Author Archives: Justin

More Reasons For Wearing A Belt

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In case some of you noobs haven’t seen it, I’ve talked extensively as to why you should wear a belt (part 1 and part 2).

To review, when you lift, you take a big breath. This large breath increases your intra-abdominal and thoracic pressure which acts as a pneumatic brace on the anterior portion of your spine. In other words, it helps support the spine, and because it has more support, it has more strength. This process is called the Vasalva Maneuver. The Vasalva Maneuver was something that Antonia Maria Vasalva created to test patency in the eustachian tubes of the ear. It was later used on U-boats, and has since been used by fighter pilots so that they can pull G’s as they shoot down bandits and destroy things. It’s also one of those things embedded in mammalian DNA; take a breath and hold it to exert lots of force.

Grunting while lifting achieves the same thing. The grunting provides a guttural expulsion of air through the throat against a closed glottis. Usually it is done through the sticking point, or the point where the most force is being applied because it temporarily increases the torso pressure because of the forced air against the closed glottis. But grunting should only be done on lifts over 400 pounds so that you don’t look like a jackass.

A properly tightened belt will augment all of this pressure build up. The tightness of the belt essentially decreases the volume of the lower torso just a little bit. We all know, or should know, that when the volume is decreased with the same amount of air in the container, the pressure will increase. But, more importantly than the change in volume is that the tightness forces and allows the abdominal muscles to contract harder into the belt. More contracting by the abdominal muscles with a smaller container means more pressure, thus more support, thus more strength. This is good for getting stronger, and as I’ve said before, if someone aims to get strong and doesn’t wear a belt, they are a fucking idiot.

Now, this whole “belt wearing” process has both acute and chronic affects. It irritates the shit out of me how fanboys around the internet will ask, “How many pounds/kilos will be added to my lifts if I wear a belt?” It doesn’t work quite like that. Yes, the acute affect of the belt is more pressure which leads to a stronger torso in that bout of lifting, but wearing a belt must be learned, and the belt is more useful for it’s chronic affect. Since the belt aids in strengthening the trunk, the squat/press/deadlift will be increased by wearing it over time. It will be increased so much that your new strength attained by wearing the belt will be higher than the strength you would have gained without the belt. Yes, you will get more strong more efficiently when wearing a belt.

It also has a chronic affect on the abdominals. Since they are contracting harder while tightened in a belt, they will increase in strength faster by doing so. The stronger abdominals make a stronger back as well as a stronger lift. This is also why it would be optimal to train with belts whenever possible. If you can’t wear a thick 13mm belt while deadlifting, find one that you can use. The picture below shows Chris deadlifting 625 last year wearing just a velcro belt. He has since switched to a thicker belt.

Chris deadlifts some time last year wearing a velcro belt



I wear a velcro belt when I clean and jerk heavy, but when I front squat I wear the same belt I back squat in because I want more tightness on my abdominals for the training adaptation. So, don’t think in terms of acute use out of wearing belts, because the chronic adaptation of wearing one over time while getting your abdominals stronger is the most useful reason to wear it.

Breakin in that stiff belt from 70s Big on Vimeo.

Matthias Steiner

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This is a post by my friend, Brent. One of his hobbies is to get on YouTube and watch videos of Olympic weightlifting, and he has done so for years (along with eating alone at restaurants, loving techno music, and getting chastised at work for having sweet hair). He has a pretty good knowledge of current weightlifters, and I’ve invited him to weigh in on well known lifters throughout the world.
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Matthias Steiner started competing as an Olympic weightlifter in 1995 for Austria. He was a relatively 70s big athlete from the outset, and rapidly grew into a competitive 105k lifter, and would eventually produce a 405k total at the 2004 Olympics, which ranked him 7th in what was a fairly tight competition. During his career with the Austrian Weightlifting Federation he competed in both the 105k and 105k+ categories.

By 2005, Steiner was unable to keep his bodyweight under the 105k limit and permanently moved to the superheavy category. It was also around this time that he and the Austrian Weightlifting Federation had a falling out, and he applied for citizenship in Germany. He wouldn’t compete for three years while his change in citizenship was pending.

Steiner reappeared on the international scene in 2008, making a strong statement when he won the Beijing Pre-Olympic Tournament with a 423k total. People were already speaking of the promise he held when he made another fantastic improvement in his showing at the 2008 European Championships. He was the only 105k+ lifter to snatch 200k, and made a lifetime PR clean and jerk at 246k in a solid 6 for 6 performance. Only Viktor Scerbatihs bested him by a kilo in total.

