Weights and Plates Podcast - #52 - Intro to Strength Sports, and Why Training Isn't Competition

Episode Date: May 6, 2023

For people new to barbell training, it's not uncommon to hear the process of strength training referred to as "powerlifting," or even "weightlifting." And while yes, we are lifting weights, that is not the same thing as weightlifting -- which is the sport of Olympic weightlifting, a barbell sport involving the snatch and clean and jerk. Likewise, while strength training involves the squat, bench press, and deadlift (and press), powerlifting is actually a sport in which the squat, bench, and deadlift are performed for a single rep under the rules and judgment of a federation.   So, if you're unfamiliar with the strength sports of powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting, today's episode explains how these sports work, and why strength training is a very different thing from competition -- even if they look the same to casual bystander!   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com

Welcome to the Weights in Place podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Yo, what's going on, man? Not much, man. You and I are going to a meet this week. That's right. Yeah. Not for ourselves. For other people that we coach. Yeah. We will be descending upon the Mecca Wichita Falls Athletic Club in Wichita Falls, Texas this weekend for the 2023 Spring Strength Lifting. Is it the classic or the challenge? Well, let me see it's either so they either do the spring

rip is a man of being precise with words so or the fall challenge it's usually like there's a spring and a fall meet and that's one or the other but uh classic that's what i always called it okay so okay so the spring classic so i think they do the fall challenge in the spring classic. So this will be the spring classic. Yeah, so I know you're taking one of your lifters, right? Or you're going to be handling one of your lifters there. I have five of my online clients that will be attending this meet, which is pretty exciting. There are two of those clients that I've actually never met in person. We've only worked together online. So we will be meeting each other in person for the first time on Saturday.

why don't I have that kind of luck? I was like, I got three lifters off from selling out, but pretty much every meet before the one I hosted there. So I hosted one at Wichita Falls for those of you who don't know last year was fun, but I did not sell it out, but all the other ones before, and now this one sold out. So last year was just a weird year. A lot of people got sick at the beginning of the year too. It seemed, yeah, it seems like there's a, there's a lot of pinup demand for, uh, for lifting. So I don't, I don't, I don't recall if there were any in 2020. I actually, I think there were, I think I, I think I went to that one. Um, I, I, my memory is a little fuzzy that whole time between 2020 and 2021 is just like a, uh, just a void, but, um, yeah, there were, there were a couple of meets, but they were lightly attended if I remember

correctly. And then, yeah, last year was a little bit of a weird year. It didn't really open back up entirely. But, yeah, now I think there's just a lot of people who are, you know, maybe been sitting on the fence for a couple years and decide to jump back in. Yeah, I would love to do it, but I can't. I can't plan my training that perfectly with my current lifestyle. I mean, I get stronger every year, but to get perfect 12 weeks to do a peak performance on a specific day, I'm not adding that stress to my life right now. Yeah, same here, same here. It's just, yeah.

So that's actually, that's a good segue for what we wanted to talk about today. So last year, about this time, I believe is episode 22, we talked about peaking for a meet and what that looks like and how you can change your programming or how you can taper your programming rather to produce a peak performance, right? So you can lift the most weight possible for one rep

and do that and basically work at a capacity that's above your normal day-to-day capacity to lift heavy, right? Because day-to-day you're carrying fatigue and just, you know, sort of normal training load, training stress, and, you know, you can dissipate that and create a peak. Well, so we're not going to cover that again. We've already talked about that. If you're interested in how to peak for a meet and what that looks like, go back to episode 22. Today, we wanted to talk about something that it's just a popular question that we get very often, especially with new trainees is the question, well, I don't know about this lifting barbell stuff because I don't, I don't want to do power lifting.

Right. The immediate thought is lifting barbell stuff because I don't want to do powerlifting. Right. The immediate thought is that barbell equals powerlifting. Yeah. And in fact, I even, I have some clients I've noticed who sometimes refer to what they do as powerlifting. Like, oh yeah, I've been powerlifting with Coach Trent. Yeah, I've had that too. Yeah.

And I'm like, I don't usually correct them. I don't really care. But it's important to point out that powerlifting or strength lifting or weightlifting, right, or any strength sport is entirely different from the process of strength training, right? So we wanted to talk about that today. Yeah, so let's just, you know, I wanted to start this episode off with just some basic definitions that, you know, we never really delve deep into competition beyond our peaking episode. And some of the listeners here may not know what all these different sports are and may use the terms interchangeably. Like, if you crack open a research paper, sometimes they

just call lifting weights weightlifting, you know? Right. And that's technically true, but from the standpoint of various sports, you know, these words have specific meanings, you know, they're operationally defined for certain sports. So, let's start with the OG, we'll talk about weightlifting, which is short for Olympic weightlifting. Yeah. And Olympic weightlifting, pre--1972 consisted of three lifts and i say pre-1972 because it's an important point because some of these words get thrown around pre-1972 you had three lifts you had the clean and press or you had to clean the bar up off the

floor and press it overhead i wouldn't say it was a strict barbell press, but you couldn't bend, well, you couldn't squat down and do an obvious push press, although some of those were passed back then. But the intention of the press was it was supposed to be more strict than the jerk. So I guess in some ways that was accomplished, but the intention should be that you were strict pressing it. That kind of got butchered over the years. In 72, one of the reasons, the official reasons for dropping it from the meet was that it became difficult to judge because the questions of how much layback, meaning when your hips go forward, your body becomes more horizontal, and that's referred to as a layback, or the slang term is a standing bench press.

