This is a list of people already on the 70’s Big Movember Team who are yet to raise any doll hairs:

Will Cook, Wayne Reeder, Ryan Buck, Ryan Berube, Pete Townley, Neil Sater, Luke Smith, Kevin Diaz, Justin Coons, Jeremy Shepard, Jay Stadtfeld and Jake Golovchuk (my homies, c’mon!), J.T. Matherly, Iman Crawford, Foster Scott Devine, Eli Weber, David Sharp, David Hagrety, Daniel Villava, Craig Kilgo, BJ Fox, Bill Clark, Ben Urich, Andrew Swisher, and Aamir Syed.

Gentlemen, if you do your part in raising some doll hairs, it will help 70’s Big reach its goal of $5,000. I challenge each one of you to raise $100.

Women Can Join the Fundraising Team
This isn’t solely a guys-only thing. Women, you can join the 70’s Big Movember Team and help raise money as well. No, you don’t need a friggin’ mustache and I prefer that you don’t have facial hair. If you’re a fan of dicks, cocks, or penises (or the utility thereof), then help us raise money for the cause. This won’t be the first 70’s Big fundraiser, so we’ll scratch your back (although most of us supported breast cancer awareness). I’m sure the few women who join the team will undoubtedly be better at this fundraising stuff than the majority of guys on the team.
Edit: What I mean by this is that women can create a profile just like the guys have. I believe the site calls it being a “MoSista” whereas guys are “MoBros”. You then could join the team like anyone else, and then have people donate to you specifically. When you are a part of the team, that total would go to the team as well. And you could win the money/book/t-shirt prize too.

What Do you Want
Do you want silly stuff? I’ve got silly stuff for you. Here’s a video of me hitting a mob. There’s no relevance whatsoever, other than I do it with a mustache, but maybe it will give you an idea of the lengths we’re willing to go to raise money. Or something.



Lift-a-thons?
Patrick Stroup, Jacob Cloud, and I have already stated that we’re willing to do some kind of lift-a-thon. Jacob does some deadlifts in THIS VIDEO, and Stroup is going to do squats and yell whatever obscenities that you submit with your donation. Instead, I’ll do clean and jerks. I’m thinking that for every $50 raised to the team from this point on (current total is $2,683, we’ll round it to 2,700 to keep it even). If you want a phrase shouted with the weight overhead, then include that in your donation (regardless of the person you donate it to). I’m sure Stroup and Cloud will join back in the fun for lift-a-thons. It’s your chance to kill us.

14 Days of Movember Left
We only have two weeks. In the first two weeks we raised a bit over $2,500, so the goal is to raise $5,000. I’m killing my dignity (see video above) and willing to do up to fifty reps on the clean and jerk. Let’s get it done.

I didn’t watch most of the Men’s weightlifting. While the lighter weight classes are impressive, I’m just not that interested in watching the smaller guys. I don’t understand why there’s even a 56k class, but the fact that this lightest weight class lifts about the same as me doesn’t help my self-esteem. Besides, the Chinese took gold all those classes. In fact, the damn Chinese had 7 of the top 3 spots in the 56, 62, 69, and 77 weight classes (7 of 12 spots combined). The only close gold battle seems to be in the 62k class, where gold and silver finished with 321 and 320 respectively. The next closest was the 77k class which was separated by 3 kilos, and then the other classes at least had a 5kg discrepancy between gold and silver.

I didn’t watch the 85k class either, and I make not apology. The best total in the 77k class would have placed 4th in the 85 class. The best snatch in the 85s (173) was only 3k more than the best in the 77s (170). Same thing with the clean and jerk, but a 4k difference (209 to 205), and that puts the best total was within 7k. Here’s the 85k clean and jerk session (English TV version).

This post will be full of pics and vids, so… Continue reading →

Last week the World Weightlifting Championships occurred and they were very entertaining. The women were pretty impressive; the 75kg class was lifting about what I currently lift. I was a pube away from quitting right there. If you’re a guy, take 80% of your body weight, match that up with the women’s class and observe what they are lifting. If you can’t lift that, then…look man, I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t…I just can’t.

