November is a magical month. Men across the world will forgo the confusing art of shaving and develop impressive and intense facial hair. Some may call it “No Shave November”. We have called it Novemburly. Many know it as Movember. Either way, you’re participating.

Movember started in 1999 and has developed into a month-long fundraiser for men’s health, particularly cancer. Cancer is a pestilent adversary and 70’s Big is joining the fight to kick it in the BALLS. Combine fighting and facial hair, and we’re there. However, this time it’s to raise money.

There are two ways you can participate: either create a profile and join the 70’s Big Fundraising team on us.movember.com, or donate to the team or one of our members. Either way, click here and get started (the team is on the right).
Edit: Even if you only donate one doll-hair, that will help. Various team members will be doing amusing things for donations, so keep an eye out.



Contest Prizes
Whoever raises the most money on the 70’s Big Movember Team will receive $50 bucks, a 70’s Big t-shirt, and their choice of one of my e-books or FIT. That’s right — raise the most money for a badass cause, grow some facial hair, AND get cash and 70’s Big gear. I’M GOING TO PAY YOU TO GROW FACIAL HAIR, SO GET STARTED.

Do I need to grow a mustache?
Movember emphasizes shaving at the beginning of the month and growing a mustache. Since Jacob Cloud and I already have sweet facial hair, we’re certainly not going to SHAVE it. Instead, grow whatever you want. If you have a beard, show it off. If you don’t, then either grow a ‘stache or don’t shave all month. Pick one, join the fundraising team, and LET’S FUCKING KILL CANCER.

And now a word from co-captain Jacob Cloud and his cat Weezer:


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In this podcast I talk with Dr. Michael Hartman, a college professor, weightlifting coach, sport scientist, and new father. We also collaborated with Dr. Lon Kilgore to create a strength training, endurance, and fitness resource called FIT (I’ve been using the strength chapter to plan advanced lifting programs).

Hartman as Ditka says LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

We talk a little bit about FIT, but also talk about weightlifting in the Pan American Games last week and the upcoming weightlifting World Championships occurring next week in Paris. There’s some time spent on talking about Kendrick Farris, how he did at Pan Ams, his jerk, and when Hartman met him as a school age lifter. Then we get into various questions about weightlifting including hitting a solid rack position in the snatch, push-pressing, rack position in the push-press and jerk, and possibly doing an old-time weightlifting meet with the clean and press, snatch, and clean and jerk. This podcast flows very well and has a lot of good information in it.

Podcast-10-Hartman-Q&A
(left click for stream, right click and “save as” to download)
1:18:13 long

There’s still something goofy happening with iTunes despite my podcast submission. Will let you know when it’s working.

Feel free to ask questions about Dr. Hartman, the podcast, or weightlifting here. Good questions will be used for Friday’s Q&A, and you can ask them to Dr. Hartman too. You can find other 70’s Big podcasts (including more weightlifting material with Glenn Pendlay) HERE.

I should have made a contest or something intelligible, but here are some pics of our readers from Halloween. Debate which is the best in the comments. If you want to submit your pic, then do it on the Facebook Fan Page.

Hydro, who I met in Monterey

Jeremy C.

Cloud, as The Dude with Jesus

More of The Dude with company

Brian G. as...himself?

Unknown

This post was written by my pal AJ. I got to hang out with him a bit at USAPL Raw Nationals in Scranton earlier this year. His biceps are pretty decent. On a similar note, he coaches strength training and powerlifting in south Florida. This post is about one of his female lifters, (who he refers to as) “Big Cat”, who came to him with some hyper mobility issues yet has progressed very well in her 10 months of lifting.

Training the Big Cat
by AJ Loreto, The Lion Tamer

The Big Cat came into Just Lift to ‘tighten up’. Not in this kind of way, but in the ‘my joints are fucked up from BJJ and need to stop being so mobile’ kind of way. I’ve never really heard of this, but whatever we’re Just Lift Powerlifting Team so we’ll take in anyone who wants to be there. She wanted to lift, so I threw her at the weights and Starting Strength. By the way, I’m a “Starting Strength Coach”, the seminar was fucking great, and now I’m a good coach.

Big Cat already wanted to be in the gym, so there wasn’t much need for extra motivation. In her first round of programming she did the good old 3 sets of 5 reps, with little drama aside from some tricky shoulder joints requiring some extra warming up and an occasional rub to loosen up. She high bar squatted early on because of her shoulders and lack of traps and rear delts to hold the bar, but now she’s got a shelf that would make the Shrug Thug proud and no longer has issues holding the bar low.

We eventually got her to squat consistently without collapsing at the bottom. At first she would take some repetitions as “opportunities” to either go too deep or forget what she was doing and literally drop to the floor requiring some interesting spotting efforts and removing the bar from her back completely (we eventually got the hint and used side spotters). Her inability to recover from troublesome squat reps got better and now the Big Cat is capable of actually grinding reps out without going limp.

Big Cat Deadlifts 135kg June 18th 2011 USAPL local meet from Tony on Vimeo.

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Happy PR Friday ladies and gents. Post your training updates and PRs. If you have any good Halloween costumes, post them here and we can put them up on Monday. Oh, and speaking of Halloween…stay safe.

Shankle takes bronze, details below

theturgid asks

Hi Justin, quick TM question, do you have experience with someone doing back to back bench or press weeks (i.e. not alternating) for a few weeks while chasing a milestone PR? Is this alright, or not advisable due to recovery concerns? Thanks

Dear theturgid,

I always knew the term “turgid” had a negative connotation, but I didn’t realize it meant “swollen and distended or congested”. Sounds like what happens when you drink milk. Concerning the question, I’ve had lifters bench in consecutive weeks when getting ready for powerlifting meets. “Chasing a PR” would be a similar thing without the meet, so yes, that’s okay. I would still have you press on that Light Day — whenever I have strong guys decrease pressing frequency as they ready for a meet, their shoulders get sore (more on this in the Texas Method Part 2 e-book coming in a week or so).

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