So I wrote an article called The Standing Bench Press. I recommend you all reading it. It's referred to as a layback or the slang term is a standing bench press, you know. So I wrote an article called The Standing Bench Press. I recommend you all reading it. But the question of how much layback is too much layback or how much knee bend is too much knee bend. But anyways, back to the sport aspect of this. Olympic weightlifting was the clean and press, the clean and jerk, which consists of, you know, you dip down, you bend your knees here, and then you try to hoist the bar up and drop under it before it starts falling back down with the arms locked out overhead. It's not a press, it's a jerk. You are literally dropping under the bar and extending your elbows before the bar starts traveling downward. That is different than a push press where your elbows lock out at the

very end. You dip down, you hoist the bar up, and then you basically lock out a weight far heavier than you can press strictly from the bottom, right? Yeah, we think of, you know, especially today, it's gotten more popular in recent years. The sport of strongman allows you often to push press the implement, and that's what you'll see where guys bend their legs and then press it out but yeah in olympic weightlifting you have to drop under and you can be called uh you can you can have a you can get a red light in other words you can be disqualified from the lift if you are uh considered to press out the lift right where they see your elbows bend in order to lock out yeah or extend to lock out yeah exactly so um with a jerk your elbows have to be extended

under the bar you're literally dropping before the bar starts dropping that's why it's a display of athleticism you have to be very fast or otherwise the late the weight will be light enough for a slow person to do the same thing right Right, right. You know, I've had a 600-pound, well, 575, 575-pound deadlifter mutual friend of ours who can only clean 175. Because that's impressive. Yeah, yeah. He can bench 475, but he can clean 175,

and he can deadlift 575, and he can squat 610, but he's just slow. But anyway, so yeah, so we have the clean and press, the clean and jerk, and then the snatch. And the snatch is the first lift of the meet. Actually, I should have started with that, should have let in with that. But the snatch is where you pull the bar up off the floor with a wide grip, and you hoist it up and drop under it before it starts falling. Same concept, same thing with a clean. So for those of you who've seen a clean, the arms are not pulling the bar up. You are hoisting the bar up primarily with the hips. The arms stay straight and you drop under it. You're trying to fall under the bar

before the bar. You're trying to get under the bar before the bar starts falling. You have to drop faster than the bar does essentially. And people that are very explosive, this is why this sport has been in the Olympics because you have to be fast and athletic and explosive for it. People that are very explosive can drop under a heavy weight without moving it very far. And it's still light in relation to their deadlift. By definition, it's light because when I mean, quote unquote, heavy for a clean, like 70% of a deadlift, I mean, that's pretty heavy weight to be dropping under. But the reason they're able to do it is they're fast, you know? Then they have to front squat it up, you know? So anyhow, yeah, that's Olympic weightlifting.

And when people say weightlifting, they're referring to Olympic weightlifting, which after 1972 became the snatch and the clean and jerk, and that's what it is today, the snatch and the clean and jerk. So it's two lifts. And the rules are a little bit different in terms of loading. The weight on the bar can never go down in Olympic weightlifting. So you may follow yourself. And what that means is, let's say that I'm doing 200 kilos and Trent's doing 210 and I want to do 205 in between. That means I'm going to do 200. Then I'm going to be next on the platform and do 205. The weight can never go down, right? Right. Yeah. And that's always a source of strategery in weightlifting because you can change your attempts so many times. I forget what the rules are in international competition, but yeah, you can sort of call for an attempt. If you hit 200, you say, tell the judges, I want to go 205. And then someone else might go, well, I was going to do 205, but now I want to do 206 so that they force you to go back on the platform again. There's all sorts of like weird stuff there. It's actually, it's actually kind of funny because the top

weightlifter in the world right now in the men's super heavyweight division is a guy named Lasha Talakatsa. I don't know how to pronounce his last name properly. He's from Georgia, you know, the one on the Eastern side of the world, not in Southeastern US. Um, yeah, he's a, he's a giant Georgian guy. He's like six, seven, 400 pounds and just crazy explosive. He is so strong that his openers are usually heavier than everyone's third attempts. So he's had to train specifically to do all of his attempts in a row because that's how they usually fall in competition. Exactly. Yeah, it's pretty funny. But yeah, so the point about weightlifting is that, yeah,

a lot of people throw this term around loosely as like, yeah, I'm doing weightlifting. But for people that actually do the sport, weightlifting is a very, it's a highly specific strength sport. It's a very high skill, very athletic form of strength sports. And it doesn't bear a lot of resemblance to typical strength training. You know, yes, the athletes that do Olympic weightlifting often train the similar lifts that we talk about. They will train the squat, the press, you know, whether they train the bench press or the dead

lift is kind of depends on the athlete. A lot of them aren't quite so much into that, but the point is their competition lifts are very technical and specific, right? As opposed to some of the other strength sports that we have out there. So let's talk about those now. So let's talk about powerlifting, right? Because that's the other popular thing. And I think especially in the last five to 10 years, powerlifting has gotten much more popular with the average person than it was in, you know, in previous decades. So powerlifting as, as it is today, it came to, came to being somewhere in the sixties, I think. I mean, it, it really kind of, I think it really sort of, uh, came into its own in the

seventies. But, uh, yes, I don't know when, where the origins of powerlifting are specifically. Do you know? Uh, that I would not know. I don't know that. I know they were doing it in the sixties for sure. would not know i don't know that i know they were doing it in the 60s for sure um yeah so so yeah some sometime around the 60s and 70s um the sport of powerlifting uh emerged right and and by the 70s and especially the 80s it was you know kind of codified into a a very you know specific sport

um powerlifting is a competition in which you come you you do competition versions of the squat, bench, and deadlift. And every competitor does three attempts of the squat, and then three attempts of the bench press, and three attempts of the deadlift. And they're going to do a single rep for as much weight as they possibly can. as much weight as they possibly can. And, um, one thing that is a little bit different from training in the gym is that the, these are competition versions of each of these lifts. And what I mean by that is that when you squat, uh, in powerlifting, you have to follow rules, right? There are rules for how the motion can be performed. In other words, like what is depth, right? How, you know, how deep is deep enough to count as a good lift? Where can you put the bar? You know, how wide can your hands be? What kind of grips can you use, right? These are all rules that powerlifting has, right? the commands of a judge, right? So there's a judge that tells you, depending on what your federation is, you're lifting in, unrack, squat, re-rack, you know, or whatever, you know, press,

there's all different kinds of commands and they're slightly different from federation to federation. So these are competition versions of training movements that we would do in the gym. training movements that we would do in the gym. So when people talk about powerlifting, well, that's, you know, yes, it is very similar to the type of strength training movements that we do in the gym. Because yes, we squat, we bench press, we deadlift, we also press. But when we're doing it for training, we have a different purpose than the athlete that's training for powerlifting, right? Right. So yeah, let's talk about that. So, you know, just to review what you just said, powerlifting, three lifts, squat, bench press, and deadlift. And the way those lifts are performed are geared towards moving the most weight. Right. So let's be clear on this. Your goal

