends and learning from them. It also proves how important it is to have good training partners and people to look up to.

After my brother graduated high school, he moved to Fargo to play football for North Dakota State University. He used his strength and power to become one of the best college left tackles in the nation. After he left, I struggled with my training. I didn’t want to lift and I did not feel that training was fun or inspiring anymore. I still ended up competing nationally and doing the Olympic trials for weightlifting in 2004, but I never felt the same about lifting. During the Olympic trials I acquired a bad case of Mono and was out for months.

I tried lifting again in college. We even started a team at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. There were a handful of us training together and we took a team to the Collegiate Nationals in Reno. I coached the team and lifted. Even still, my drive for weightlifting was dwindling. I was mentally burned out. So, I retired.
I took a few years off and I spent my weightlifting hiatus doing cardiotard classes like TurboKick, Zumba, and riding endless hours on the Elliptical machine trying to be skinny. Time to face the truth. My quads and shoulders are big. And strong. They are not meant to be compared to the twig fairy. They are 70’s Big. And beautiful.

Mentally, I was ready to lift again. I was ready to embrace the fact that I was born to lift. I was living in Chicago and wanted to lift and try this thing called CrossFit. A good friend of mine, Casey Burgener, suggested I check out Windy City CrossFit because they have an “Oly” program. GREAT! I can try out CrossFit and if I fail….I can just go back to lifting! While I will admit that I will probably never win a CrossFit championship, it has been great to push myself in new ways that I probably wouldn’t have done on my own. It is also nice to learn about other lifts besides the snatch and clean and jerk. And this thing called the pull up – moving my body around a bar rather than moving the bar around my body! What a concept! Anyway, I am not poking fun at CrossFit, but it is nice to have a balance between CrossFit and Oly lifting. It has helped me define my weaknesses (arms/shoulders/”core”) and strengthening these can only help my Olympic lifting.


And here we are today. Ellee and I both lift in Chicago and we are proud of our 70’s Big Female Asses! I feel good knowing that strength is appreciated in these parts. Again, I will say that I am lucky to be in a community full of strong females (and males) who believe that strength is more important that being skinny. I am lucky to have been in these types of communities my entire life.

I hope you enjoyed some of my stories from growing up Oly. I would like to thank my parents, brother, and friends who have molded me into the person that I am today. Thank you. 70’s Big Females – thank YOU for being YOU! Now go lift some heavy weights!

Love,
Cori

Getting stronger is a process that demands that you get smarter by learning from mistakes. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? You just go to the gym, have a “workout”, get strong, occasionally mess up, but fix it and keep “working out”…right?

No, sir. The process of training is grueling. It can be fun when training with friends, pumping loud music, having a grand ol’ time. But for most of us, we don’t get that luxury. We’re in a gym, a garage, or a “fitness adventure”…alone with our thoughts. There isn’t anyone there to encourage crushing the first set of squats or to hit a sixth snatch in a row. Each set, each rep requires that you make a decision: “Do I give it my all here?” Doing it on every rep isn’t easy.

It would be pretty easy to not try. It would be easy to slack on some reps, to not bounce the hell out of a squat or not finish the pull on your cleans. Sure, it’d be easy. It’d be so easy to quit. It’s much easier to quit than do something hard, so why bother?

Fuck. That. Never avoid doing something that’s hard. Avoiding “hard” makes you a coward, and you can never experience or learn anything by being a coward. By convincing yourself to do something that’s hard when you don’t want to, you won’t just grow physically. You display a quality of strength that correlates and resonates far beyond the barbell. By overcoming the difficult, that process sets you up for success. Your thoughts formulate your feelings, your feelings compose your emotions, your emotions are exhibited through your actions, and your actions define who you are. By structuring your thoughts to tackle difficult challenges, to strive towards success regardless of the obstacle, you formulate into a better person. You manifest into 70’s Big.

Happy PR Friday (post PR’s to comments)

TSC Results

View it webpage style HERE.



Thanks to all the participants and congratulations to MaceJunas (Men’s Elite winner), tommcadam (Men’s open winner), and mthornell (Women’s Open winner). Also congratulations to Men’s Elite runner up Antigen — who organized this 70’s Big TSC and compiled all the results — for tying an all-time TSC record of 24 pull-ups with a 10kg load. I believe Antigen was at an organized TSC event, so he had some strict judging.

