Some of you woke up yesterday and were appalled that there wasn’t a post. I was completely spent after the 12 hours of coaching on Sunday along with being exhausted by interacting with my friends (Gant knows). I constantly was trying to put them in or keep them in a positive state of mind for lifting.
I’m not impressed with my coaching from the weekend and think I could have done a better job. I’m not going to get into it today because I just spent the day traveling from Denver to Panama City, but you can look at some of the updates that I posted from most of the weekend on Twitter.
Overall, things went pretty well. Brent went 7/9 with PR’s on all his lifts, AC won second overall in the 220lb Open class, Mike went 7/8 and had big PR’s on all his lifts as well as winning 5th in the 242lb Open category, and Chris won second overall in the 275lb Junior category. Good, tough lifting out of those four.
We did a bit of filming throughout the weekend (not as much so that there weren’t any distractions from Sunday’s lifting), and AC will be cut together an excellent short film. He’s already created a sweet teaser:
My group of friends that are involved in this website are competing at USAPL Raw Nationals in Denver this weekend. The five us will be flying there tomorrow from different locations. I’ll be flying from Panama City, Florida where I recently moved to, AC will be flying out of Georgia (he goes to school at Georgia Southern and his family lives outside of Atlanta, and Chris, Mike and Brent will be flying out of Dallas (Mike and Chris are coming from Wichita Falls and Brent lives north of Dallas). There shouldn’t be any confusion as to where any of us live now.
Raw lifting in the USAPL is relatively new, and in order to qualify for nationals you simply have to total as a raw lifter in a USAPL meet. USAPL is prevalent for its “low end gear” competitions since it resides under the International Powerlifting Federation’s (IPF) ruling. None of the aforementioned lifters are interested in competing in gear, and it isn’t something I’m interested in doing or coaching either. We may look for a new federation in the near future, but as of right now we’re just focusing on this weekend.
Belligerent Brent will be competing in the 82.5 kg class and will lift at 9:00 AM on Saturday. He’s the only one of us that will be lifting on Saturday. I imagine there won’t be any hi-jinks on Saturday since AC (100kg, 9:00 AM), Mike and Chris (110kg and 125kg, both at 2:00 PM) all lift on Sunday. I’ll be coaching them in their sessions, and it will be a lot more easy going than the Texas State Meet was (results and write up).
Don’t fret, though; we’ll have cameras rolling and AC will be directing. There were some folks that didn’t know I was in Peoria for USA Weightlifting Senior Nationals and would have come had I mentioned it, so you guys are welcome to attend and cheer them on. All of my friends are young and pretty strong and should do decently at the meet.
And since I’m announcing things, I’ll direct your attention to the schedule for the 70’s Big Workshops on the Services page. AC and I will road trip through California in early August. There are two workshops during the weekend of August 7th near L.A. and Monterey, and we’ll help out with some coaching while we’re there. We don’t have a workshop scheduled the weekend of the 14th, so if anyone wants to host us we’ll be in the bay area.
Later in the month we’ll be in south Florida at Fort Myers, then I’ll be headed up to western Canada in Kelowna, BC in the last weekend of the month. We’ll also have some stuff going on in Atlanta as early as September, and I’ll announce that as soon as we finalize it.
We’re also going to start Live Webcast Presentations that are pertinent to both Workshop material and reader requests. The audience will be able to ask questions via chat throughout the presentation as well as a Q&A section at the end. It’s too early to tell if speedos will make an appearance.
On top of the webcast theme, we’re going to have Chat Room Q&A which will allow users to ask us questions on whatever; training, programming, advice on bullies, how to become a bully, etc. If it gets popular, we’ll have themes for the chats and perhaps special guests. The Live Webcast Presentations and Chat Room Q&A will give the readers who live out of driving/sailing distance to interact and get some help.
Lastly, I’m going to start doing Form Check Help. No, I can’t coach you without being in person and I may not even be able to make an impact, but I’ve periodically helped people in all of the barbell lifts by giving them a helpful cue online. You’ll send in a video, I’ll analyze it and then we’ll chat on the phone about it for a bit. If your squat is a fucking train wreck, then I’m not going to charge you and will try and find you a Starting Strength coach to help you out. These little form checks will be very cheap ($10 and under depending on how many videos) and hopefully it will help those of you that train on your own.