in a powerlifting meet is to move the most weight. Does that mean that you're acquiring the most overall strength? Not necessarily, right? I mean, certain things are getting stronger. Obviously, you're lifting heavy weights, but our criteria, when you are strength training, that is not the same thing as powerlifting. Yes, you are lifting heavy weights, relatively speaking, but our goal is not for you to move the most weight from a starting point to a finishing point, which can vary in powerlifting, by the way. You know, one person benching can be moved, well, this can vary in general. You know, the distance a weight is moved varies from person to person as it is because of different limb

lengths, etc. But in powerlifting, it can vary vastly because if you grip the bench at the widest point that you could grip it and somebody with the same arm length grips it narrower, you're pushing at different distances. So in powerlifting, the way they like to say it is they're manipulating leverage to move weight because that's what you're scored on. The person who lifts the most weight wins. But is that person the strongest? Well, that's hard to quantify, actually. But I would argue no,, not necessarily because you see people that can form these crazy exorcist type arches in their back. So, you know, people use arch both ways. Like I've heard people say, my back is arch when it's rounded. So when I say arch, I mean, you have this big, um, so you're laying on the bench,

there's this big arch under you, right? And there are people that can make that quite pronounced to the point where the bar is moving an inch, right? So is that person stronger than the other guy that has, you know, just a normal arch and goes down, you know, several more inches, you know, probably not, you know, so it's hard to quantify, again, if moving weight means you're the strongest because people move weight differently. The thing that pisses me off the most isn't even that. It's the deadlift. You have people in powerlifting at some point, some jerk-off, walked on the platform and picked the bar up with his hands between his legs sometime in the 1980s. And the judges let it go instead of

calling a rules committee meeting and saying, no, the hands must be outside the legs. So now we have this interchangeable deadlift term that could refer to hands between the legs, hands outside the legs. People like to call it sumo. I just call it non-existent mythology. I don't acknowledge that shit. Because the great Carl Schutt once said he does sumo as a party trick to get his total up that was the most honest characterization of it you know um right because that's what it is i mean there's no i can't think of a good reason to deadlift with the hands between the legs in a

wide stance um other than if you are so if your arms are so fucking short that when you're in the correct position, and for those of you listening that think you're in the correct position, you're probably still fucking it up. You need one of us to look at you. But if you're in the correct position with the bar over the middle of the foot, shoulder blades over the bar with a nice narrow stance, and a normal hand grip right outside the legs, and your ass is up higher than your shoulder blades, unless you have super flexible hamstrings, you might have to start putting the hands between the legs. I still have not personally seen somebody built that way,

but there is a picture in an old article written by Lon Kilgore called Measure of a Man where they had a girl that they had to put into a position where she picked the bar up between the legs, and her torso was still horizontal and parallel to the floor. And Rip always talks about her, or he used to talk about her at seminars. I don't know if he does anymore, but that article's out there as a photo. And I have not had someone that was built quite that fucked up. I do have a female who can deadlift just fine, and her hamstrings are so flexible,

she does a deficit stiff-legged deadlift with a flat back. So, I mean, if you could pull that off and you're built that way, then sure. But you know, 99.5% of people can deadlift with the hands outside the legs and maintain a rigid spine. Yeah, absolutely. My wife is a testament to that. She has very, very long femurs and a fairly short torso. And she has kind of short arms too. And so she's just got the worst leverage possible for the deadlift. And we had to, you know, we had to, we had to deviate somewhat from the, the standard starting point in the starting strength model for it, for a deadlift in order to get her into the right position, but can still do it and she's pulled 300 pounds that way as a you know five foot four right um you know fairly small framed woman um so yeah let me go back and finish my thought there so um because i kind of got off track but yeah you squat bench press and deadlift um and you can manipulate your positions you get a you have a lot of latitude to manipulate your positions on these lifts to make more weight move. When we train you for strength and conditioning,

or just the strength half of the strength conditioning, we want you to meet three criteria. We want you to use the most muscle mass throughout the longest effective range of motion that allows you to lift the most weight. So lifting the most weight is one of three criteria, but the other two have to be met. If you do all three of those in powerlifting, that may not equate to the most points you can score, and that me. So let me repeat that. If you go to a powerlifting meet and lift the most weight through the longest effective range of motion that uses the most muscle mass. You may lift less weight off the ground, off the bench, or you may squat at least less weight than you would if you manipulated some things. For instance, you may

pull more sumo. But does that mean you're stronger? No, because you're using less muscle mass. You're taking the quads out of it, you're reducing the range of motion on the hips, because you're using less muscle mass. You're taking the quads out of it. You're reducing the range of motion on the hips. And you're disproportionately placing more stress on the adductors, right? And there's less time under tension on the spinal erectors and all the back muscles. If you squat with a wide stance, you're squatting across a shorter distance, right? You're probably bending over less as a result. So you get less hip extension. You get less time under tension on the back, right? So you're using less muscles to move more weight.

And the exorcist arch on the bench speaks for itself. If you're pushing it one inch with a wide grip, you're reducing range of motion on the elbows, range of motion on the shoulders and pecs. So you're using less muscle mass. So let's be clear again. When you train with us, you have to meet all three criteria. You're just trying to get generally strong. And you're trying to get stronger in those movements, you have to use the most weight, the longest effective range of motion that recruits the most muscle mass, and you have to add to that. And then everything tends to get stronger in a

more balanced way. I predict that people that train this way consistently have fewer injuries than people who train with powerlifting in mind. So, again, you are not powerlifting, right? You are generally strength training. We also press and do chin-ups as well and power cleans for some of our younger folks or more athletically-minded people. Right. Yeah, exactly. Which aren't the powerlifts, right? Powerlifter, squat, bench, and deadlift and do variants of those three lifts.