Weightlifting, Squats

Glenn Pendlay joined the 70’s Big Chat the other night for longer than he probably wanted to. He had some interesting comments on “macro weightlifting” — or things that concern the sport as a whole and how we compare with the rest of the world. One topic in particular was this notion that American weightlifting coaches don’t focus on strength. Glenn kindly pointed out in this post that it isn’t the case. Max Aita aimed to do 5×5 with 260kg. That’s fucking 572 lbs. Glenn points out that “he doesn’t quite make it, but ends up doing 27 total reps in 7 total sets, rep counts were 4,5,4,4,4,3,3.” The video gets fucking intense, so watch all the way through.



As an aside, here’s Donny Shankle push-pressing 130kg for 11 reps from behind the neck. That’s 286 pounds. More on this topic in a future podcast with Glenn.

Still adding links below to the recaps
Some of the 70’s Big crew competed in the USAPL Texas State Meet again this year. Mike competed at USAPL Military Nationals a couple of weeks before, so he handled Brent, Alex (his brother), and Chris at the meet. He wanted to do a write up for each portion, and they are linked below.

The Ride Down
The ride from Wichita Falls to San Antonio was arguably eventful, but more so because of the lack of organization. Mike tells an amusing story of the ride.

Brent
Brent ended squatting with a meet PR (and matching a gym PR) of 210kg (463 lbs) weighing around 162. He missed his third bench, and hit all three deadlifts finishing at 200kg (441 lbs) on the last one (he was unimpressed). I want to point out that the dickhead did clean and jerks two days before the meet at 265 pounds…with iron plates. He clearly didn’t make any attempt to peak for this meet.


Alex
This was Alex’s first meet, and came out 8/9 with a 242.5kg (533 lbs) squat, an easy 165kg (363 lbs) bench, and an easy 227.5kg (500 lbs) deadlift (Mike probably held him back, wanting him to pull 500 for the first time).


Chris
Chris had an awesome meet. We’ve talked a lot on tweaking his program and peaking his training for this meet, and we also talked extensively on what attempts to make on each lift. The only hiccup was missing the third attempt bench by 2.5kg because he barely missed it, but that is more so attributed to the not-great meet conditions (they had 90 lifters and one platform, so Alex and Chris didn’t start lifting until late afternoon and finished close to 9 at night). Overall, I think we did a very good job of implementing an advanced Texas Method style program, tapered it well, and chose the attempts well.

He went 8/9, squatted an overall PR of 292.5kg (644 lbs), missed his last bench but meet PR’d with 165kg (363 lbs) on the second attempt, and deadlifted an overall PR of 300kg (661 lbs). All raw and drug-free of course. He then destroyed several villages.


Good job to Mike for handling the three lifters — it’s never an easy thing. Mike was apparently more tired after doing that then when he actually lifts. I’ll make sure and be there for all of them at nationals later this year. Oh, and thanks to Mike for the write ups and I think he and Alex made the vids.

It’s no secret that bacon was a gift from the immortals. Zeus, Cronus’ son, showed the Lifterians the great secret of bacon several years after Priam’s Troy fell. He said onto the Lifterians, “Go forth and eat bacon, for it is thy life source. And when you shall sacrifice to us, the mighty immortals, may you do it with delicious crispy bacon lest your prayers go irritatingly ignored. I bow my head to you now, Lifterians, binding our pact for eternity.” And so it was that the unfathomable was fathomable, and bacon was upon our green lands.



Let it be known that all bits of bacon should be consumed, lest it insult mighty, terrible Zeus. Do not dispose of bacon grease; Apollo himself, the shall rain his flurry of arrows upon the backs of such wasteful fools. Cook thine eggs in the grease of bacon for superior results.

Rumors have been heard in crowded streets that bacon was actually the offspring of powerful Zeus and loving Aphrodite. This explains why bacon has such a powerful, passionate, and loving attraction.

Now fire up the grill, the stove, the oven, and griddle,
Light the match, grab the pan, and place the bacon in the middle.
Let it snap, let it pop, let the aromas climb
For all of your friends will know that it is bacon time.

********

Let’s play a game. I’ll give you a place or an event, and you tell me if it’s appropriate for bacon consumption.

[poll id=”28″]

[poll id=”29″]

[poll id=”30″]

[poll id=”31″]

[poll id=”32″]

[poll id=”33″]

[poll id=”34″]

If you answered “Yes” to all of the questions above, then you are permitted, by Cronus’ son, to lead a fruitful life. If you answered no…may the gods have mercy on you, your land, and your people.
Also, a bacon bra (sorta NSFW…if you work in a church).