It was clear that Steiner would be the dark horse in the 2008 Olympic Games. He would face tough competition against Scerbatihs and the Russian colossus Evegny Chigishev. Steiner missed a crucial third attempt snatch and finished with 203k going into the clean and jerk, trailing behind Scerbatihs and Chigisehv in fourth place. Scerbatihs missed his second clean and jerk at 244k, but Steiner missed his first attempt clean and jerk at 246k before coming back on his second to take 248. Chigishev was successful at 240, 247, and 250k, which, along with his 210k snatch, gave him 460 for the lead.

Scerbatihs and Steiner would determine the medal rankings with their last attempts on the clean and jerk. To take first place, they would both need to take unreasonably large jumps in their attempts, but this was the fucking Olympics. Nobody was playing games, they had all quit school because of recess.

Scerbatihs would make a valiant attempt at 257, but was not able to pull through.

Steiner knew what he needed to do; he needed 461 to win, and he called for 258k on the bar. This would be a 10k increase from his second attempt, and a huge lifetime PR. The clean pinned him for a moment, but he powered out of the hole and set himself for the jerk. As he stuck the shit out of the jerk, the auditorium, which had held their silence during his effort, exploded with cheers and applause for he had produced one of the biggest upsets in weightlifting history.


T-shirts Up

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“Get a tan, buddy!”

You won’t find the above quote in any book, movie, or TV show (or if you can, it isn’t what I’m referring to). I was walking with my lady friend with my shirt off on Sunday, and this extremely cool guy shouted it from his car as he was driving by. It took me a moment to realize what he said, but I glanced over and I’m 74% sure that he was wearing a wife beater and was thoroughly tanned. I, on the other hand, was thoroughly white and hairy.

What’s really important here is that I’m sure he was thoroughly satisfied at what he had done, and he did this at my expense (it was more than likely the most satisfying experience of his day). Such is the story of my life. I aim to satisfy (from an intellectual and entertainment perspective, you pervert) the readers of this site at my own expense. I just hope you’re getting your satisfaction. If you aren’t, maybe you can mosey on over to the 70’s Big Store because the new 70’s Big Throwback T-shirt is now available for purchase.

An excerpt:
Twisted steel and sex appeal are rampant with this vintage shirt that is a head on collision between the style of old and new. The strong guy on the front says, “Yeah, I barbell train,” and his better half says, “Yeah, squatting gives me a solid ass.” This shirt is guaranteed to turn some heads, and those heads will say, “Yeah, that guy (gal) is ready to party.”



Supplies are limited with the first printing because…uh, I don’t have a lot of money. I will more than likely have to make a new order in the next day or so. Also, let it be known that this is a new method of shipping the shirts, and there will undoubtedly be some kinks to work out. If you have any questions or concerns, go to the Store page and post to the comments. We’ll get to them ASAP.

There will be updates for other services and the store starting in the morning and throughout the day.

Non-Sanctioned Meet Recap

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The following is a post by AC. This past weekend he handles some lifters in a non-sanctioned powerlifting meet. I talked to him throughout the meet, and there were some things that occurred that ticked him off pretty well. Here goes…
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This past weekend, the college I currently attend held its annual “Show of Strength”. It is a school-run event directed by employees of the university’s rec center. I had a few people I coach (for free) lifting in the meet so I decided to go and help them. This was the school’s 5th annual meet and you would think they are pretty proficient at running a competition by now, right? Wrong . . . Wrong. The meet director had no prior experience in powerlifting and the head judges were incompetent as well. I’ll get to that soon. I had a bad taste in my mouth to begin with because of the people running the show, but during the rules briefing my suspicions of a poorly run meet were revealed to true.

Right off the start this 150 pound young male puts on his microphone to welcome us to the “5th annual show of strength”. He goes on about how the each lifter will have three tests to complete. Yes, tests. Not lifts. He calls each lift a test, rarely calling them the lift that they actually are. This was really annoying (Note by Justin: I’ll vouch for how annoyed AC was. I was on the phone with him during this briefing, and he was livid about the usage of goofy terminology). After that one of the head judges proceeds to call the lifters over to one side of the bleachers for the rules briefing. He goes on for a few minutes on why we should listen to him in the first place; he has experience in “strength and conditioning”, worked with some college football team, and has helped the L.A. Angels. This obviously means he knows lots about powerlifting. The briefing goes on for a few more minutes and consisted of three demos on how to do each lift and what to listen for with the commands.

Now in my experience you do not show up to a powerlifting meet not knowing how to squat, bench, and deadlift so it wouldn’t make sense that the lifts had to be described and taught to the lifters. I can understand explaining the commands, but not getting (crappy) tips on how to actually perform the lifts.