Very few of them press. You know, some of them might do arm work because everybody that goes in the weight room likes arm work, but for the most part, they squat, bench, and deadlift or some variation of the three. if you want to become a competitor, um, you, you are by definition specializing in that sport, right? So if, if I was to train somebody who wanted to compete in powerlifting, then yeah, I'm going to emphasize their bench press more than their press. I'm still going to have them press something because I believe it's healthy for the shoulders. Um, and that, that longer range of motion is, is a good thing as well. But, um, you know, they have made the decision to specialize in that sport, which means that they are going to now, their training now has to we mentioned before right and we're going to try to maximize the amount of weight they can lift so yeah so the point is like the training actually looks fairly different compared to somebody who just wants to be generally strong and build a well-rounded um strong physique right so yeah so the the other thing that's kind of funny about power lifting it's less popular today but you know if you go back 20 years, 30 years back in the 80s, a lot of powerlifting, if not all of it back then, was equipped powerlifting. And the lifters that competed were using equipment of various kinds, right? They were using like a squat suit that was supportive. It had a, you know, sort of supportive structure to it. They used maybe even competition briefs and knee wraps that were highly compressive and could help you lift more weight. And those have somewhat fallen out of favor. Nowadays, you can find raw powerlifting, as it's called, where you train with essentially the same equipment you would use,

you know, just doing general strength training in the gym, knee sleeves and a belt, and maybe some wrist wraps, but you're not using the very highly supportive equipment that they'd use back in, you know, back in the day. So that's another element of powerlifting that, you know, some of the older guys around the gym that you might see are more and more familiar with. But again, that's another element that removes it from general strength training. Yeah. And back in the day, raw powerlifting used to be a belt and white knee wraps that were fairly supportive, but didn't really contribute that much to a lift. Throughout the years, in the 1980s, they started making assistive equipment, you know, to contrast from supportive equipment. Yes, the general white knee wraps do give you a little bit more rebound off the bottom, but not much. We're talking about a small percent

difference. Knee sleeves really, unless you're getting the real tight, now they make, it always turns from support to assistance, right? Yeah, that's true. The blue reband knee sleeves provided no assistance. They were just, they warmed the knees and gave you a sense of security there, you know? Right, yeah. But now the SBDs and the strong sleeves and like they got these tighter sleeves now that serve to provide assistance. Well, back in the day, it was just knee wraps and a belt. That was raw power lifting. Then later on, this turned into assistive equipment. They started making these very, very stiff knee wraps that gave you more recoil out of the bottom. They added more pressure around the knee so that you basically got more rebound. And that turned into suits that did the same thing to your groin and helped your back stay tighter and all these other things.

Added more compression to the lift so that you can generate more force. And then those were single-ply suits. They had one layer of this assistive material. And that turned into multi-ply suits in the 90s where it was several layers and then bench-press shirts that did the same thing. And before you knew it, you had people bench-pressing 400 pounds more than they could with just a regular t-shirt on or no shirt, yeah so and you know went so far with all that stuff and even with that the peak of equipped power lifting which was probably the mid-2000s they didn't allow straps on the fucking deadlift

which just blows my mind like you could wear all these goofy suits and do all this clown shit like squat 300 pounds more with a suit on than without a suit on or bench three or 400 pounds more with a shirt on versus without a shirt on but then you can't wear straps on the fucking yeah lift yeah much to the chagrin of some very very good power lifters uh one of the best squatters of all time captain kirk karwoski yep uh he if you go look him up the dude was just an absolute mountain of muscle. It's just ridiculous. And he famously squatted in training.

He squatted a thousand pounds for a double, a deep ass double. It's amazing. Um, but the poor guy, I think he topped out about 800 pounds on his deadlift because he couldn't hold onto the bar. He had tiny hands and he would, the bar would just slip out of his hands all the time, even using a mixed grip. So he bombed out of a ton of meats back in the day because of that grip. I mentioned that earlier. I won't go into all the elements of strongman. Strongman is a little bit more of a circus or vaudeville type competition, although it has become much more standardized in the last couple decades. But the sport of strongman does involve a lot of barbell type lifts.

Typically, the lifts are performed on odd sort of implements. So, you know, you might do a deadlift in a strong man meet, but it's not going to be a deadlift on a standard seven foot power bar. It's probably going to be a deadlift on maybe a super thick axle bar, or maybe it's going to be on like a, you know, you're going to deadlift a car with like a, some sort of like bar that's welded onto the side of it. with some sort of bar that's welded onto the side of it or the edge of it. There's all sorts of wacky implements they do.

It's just what makes it really fun to watch. But what I find hilarious about the sport of strongman is you can lift the weight just about any way you want to. There's not a whole lot of rules, especially on the deadlift in a strongman. You can hitch it. They use an elephant bar, which is 25 millimeters or something right yeah that is one yeah that is one particular type of deadlift is an elephant bar yep um it's ridiculous but you know you can do all this crazy shit like there are guys that actually take advantage of this there's a there's a small guy who's super strong but but he basically has trained his deadlift technique. So where he

pulls the bar up just above his kneecaps, and then he literally squats down. So the bar is resting on his quads just above the kneecap. And then he squats the bar up. So that's called hitching, where you intentionally re-bend your knees to get to sort of, you know, hitch or, you know, jack the weight up your thighs. You can't do that in a powerlifting meet, but in strongman, you can do that. You can hitch nine ways to Sunday and it's all legal. By the way, you can wear straps, you can wear suits, whatever the hell you want to do, but you cannot deadlift sumo. You must pull deadlifts conventional. Exactly. And that's how it should be and that's that's what i love about it so they have preserved the sanctity of that sport

um yeah god bless them yeah um cool so uh with power lifting just to kind of wrap that point up before we segue into the next one because the next one was based upon all the problems with the previous ones. So we've talked about the lifting aspect. We've talked about how lifts can be manipulated. You even talked about how attempts can be manipulated in weightlifting in terms of how the selection goes. Typically, in powerlifting, you submit your attempts early and you can change them. I think it's, is it up to a minute before your attempt or before it depends on the on the particular competition um but yeah that's set up to give the um the

scorekeepers enough time to rearrange the order of the lifters because it goes from heaviest or lightest to heaviest right no matter what so if you change your attempt it reorganizes it in that way. But you're not going to follow, there's first attempt, second attempts, third attempts, you're not going to follow yourself in powerlifting. So you can't manipulate the attempt selection because you have flights based on how strong people are usually, or on division sometimes. And so you have the flight A, flight B, flight C, you know, depending on the number of lifters in the meet. I've never ran a multi-flight meet. Usually it's just one flight. And then the order is based on the load so that it's easier for the spotters and loaders to change out the bar.

