Bob Peoples 700 Pound Deadlift

[DieselWeasel]

Originally Posted by BendtheBar

I nearly purchased the People's book last night. Worth having it in the library?

Yeah, it's a good book, but was overpriced considering it's not very lengthy.

[DieselWeasel]

[Wlfdg]

Country strong! He was a farmer with time and energy for weight training. Kind of kills any tired excuses you might think up.

[Fazc]

Originally Posted by BendtheBar

I'm not sure if powerlifting followed the path of bodybuilding, not how much of it has to do with drug use.

I believe they both followed the drug path together. Training for either BB or PL doesn't have to be massively different in the off-season. Think of the "Original Arnold" routine for mass, the Park routines or for a PL example Hepburns constant weight routines, they all had these fundamental principles:

1) Stay injury free, which really is the big one. The longer you're in the game productively the more you'll lift.
2) Get stronger in the bigger exercises for reps.

Power guys like Doug Young would of course do low(er) reps with the bulk of their work in the power exercises. Physique guys would usually (not always) work with high(er) reps and would not neccessarily stick to the power exercises, Ross's Incline DB. Press comes to mind.

The marked differences are only in-season/pre-competition. Where one will specialise in strength or physique goals. These have traditionally been shorter 12-16 week cycles leading upto a competition. I have a book here called The Bench Press which details training cycles of many of the top Benchers ever from the 60's to the 90's and each one of them said they train with higher reps in the off-season and aim to get stronger for reps.

Maxing out in the gym seems to be a relatively new concept, even the original WSB crew back in the day never did that. They rotated exercises for sure and had lower weight/speed days but rarely were training maxes talked about. Lower reps were done for more volume.

I'm sure part of the reason is escalating drug-use. With anabolic hormones swimming around in the body throughout the week, the body would not need to be trained three times or even two times a week. Once is plenty. In that context hitting the lift as hard you can once a week makes sense.

[BendtheBar]

Originally Posted by Fazc

Maxing out in the gym seems to be a relatively new concept, even the original WSB crew back in the day never did that. They rotated exercises for sure and had lower weight/speed days but rarely were training maxes talked about. Lower reps were done for more volume.

I'm sure part of the reason is escalating drug-use. With anabolic hormones swimming around in the body throughout the week, the body would not need to be trained three times or even two times a week. Once is plenty. In that context hitting the lift as hard you can once a week makes sense.

I would also add that I believe most Westside lifters to use training gear. As I have never trained heavy in gear, I am not sure of it's impact. But I do wonder how much this changed the Westside dynamic.

Maybe I am speaking out of school here...

[5kgLifter]

Originally Posted by BendtheBar

Was doing some reading last night and it put into context just how hard a natural 700 pound deadlift is to achieve.

Bob Peoples set a deadlift record of 719 pounds, and this record stood for 50 years.

His training is interesting because he deadlifted heavy nearly day, and also focused quite often on eccentric training. In fact, he developed machines to lift the weight for him so he could practice lowering it.

A 700 natural deadlift is an amazing accomplishment.

I find this bit of interest because when I started with the KB jerks, at the weightload of 12kg...I trained them everyday, for a few reps only, with each weightload which is how I got up to the 24kg eventually.

I found that doing a few reps, max of 10, with the 12kg...one with the 16kg, when I could, and then 8 with it...one rep with the 20kg and then progressed to 7 reps, and onto the one rep at 24kg which turned in to 3 single reps possible in the one session toward the end...seemed like a hot knife through butter for progression.


Initial KB use was: 8kg (warm-up 10 reps), 12kg slightly less reps, 16kg as many as seemed sensible (or possible, to begin with)*

That progressed to: 12kg (warm-ups), 16kg slightly less reps, 20kg as many as seemed sensible (or possible, to begin with)*

Then: 16kg (warm-ups), 20kg slightly less reps, 24kg one rep which progressed to several with short breaks.



There's definitely something in the daily training as long as it's not overdone or overreached, and that ran alongside anything else I was doing at the time...took barely a few minutes at most.







* Initially it would be one rep, or even a half-rep which did not go up at all...as the days went on the reps increased quite steadily and relatively easily, all things considered.

[Fazc]

Originally Posted by BendtheBar

I would also add that I believe most Westside lifters to use training gear. As I have never trained heavy in gear, I am not sure of it's impact. But I do wonder how much this changed the Westside dynamic.

Maybe I am speaking out of school here...

Yep maybe, i've had some experience with gear. Typically the time taken to take the gear on/off as well as considerably work on the main lifts doesn't really lend itself well to a full body. You can imagine trying to do a geared Bench, geared squat and geared deadlift on your Monday heavy day! Not gonna happen, it'd be like doing a full meet at the start of every week.

When I trained for power (whether geared or not) my training looked like this:

1)

Bench 5x1 , 5x5
Rows 5x5
Incline DB. Press 5x10
Cable Rows 5x10

2)

Squat singles
Arched GMs singles to to triples
Leg Press 3x5
Abs 5x10

3)

Overhead Press 5x1, 5x5
Chins 5x10
Incline Bench 5x10
Cable Row 5x10

4)

Deadlift upto 5 doubles
Either deficit or partial singles
Ab work

These sessions would take an hour to two hours sometimes. If you figure a geared lifter is going to be doing at least as much work on the main lifts and perhaps some prehab etc which is popular, the time really begins to run up.

Also back to the discussion, the above routine could be adapted quite easily to a more bodybuilding type approach.

[BendtheBar]

Originally Posted by Fazc

Typically the time taken to take the gear on/off as well as considerably work on the main lifts doesn't really lend itself well to a full body.

I was thinking more in terms of the evolution withing Westside over the years...from this quote. The evolution of Westside from low rep volume work to max training.

Maxing out in the gym seems to be a relatively new concept, even the original WSB crew back in the day never did that. They rotated exercises for sure and had lower weight/speed days but rarely were training maxes talked about. Lower reps were done for more volume.

Regarding your workout...add a few sets of 5-10 rep squats instead of the singles and I think it's an excellent muscle building approach.

[Fazc]

Originally Posted by BendtheBar

I was thinking more in terms of the evolution withing Westside over the years...from this quote. The evolution of Westside from low rep volume work to max training.

Right yeah the old stuff seemed quite clear; they basically cycled low reps for longer cycles as their ME day. But who knows what they currently do at WSB exactly. I think in reality it's a lot more instinctive and a lot less prescriptive. They're a bunch of the strongest lifters on the planet training in one facility. On any given day at WSB I highly doubt you'd see six 300lb powerbears frantically huddled around a printed piece of paper to tell them whether it's GHR's or RDLs today.

Quite a few articles have talked about lighter days and rep days. If they needed reps on the given day i'm sure they would forego the heavy session and go at another time of the day to do reps.

However as these things do, over time certain principles are more or less widely accepted and they tend to blur over the bigger picture. I think that is what happened with PL, and a similar thing could be said for pre-competition routnes in BB.