The warm-ups start and fifteen or so lifters have ten minutes to warm up. It’s ok though; there are three squat racks and a smith machine available to warm up on. Yes, they were told to use the smith machine to warm-up with. The silliness kept increasing.

The squatting started, so far so good. The bars were loaded in ascending order just like any other meet. There were few enough people to were all the weight classes went in one flight. My friend Brittney, who I coach, crushed all three of her attempts on squats, so that was pretty epic. When my other friends were lifting later in the flight I noticed some inaccurate judging. The more the “Tests” went on the more the judging degraded. Some squats were two or three inches high and they were getting the thumbs up. Just about no one, besides the people I coach, listened to all of the commands. The “Rack” command apparently became an option. Even the judge who gave the rack command was accepting attempts when lifters didn’t listen to him. The guy who gives the fucking commands! Can you believe that?

The biggest squat was 460 from a guy who I overheard weigh in at 199. His was a high bar squat that was 3 inches above parallel and he didn’t wait for the rack command, but he got two enthusiastic thumbs ups from both judges. My friend Dylan squatted just fine, but Justin S. got called for a “double-bounce” on his first attempt. I guess it was invisible to my eyes. He nailed his second and third attempt. Justin also got held at the top of the squat for about 7 seconds because the judge’s thoughts were lost (probably thinking about how good his biceps look), so I had to yell to remind this fool to give the rack command. He eventually did.

I am not going to go into too much detail on the bench press. My friend Taylor made a prediction that only the people we had coached would actually follow any of the commands. Actually, one other guy actually followed the rules, but just one. The judges gave thumbs up for people that didn’t wait and the spotters kept taking the bar before the judge gave the signal. There was a multitude of things that went wrong on bench. The silliness was accepted by the inexperienced staff.

Justin S. actually follows commands on this bench attempt



The deadlift…oh jeez. First, the judge only gave an auditory signal of down at the top of the lift (and did not give a hand signal) which is almost impossible to hear when you are actually deadlifting a max attempt. You were also allowed to drop the bar from your hands. So everyone who deadlifted “a lot of weight” got to drop the bar like a bunch of goons. Some of the ugliest lifting was occurring at this point in the meet with horribly rounded backs. Brittney, Dylan, and Justin all PR’d on their pulls which was awesome. I’m so proud of them, AND they all lowered the bar back down as well. Gustavo (who posts here) was also there and I believe he had some PR’s as well. Dylan pulled 575, and then on his second attempt they mis-loaded the bar which caused him to miss the lift. This was disappointing. There was another guy who pulled 575 at 199, and it was pretty impressive.

All in all this meet was horribly run, the judging was poor, and most of all I was really hungry (Note by Justin: This means AC was growly).

–AC
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Instead of looking at this as a big bashing article, look at it as a warning to any competitions you may find yourself in. If you’ve been following the site, you know that we really preach on putting yourself on the line in some form of competition. However, there are federations that have a sanctioned set of rules for a reason. As with licenses in certifications, it guarantees some baseline competence with the quality of the product. In this case, a sanctioned meet from a credible organization dictates how the lifts will be judged, and some baseline requirements for how the meet is run. Imagine if you were beaten by the lifter who was allowed to ignore the judges’ commands and squat three inches high — you’d be pretty pissed if incompetence prevented you from winning. Also, the more experienced the meet director is, the more smooth the meet will run. Be cognizant of these little details so that you can get the best out of your competitive spirit.

PR Friday

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“If it’s a severed head I’m going to be very upset.”

PR Friday boys and girls. Post your weights lifted, competitions attended, pants splitted and victory dances performed to the comments. We certainly had lots of PR’s for emotional outbreaks in the comments this week.

The 2010 National Master’s Weightlifting Championships is this weekend in Rego Park, New York. I’d like to wish my friend, Dr. Lon Kilgore, a good luck. He has been competing in Olympic weightlifting since he was 11 years old will be competing this weekend in the 85 kg class at 52 years old. You can see the final schedule here as well as the start list (including names and info on the lifters) here (Kilgore is lifting in the 8th session). More Masters’ Weightlifting info can be found at their home page.

Also, I just realized that USAW recently released the 2010 National Championships Entry Form with the tentative schedule. Check it out if you want to see how a big meet with multiple sessions will be set up, along with all of the legal hoopla that goes into submitting an entry for one of these (who knew you weren’t allow to dope blood?).

The new t-shirts should be finishing up later today or on Monday, and I will give updates as I receive the information.

In the mean time, here is a pretty sweet weightlifting video that has the hair, the style, the drama, and some big lifts:


Noon edit:

Word of the Day: AC Jump