But then the load does come down for the second attempt, and then it starts all over. So that is the difference between powerlifting and weightlifting in terms of how you can select your attempts. The weight never goes down per attempt, right? In Olympic weightlifting, the weight never goes down at all, which is interesting. So, the next thing that people like to manipulate that isn't the lift itself is body weight. So, in Olympic weightlifting, there is a two-hour weigh-in. In powerlifting, this depends on the federation. And there are so many federations for powerlifting, whereas there's maybe a handful for weightlifting. And part of that is that powerlifting is not and will never be an Olympic sport. So, sorry, guys. So, in powerlifting,

if you follow the IPF, which is the International Powerlifting Federation, it's the biggest, oldest one, and every country has a national federation that is associated with the IPF. I think here it's Powerlifting USA. Now, it used to be USA Powerlifting. Because the IPF wanted them to adhere to WADA standards for drug testing. What is that? World Anti-Doping Association. And apparently that would have made running meats a lot more expensive. So USA Powerlifting was like, we're not going to do that. You know? Yeah.

They got dropped. Now I think Powerlifting USA is now the United States affiliate of IPF, if that's the correct term. Anyways, they follow the two-hour weigh-in model. So when you have a two-hour weigh-in, let's just start there. There's little you can manipulate at that point without fucking up your performance, right? So you can reduce your sodium intake. You can reduce your carb intake. You can mess with your fluid. And you can get a few pounds off typically in federations where there's two-hour weigh-in. Guys don't typically train too far above their desired weight class, but you want to fill out the weight class. You want to be the heaviest you can for that meat. Although the points are, you know, when you're looking at Wilkes, which is in relation to body weight, being lighter and lifting the same is more ideal, but typically it's recommended, you know, unless there's a record

to be broken, it's recommended that you fill out your weight class. You can maximize leverage and all those things. Right. So typically if you're an 80 kilogram or what is it? 82 and a half kilogram lifter, 181 pounds, you know, these guys might might train at 190 and then come down to 181 for the meat and uh yeah you could do that in a short time and not really fuck yourself right um however other federations typically the well let's back it up we have tested and untested federations right but everybody's using drugs not every single competitor but there's drug use in all of them and i'll explain why because in a tested federation they only test 10 of the lifters right so that means you're assuming that 10 of the lifters reflect 100 of the lifters right

and it's a crapshoot right so and the other thing too is when people take steroids just because you've gotten off of them and gotten them out of your system doesn't mean you've gotten the gains out of your system, right? Yeah, let's just kind of be clear here. With any sort of high-level strength sport, and I think it's fair to say— Sport in general. Sport in general. Well, sport in general, absolutely. Since we're talking about strength sports here, we have not evolved to need 365-pound linemen.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, yeah, let me say it more broadly then. Okay, so any sport which involves a heavy emphasis on strength and power, right, there's a lot of steroid use at the highest levels, right? highest levels, right? And with any of the strength sports, um, you can be guaranteed that there is lots of steroid use at the high levels of the sport, right? That doesn't mean every single competitor, that doesn't mean they're all using the same amounts of drugs and the same types of drugs. Um, you know, that I'm sure that can vary wildly, uh, from competitor to competitor, but it is a, it is, it's, it it's it's there and it doesn't matter whether

they test or not um there's a whole lot of reason to use it and there's a whole lot of ways to get around it uh especially in certain countries it's easier than others but um you know without going down that rabbit hole of steroids yes it is right it's there everywhere in every strength sport i i bet every single record that was ever set um high-level strength sports was set with some sort of PED use. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And I've noticed that when I bring newcomers on that train with me and they break a record, I've done it twice now in the last year, they both got tested, they both passed, neither of them were on drugs. We're not that kind of gym. At worst, some people are on testosterone replacement therapy, but I don't have any heavy users of anabolic hormones in my gym right now. at the high levels of the sport.

I'm not, yes, I believe that somebody broke the 80 kilo bench press record in Illinois that was set last in 1988. Yes, I'm sure somebody beat that totally clean. That's fine. But I'm talking about when we're talking about Olympic weightlifting at the world level, powerlifting at the world level, et cetera. Yeah, absolutely.

So steroid use is one way to game the system. In an untested federation, nobody gives a shit. So they use more stuff, stay on stuff into the meat, and they're not worried about it. They just do what they do. And you tend to see bigger numbers in these untested federations. But there's another reason for that, right? Remember we talked about two-hour weigh-in? Well, these other federations will have 24-hour weigh-in. So these guys will literally dehydrate themselves, go on low-carb, very low-carb diets, and do other things that I'm not even familiar with because I have no interest in it. I'm not going to prescribe it to get large amounts of body weight off. And this tends to be more pronounced in the bigger weight classes.

So you'll get guys that weigh 220 when they're training, and they will cut down, quote unquote, to 181 Friday night before the meet Saturday, or Friday morning before the meet Saturday, depending on if they're in the morning flight or afternoon flight. And they'll weigh 181, then they'll start giving themselves IV fluids and taking a bunch of carbs in the 24 hours leading into their meet. So then when they actually get on the platform, they weigh 220, and they're setting records in the 181 class. So this is one of the big reasons that in these untested federations with 24-hour weigh-in,

you see such bigger numbers. You have more steroid use. They don't cycle off of it necessarily, not for the meat at least. And they're weighing 40 pounds more than the weight class that they're competing in. So this is just silly bullshit. So that's another way that people game the system. If there's a 24-hour weigh-in, you can game the weight. You can game how you grip the bar or how you stand on a squat. You can game the way you're performing the lift to move more weight. And then the last thing that we didn't really get into were commands. So you have to follow directions.

You can't just go on the platform and lift the weight. Now you have another person participating in the lift. That is the judge. And the judge will tell you on a squat, he'll say, you know, you'll walk it out, right? And they'll say start. And then, or they'll say squat. Is it start or is it squat? I can't remember.

You know, I'm not sure. Well, they command you to squat, just like C.T. Fletcher commands his arms to grow. So they command you to squat, and then you stand up, but then you can't put the bar away. You have to wait for them to tell you to rack it, right? So if you squat before they tell you to squat, that squat doesn't count, even if it's 1,000 pounds clearly deep, right? Now is a no lift. You get a red light for that. If you start walking towards the rack before they say rack, you get a red light for that.