I don’t have any vids of the 75 session itself, but it included Lidia Valentin, who is…a favorite of this site? Here’s a video from the 2009 World Championships.

In other news, Julia Rohde is one of those bulky weightlifters who causes women to flee from the sport. The 53kg German lifter finished in 14th place with 85/106, yet was 3rd overall at the European Championships a few weeks earlier. Here’s her 102kg opener at the Europe Championships.


Here are some of the final clean and jerks in the 69kg class. The only women sessions I watched were 69 and 75, and both were impressive. The Chinese lifter who takes 140 for her opener hits a beautiful jerk that drives her very low on her final attempt (I screen capped it on the Fan Page album in case you missed it).


Here are the snatches from that session (in case you’re new, snatch occurs before cj). The best snatch in this class was 118 by Russia’s Oxana Slivenko and she also tied the best cj with 148. Those are some impressive numbers. That 266 total is almost the qualifying total for the 94kg class for the American Open. The best 75kg class lifter finished with 130/163=293 which is about what I could lift. Yikes. A Chinese 75+ lifter hit a 182 clean and jerk, which is just fucking scary. She finished with a 328 total.

There will be more information on the men’s results tomorrow. Thanks to Brian Smith for collecting some info for this post.

Veteran’s Day is a holiday that is formerly called Armistice Day that commemorates the armistice between the Allies and Germany in World War I. It took effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. In the Commonwealth it’s known as Remembrance Day to remember those that have died in the line of duty. In the United States it honors all military veterans.



There are many different types of jobs that military servicemen can hold, but the common theme among them is sacrifice. The infantryman sacrifices for long months in the most barren areas of the world. He sacrifices years of his life in combat zones and sacrifices bodily harm — some more so than others. Some are hit by flak, some are blown up, some are shot. Some are medevaced and some are patched up and step outside the wire again because they can’t bear the thought of letting their friends down. He sacrifices his emotion as he leaves the combat and steps back into civilization. Many sacrifice their ability to un-see their friends falling apart and killed in front of them. Others wish that it were them instead and live with the guilt that they survived and others didn’t.

The medic, the corpsman, the nurse sacrifices daily to keep friends and strangers alive. They may live with the horror of losing someone in their care, whether the victim could have been saved or not. The maintainer works on aircraft, vehicles, and other pieces of equipment that others rely on. They pull extended duty to make the impossible happen whether at home or deployed. They keep the world functioning for pilots and drivers. They provide covering fire as door gunners, they ensure the safety of their cargo, whether it’s human or supplies. They sacrifice back-breaking hours and efforts to assist those in the direct action, often finding themselves in the thick of it.

The special operations units engage in dangerous missions, putting their lives at risk daily for recognition that they will never receive. The things that they accomplish are hardly televised, they will never receive thanks, and often their job isn’t known or understood by a civilian. And they wouldn’t want it any other way.

Above all, each soldier, Marine, sailor, and airman sacrifices freedom. They are held to higher standards, meticulous laws and orders. They are taken from their families and often miss their children being born or growing up. They cannot travel on a whim and are underpaid. They lose relationships, break their bodies, and struggle with their memories. They know their country will never fully pay them back for everything that they’ve sacrificed. They lose the freedoms and liberties that a civilian takes for granted, but in the end…they, above all, earn that freedom.

Some veterans still find it odd to be thanked for what they do, but they should know that the thanks is there.

It’s also PR Friday. Post training updates or PRs to comments. Weight is irrelevant — you don’t have to be strong as everyone else to post here, just work hard. What is your least favorite lift to do?
Follow the jump for the Q&A (coming in a few minutes). Continue reading →

Konstantinovs took a hiatus from posting videos on YouTube, yet he seems to be back with a couple of non deadlifting videos. I had read that he was going to go up a weight class and he certainly looks bigger. Check out this pretty simple 551 bench.



The curious thing isn’t that he’s speaking English, it’s that he’s using the slingshot. It’s curious because Konstantinovs is a raw lifter (and known for his deadlift if you’re a noob). I’ve seen Kelly Starrett talk about using the slingshot as well, and he even used it for an excellent “shoulder flexion with external rotation” mob.

Continue reading →