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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The 2011 Pan American Games are in full swing and 70’s Big has been covering some of the weightlifting sessions on the Facebook Fan Page. There’s usually some decent stuff going on at the fan page, but this is an instance where we were essentially posting results of the sessions as they were happening. If you can’t see Facebook, then you can always follow on Twitter too.

I didn’t know the exact times of the lifting because the Pan Am website makes it difficult to navigate to the next day’s scheduling. In any case, today is the last day of lifting, and the schedule is as follows:

– 1:00 PM – Men’s 105kg (featuring American Donnie Shankle)
– 3:00 PM – Women’s 75+ (featuring Americans Sarah Robles and Chioma Amaechi)
– 5:00 PM – Men’s 105+ (featuring American Pat Mendes)

Guadalajara is in the Central time zone, yet I think the’s times are in Eastern time. Be on the lookout for the sessions (if anyone can confirm the time zone, then let me know).

Two time Olympian Chad Vaughn finished with a 326kg total to take bronze in the 77kg class.
Video of his heaviest successful lifts

Yesterday Kendrick Farris had a decent day taking bronze in the 85kg category. There was some kind of issue either with the display of the meet clock on the back, or his coaches not keeping an eye on it. In any case, he had to run out for his third attempt snatch. Kendrick came out and missed the jerk on his opener at 190kg, then hit 191kg on the second attempt. It looks like he’s back to doing his hybrid split/squat hybrid jerk instead of the squat jerk. He came out for the third attempt when his name was on the monitor, and we saw the judge tell him the bar wasn’t ready and to go back in the warm-up room. It’s possible that another lifter’s coaches changed their weight at the last second to dick Kendrick over, but either way his coaching team should have had better situation awareness. There was less than ten seconds when he ran from the curtain and he ended up getting his hands on the bar with one second left, and only clean pulled a deadlift. Despite these goofs, he still made bronze.
Video of some of the 85kg lifters, second lift is Kendrick’s 191kg cj

Kendrick hits 191kg on his second attempt

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