So now you have a third party participating in the lift. So three things that can be manipulated to influence performance in a powerlifting meet. Body weight, which is more so on a 24-hour weigh-in than a two-hour, although there's a little bit of manipulation in a two-hour. The judge you get, that's the luck of the fucking draw. The judge can influence your performance. Your spotter. Your spotter can influence your performance. And the way you perform the lift can influence your performance.

And all of this stuff, all of this shit pissed us off. Pissed Rip off especially. He's much older than we are. And he competed in the 80s. So he had a lot of time to think about this. And around 2007, he held the first strength lifting meet. And it was called the CrossFit Classic back then. Called it strength lifting.

strengthlifting meet, and it was called the CrossFit Classic back then. He called it strength lifting because the rules are written such that the best lift performed is also going to be a display of strength. And he addressed all of these concerns that we just voiced. So there's a reason we ranted about all this. And the strengthlifting meet, there are some key differences. Number one, there is no bench press. There's an overhead overhead press and it's not because we have anything against the bench press we just think the overhead press or the press we don't call it overhead press where else you're going to press the bar right right yeah the press is a you know even power lifters have said this out loud to me and these are guys that pull sumo too and do all the silly shit an overhead press is a better display of upper body strength than a bench press because you have to stabilize your body and push a bar overhead, right?

Yeah. So that's the main reason that that was put in there. It's not necessarily that he opposes the bench press. We've talked about bench press rules that we'd like to see if we ever held our own powerlifting meet, and I'll come back to that, but let's first finish up strength lifting. So there's no bench. There is a press. There is no weigh-in. There is a weigh-out. So this used to be the way it was done in Olympic weightlifting way back in the day. After your last attempt of your final lift, which in a strength lifting meet is a deadlift, you get weighed. And back in the day in Olympic weightlifting in the 60s, I believe, they would do that, but they'd also weigh all of the plates, I believe, if it was a record. They'd weigh every single plate that was on the bar and the barbell.

Yeah, to verify. To verify. I believe if it was a record, they'd weigh every single plate that was on the bar and the barbell. Yeah, to verify. To verify. And I don't think they did that for every attempt, but they definitely, I know they did that for world records. Okay, cool. So in strength lifting, we have a weigh out, we have a press, right? There are no commands. So the only person participating in the lift is the lifter.

The judges do not participate in the lift. I think they've changed this, but originally, you had to walk out and walk in all of your attempts. If the spotters touch the bar for any reason, it was a no lift. So, it discouraged people from putting too much weight on it. They were like, oh, I'm just going to put a ton of weight on it and see if I got it, and then they drop it and break femurs on their spotters. So we used to prohibit that. Now I think they've changed that, right, Trent? Well, I don't know if it's a change per se, but there is some discretion that's left to the meet director. It's not as strict as it was, right?

Yeah. Well, it's to allow for spotters to assist in the re-rack on heavy squat attempts. So that's how I've seen it. So, you know, I go to a meet and if some guy's squatting 450, then no, there's going to be spotters there, but they're not going to be helped back in the rack. Right.

Typically, but if somebody is going for a 705 squat, there's probably going to be extra spotters and there's also going to be assistants back in the rack. So I think in the rule book, that is left up to the discretion of the meat director, how many spotters will be used, if there's any extra spotters used, and then whether there's help back in the rack. Yeah, I used to red light people if they missed one side of the rack, but I've noticed that some of the WFAC meats, they haven't been super strict on

that in the last few years, which I'm actually okay with. You just, we want walkouts and walk-ins. What you don't want is somebody loading up 800 pounds when they're only good for 700 and then dropping it on the spotter and breaking the femur, you know? That's right. Yeah. Well, in fact, you know, I have seen a couple instances of people who have bailed on a squat and, you know, deliberately thrown it off of their back when they missed the lift. And those people were disqualified. They're kicked out. Yeah. And that's probably the way it should be.

You know, spotters are there to help you back up, not to lift all the weight for you. So, yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, so the thing about strength lifting is it's just, you know, in our view, it is a pure form of the lifts because there's less influence from judging and from commands and body weight and all that kind of stuff. And I will say this. Power lifting, it's cool to participate in. Watching a bunch of bench presses is boring as shit but watching overhead press is kind of fun because you get a lot of grinds you know like when somebody grinds on an overhead

press and it's like you know their elbows are shaking you know and it's right above their forehead and they're trying to lock it out that's pretty fun to see it's kind of cool to see somebody just lock out a big weight overhead oh yeah when somebody you know somebody benches 315 or 405 or 500 nobody cares nobody cares um it's just not very fun to watch unfortunately and i think the thing is like strongman the sport of strongman which again like i said had has has its roots back in the circus days um the strongman has always had a very strong emphasis on the visual aspect of the sport. You know, does it look cool? Does it look amazing and impressive to spectators? Like I want to see a guy run with a refrigerator on his back. I want to see him pull a plane. That's awesome.

Um, they do a lot of overhead pressing movements. They have very, very rarely had any sort of bench press in, in the sport. I can only think of like one or two instances in like the entire history of the sport. Um, I think they know why it's, it's impressive to see people like lift overhead. It's entertaining. You know, we want to see you lift like that giant boulder over your head, you know, not press something off your chest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, to kind of, you know, tie that up here, kind of wrap, tie the strength lifting aspect up. Yeah, so you have no commands.

There's only spotters on the squat. So I forgot to mention that. In powerlifting, they have a spotter on the bench press, obviously, which we would have if we had a bench press meet. And then there's a quote-unquote spotter on the bench press, obviously, which we would have if we had a bench press meet. And then there's a quote-unquote spotter on the deadlift, which we thought was silly, because if somebody, you know, what's a spotter going to do on the deadlift? A person might fall on them and injure both of them, you know, if they, you know, faint or something happens. So, the platform is clear on the press and the deadlift. You can't spotter press,

you're going to hurt yourself. So, we don't have spotters on the press. So, You can't spot or press. You're going to hurt yourself. So we don't have spotters on the press. So there's only spotters on the squat. And all deadlifts must be performed with the hands outside the legs. Simple. The knees can't bend in such a way where the bar moves down vertically on the press. So that eliminates the whole, well, how much knee bend is too much knee bend? Well, if the bar goes downward, it's too much knee bend, you know, pretty simple. They used to have a rule where the armpit couldn't pass the biggest part of the glutes, but they got rid of that because obvious reasons, you know, there's variations in ass size, you know, um, the point is, you know, I've explained the layback in general. One rule I would like to see is that the elbows can't lock out before the hips because that's where it really does turn into a standing bench press where people are, you know, completely parallel to the floor. The elbows lock out, then they move under it. I'd like to see less of that, but that is not a rule, you know. But that's probably the silliest thing that goes on in strength lifting.