Note: You can still send in videos to the site or my e-mail, but I won’t give it much attention and will only give you a brief response. You won’t get the whole “phone call” and “descriptive explanation” thing. Unless I like you.
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PR Friday
Go forth and record your Personal Beasts in the comments throughout the weekend. I hope to hear about your gained weight, lifted weight, children tossed, clothing ripped, and cannonballs performed. I also want to congratulate all the people that have written in and told me about their first lifting competition and how much they enjoyed it. I really like hearing about that stuff — it makes me proud of you guys…even if you are a pain in the ass 85% of the time. I’ll be posting about these exploits soon.
Take care and enjoy your weekend.
AC has been training with Taylor, a good friend that I used to pal around with when I was still in school. Taylor has pretty impressive pressing strength and bear-like features. I have heard stories of him cuddling a grizzly in its den because he “needed a soft warm body in those winter months”. I wasn’t shocked when he told me this.
A-way is his fiance and is in the top three funniest girls I know. She has surprising ferocity in her miniature stature, especially regarding her bear hug (it helps with Taylor). They are both the feature of another original AC film, and AC makes a deadlifting appearance at the end. Sweet song too.
In early June, Brent hit a PR Snatch at the WFAC in the midst of his powerlifting training.
Here’s a vid of Chris pulling 600 back in May (I think). He doesn’t get pumped at all, and that’s a rarity for him. I thought it was more impressive because he just walks up to the bar and pulls it (trust me, I know what he’s like when he’s amped).
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PR Friday. Post any personal bests you may have hit this week into the comments.
My friend Mike Hom (you’ll remember him from this video montage) has a goal of deadlifting 405×20. This may be daunting for most lifters, but Hom only weighs 190. But when you remember that he has pulled 505×5, it seems reasonable. Well, he’s almost there.
Note the shirt as he pulls 405×16.
That was a PR for Mike, and he wants to get 20 reps by September. If you’ve got any Personal Records then bust them out in the comments on this glorious PR Friday.
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Here is a very cool video of David Rigert mostly preparing for a 210kg clean and jerk (he was a 90kg lifter).
Note: There’ll be a new Saturday post that announces the “Comment of the Week” and some other kind of nonsense.
AC has Heracles-esque strength, and I’ve known this for a while. This is why I befriended him long ago; so that I could keep him close as a friend in preparation of when he was a foe. Secretly I know that he is my nemesis (don’t tell AC this), and one day we will battle to the death…
But in the mean time we are best friends, and as Brent would say, “His strength is ill.” He recently pressed 245 for a triple at a body weight of 216. Yeah. I know. Edit: Sorry for the quality, it’s a cell phone vid.
AC and Brent were talking about this video (sheeeeeit, everybody is talking about it), and on AC’s last rep, he yells “YEAH KENT!” to the guy holding the camera. I don’t think this Kent actually “exists”, but Brent thought this was pretty cool (I don’t know why). Being the chivalrous nemesis guy that he is, AC said he’d dedicate his next bench workout to Brent, which was to be 365 for a triple. This pleased Brent, because he is easily pleased by such things, so he decided to dedicate one of his own sets to AC (AKA Ace McGonague). Brent squats 410×5 (he did three sets at this weight) at a body weight around 177.
You’ll notice my other besties with testies, Chris and Mike spotting Brent in the video (we’ve come full circle). To complete this roundhouse kick, here is AC’s final contribution, the video of him squatting 525×2 and benching 365×3 (with a surprise appearance by Taylor, another one of my friends).
So, as you can see, I have proved many points today. I have proved that my friends are stronger than your friends. I have proved that one day, I will destroy Arin W. C********. I have proved that my friends are more amusing than yours. And I also proved that 70’s Big is the way of the chainsawed warrior. Need proof?
QED.
On a side note, doesn’t AC look way more awesome (obligatory no homo because I know I’d get comments on it) with longer hair? Vote on it, for this is the poll to end all polls.