I don't think it's that silly because when you're doing that with 405, it's still impressive to me. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. It's not that many people that can pull that off, really. Yeah. So, we feel like we've addressed the problems with power lifting and weight lifting in terms of the rules and the external factors that are non-strength related that can be manipulated with strength lifting. And the weighouts are great, too.

They speed up the meat, by the way. Because have you ever been to a powerlifting meet, you're on fucking line sometimes for like an hour trying to get weighed in. Well, that's what I was going to say. You know, so, you know, when we're talking about the higher levels of the sport, when we start talking about nationals and international competition, um, it's a different dynamic, but when we're talking about, you know, just regular Joes, um, who are interested in trying powerlifting or strength lifting or any of these strength sports for the first time, or maybe they're doing their fifth meet, right. But they're still relative newcomers to the sport.

Um, in my experience, strength lifting is much more friendly because the meats are tend to be well run and they tend to move very quickly. Um, because of the lack of coordinating extra, you know, like judging commands and all that stuff and weigh-ins and all the stuff we've talked about, because you don't have any of that stuff, the meats tend to move very smoothly. You know, you're not going to be sitting around for 15 minutes between attempts, you know, which sucks if you're, if you're trying to lift and, you know, how are you going to be sitting around for 15 minutes between attempts, you know, which sucks if you're, if you're trying to lift and, you know, how are you going to squat 15 minutes apart from each other? I've had to do that once. Yeah. Forget that. It sucks, right? You don't know what to do. Like, do I take a warmup? Do I, I don't know. Um, but that doesn't tend to happen in strength lifting.

Uh, and then also it's just, there's less to, there's less, um, distraction from the actual point of the sport, which is to lift a bunch of weight in one attempt right you don't have to learn a bunch of commands if you're new to this sport right um and then worry about having to follow the commands well um you just get up there and lift it's really approachable and fun for someone doing their first meet or their fifth meet yeah yeah um Yeah, that pretty much hits strength lifting on the head. The last thing I want to touch on is we've on RIP's boards and through articles and things I've said, we've talked about potential rules for the bench press,

although he's not held a power lifting meet at his gym. But if we were to run a powerlifting meet using similar criteria, the squat and the deadlift would be identical to the strength lifting rules. You know, it's pretty obvious we're not going to change that. We'd continue with the weigh outs. But if we introduced a bench press, Rip suggested that the rules be such that they disincentive, they prohibit any type of extraneous arching, extraneous gripping, etc. And some of the things we proposed are keeping a grip that places the forearms vertical at the bottom of the bench, maintaining control of the bar. I forgot how he wanted to address people bouncing it off their chest,

but he had specific language he proposed in one of his articles. We have to address the bouncing off the chest because that's the whole reason that power lifters defend the pause. We want to eliminate the pause so that the lifter can just go down, right back up, make sure the stretch reflex is off of the pecs and not the physical structure of the pecs. Off the pecs stretching and not the bar bouncing, right? Right. But we want no pause on the bench. structure of the pecs, of the pecs stretching and not the bar bouncing, right? Right. Yeah. But we want no paws on the bench. We want no commands, just like all the other lifts. And one thing that I added, and I think that if I was in Texas and lifting at Rip's Gym,

I can sell them on this. I think that all bench presses should be unracked out of a monolift to completely eliminate the need for a spotter. That way, the lifter is responsible for all aspects of the lift. Now you've gotten rid of the commands and you've gotten rid of the handoff. And for those of you who don't know, a monolift or an adjustable monolift is typically what we use for a bench press. It is basically a couple of arms that swing back and forth. is basically a couple of arms that swing back and forth. You place the bar in them as you would the J-hooks on the rack, except it moves horizontally forward and backwards.

So if you're bench pressing and you're bench pressing out of an adjustable monolift, you can pull the bar forward over your shoulders, push it straight up, and then the arms swing backwards out of the way so you can bench straight up and down and not hit the j not hit any type of j hook or anything like that so one of the problems when you're benching on your own and some of you have probably already realized this if you get too close to the j hooks you'll clip them when you're pushing up so what ends up happening is if you're bench pressing without a spotter you have to do this awkward horizontal motion of the bar you have to push it up and then go over your face to get it over your touch point,

right? The monolift, adjustable monolift eliminates that and it saves your shoulders from potential injuries. I've had guys get tendonitis just from unracking heavy benches. And then when they got the adjustable monolift, it went away. I would never even guessed it. But if you add an adjustable monolift to a competition situation, now the only person influencing that lift is the lifter himself. The lifter can do a self-assisted lift off and not require a spotter to hand it off to him. And with no commands, he just goes down, back up, and racks it.

It's as simple as that. So I'd like to see a meet held that way. We haven't, nobody's done that yet. Maybe Meggers has. He has a lot of competitions at his gym, but maybe I'll do a powerlifting meet this fall at my gym. I haven't announced anything yet, but it's possible. That'd be at his gym. But maybe I'll do a powerlifting meet this fall at my gym. I haven't announced anything yet, but it's possible. That'd be cool.

And that's how I would do it. I'd do the monolift situation. But yeah, those are the three major barbell strength sports. Strongman is a little bit more complicated. Trent touched on some of that, but I didn't want to go deep into that because I'm not familiar with all the rules and events. touched on some of that but i didn't want to like go deep into that because i'm not familiar with all the rules and events but well yeah and strongman is it's not as it's not as um yeah it has a very large range of potential events and they they change from competition to competition they're very different but it's a lot of fun a lot of fun to watch yeah and the barbell is one

of many things that they use there so it's not it doesn't really fall into what we're talking about because most of our clients are going to lift with a barbell and they immediately think, oh, powerlifting, powerlifting, right? Or bodybuilding sometimes. But, you know, bodybuilding, I've hit that one to home. First of all, it's not a sport, it's a contest. You know, you're not competing, there's no performance aspect of it other than the dancing that they do on stage. Arnold took ballet, so I'm calling it dancing because that's what he had to do. He had to learn how to dance to go and pose, right? But in terms of the lifting part of it, like I said, quick sentence on this. We lift to use the most muscle mass to the longest effective range of motion that allows you to lift the most weight.

All three must be met. Bodybuilders, on the other hand, they may use barbells. They may use most of the same exercises. But like powerlifters manipulate the performance of the lift to move more weight, they manipulate the performance of a lift to isolate specific muscle groups. So they might do a high bar back squat with an artificially horizontal back angle to place more stress on their quads, right? Or they might bench with a wide grip to stress their pecs more, a narrow grip to stress their triceps more. Or, you know, they might deadlift with a snatch grip deadlift to get more range of motion, or they might do an RDL off three plates to get more

hamstring range of motion, except everything is, all the lifts are performed in such a way to isolate muscles, not to max. So basically, in other words, everything is performed in such a way to isolate muscles, which is going to reduce efficiency. We're trying to maximize efficiency in terms of using the most muscles, right? They're trying to use fewer muscles and they're willing to sacrifice efficiency to do so since they're training purely for appearance. But yes, they use a barbell too, but not necessarily for the same reasons we do. So to bring it all home, when you're training at my gym or training with Trent or working out for general strength purposes, you're training for those three criteria. Most muscle mass,

longest effective range of motion that allows you to lift the most weight. You're going to get the most longevity out of that. It's the best in terms in terms of training you know lifting for a health purpose although you exceed that purpose quite early you don't really need to yeah you know squat deadlift over 400 pounds but you know we've talked about this maintenance is bullshit you're going to add more but you'll probably be able to continue adding more doing it this way versus the other way and it has a lot of carryover you know like, like when you can squat 405, you know, when you have to haul a giant log out of the way, it's, it's much more trivial to just pick that damn thing up and move it than it would be if you could only squat 200 or 135. Um, so yeah, there's definitely a lot of carryover. And on that note, I'll, I'll say too,

like the other thing is, you you know especially for my older guys that have no interest in competing you know we're not doing like heavy barbell singles we're not i don't have them do like heavy squats and heavy benches and heavy deadlifts for one rep right you know maybe they'd work up to a heavy double or usually more like triples. But the, you know, it's just not a, a particularly functional rep range, right? Like that's not, that's not particularly applicable to the kinds of things that we would use strength for in everyday life, a set of three or set of five or set of eight. That's much more functional in that sense. So yeah, that's the other thing too, right? Like competitors do singles because that's what they do in competition. But you know,

a general strength trainee, unless they just want to for fun, we just don't really spend hardly any time doing that. So. Right. I enjoy, I don't compete in meets. So here's the thing. If you're adding weight to the bar, you're competitive just because it doesn't mean you're a competitive power lifter or a competitive strength lifter or a competitive weight lifter. It just means you're competitive with yourself, obviously. You're trying to lift more. If you're trying to lift more, you're competitive. So you have to treat your training similar from the standpoint of recovering well, eating well, sleeping well, programming well, not going off plan, et cetera.

You do train like a competitor to some extent, but that's just human nature kicking in. You want to do more than you did before. That desire is always going to be there, right? That's right. Yeah. We want to beat the logbook. But that doesn't make you a power lifter or weight lifter or strength lifter or bodybuilder. You're competing for different purposes. Because again, I can't say it enough. Maintenance is complete fucking bullshit. Like I'm doing aspects of all of them right now. You know, I'm, you know, doing dynamic barbell rows, which, you know, originated in weightlifting. I'm doing high bar squats to make my quads fill out more, but I'm also addressing the depth aspect of squatting at the same time, which, you know, falls into powerlifting or strength lifting. And even when I high bar squat, everything except the bar placement is exactly the same

as the low bar squat, right? In terms of my setup. So, you know, I bench press, you know, my bench press is just a standard bench press grip, but then I do dumbbells too, which in the blue book, the starting strength book, Rip says the dumbbell bench press is superior in terms of all of our criteria, but you need specialized equipment to effectively progress it, which I have almost all of them looking into that. But so it's just, you know, it's not practical, but it is, it does meet the criteria better than the bench press because the greater effective

range of motion aspect of it, right? But like i'm there's elements of all of them i would clean too if i just had the patience for the warm-ups i love cleaning my techniques good i like jerks i hate snatches but uh i hate the warm-ups because you know this is a whole other episode i want to do remind me trent i want to call it the technique continuum so there's a technique continuum right you know on one end you have a snatch on other end, you have a seated machine tricep extension. So you can kind of figure out where I'm going with here, you know? Yeah, right, right. And when lifts are limited more by technique, that means you have to spend more time with it,

which means one lift might take a fucking hour to do. Yeah. Which is why I don't clean. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I have very few of my clients do that, too. Yeah. Which is why I don't clean. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I have very few of my clients do that, too. Not because cleans aren't good. It's just because the amount of time spent would take away from so much other useful training that it just doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense for my clients and the population that I work with. So yeah,

so there you go. There's a little bit of introduction to the barbell sports for you and what strength training is versus what these sports are. So hopefully that clears up a little bit of the mystery. It's kind of hard to cover all of the ins and outs of these sports in one episode. So that wasn't our goal here, but you know, hopefully if you had kind of wondered about powerlifting and weightlifting, or maybe you've used that term before, um, just talking to the general public, um, Hey, what do you, what do you do in the gym? What do you do to look like that? Oh, well, I work with coach Santana. Oh, what does he have you do? Oh, we do a lot of weightlifting. No, no, you don't do weightlifting. You do strength training with a barbell. Mm-hmm.

And now you know. So, well, we hope you found that episode useful. Let's close this boy out. All right. Well,

thank you all for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana.

If you are in Metro Phoenix, you can find the gym just South of the airport off of a 30, 30 second in Broadway. The website is weights and plates, gym.com. The Instagram page is weights, double underscore and double underscore plates. Fuck you with the single underscore.

I want that. I'm going to steal it back someday. How much will you pay for that name not hardly enough i will pay with my time and patience whatever that's worth by the time i get it well uh yeah you know where to find me at marmalade underscore cream where i post things about my audio work as well as my coaching work. You can also email me about coaching Jones, a barbell club at gmail.com. All right. We'll talk to you all again in a couple of weeks. Bye.