Bob Peoples 700 Pound Deadlift
 

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 think eccentric's has it place as assistance move for the dead, damn taxing on the lower back though, tryed it with rack pulls (5s negatives) and its a killer!

700 sure is no joke.

I would love to try eccentrics but I have a feeling they would hit my lower back too hard. The lower back is hit and miss with me. It's always a fine line between enough and too much.

I was wondering how much carryover good morning eccentrics would have...

I also read he would specialise on either the squat or deadlift for weeks at a time. When he was working the deadlift he would do that lift almost every day to the exclusion of much else. He would then switch to squats and progress on those like that too.

Similar system to John Davis and Doug Hepburn from what i've read, they would typically specialise on one big lift at a time. However both Davis and Hepburn would specialise on a quick lift and always squat as an accessory.

Nice post Fazc. I don't know much about John Davis and his training, and wasn't aware that Peoples would shift focus like that.

It's almost like a form of Dual Factor Training in the sense that he pushed himself pretty hard into (nearly) the overreaching mark.

I bought the back collection of the Dino Files some years ago, there was quite a lot of information about Davis in them. Kubik seemed quite impressed with his accomplishments.

This is going from memory but what he would typically do is something like this:

M/W/F

Snatch 5 x doubles
Squat 3 x 5

M/W/F

Clean & Jerk 5 doubles
Squat 3 x 5

He'd work the Snatch & Squat for a few weeks untill he felt a plateau and then switch to the C&J & Squat. I also heard he would Bench for 5 x triples every now and again too.

I'm sure he would have done some accessory work and quite frankly if we consider who wrote this I wouldn't be surprised if it was abbreviated to fit more in line with the Dino philosophy and whatever strawman he was trying to knock over at the time :) But I digress!

I'm inclined to believe the 5 doubles or 5 singles approach as that was typical of the Oly lifters at the time such as Stanko and the York lot. Hepburn had an epiphany and soon after raised the bar doing upto 10 singles which was his *magic formula* as he put it in his biography.

I've yet to read Dino training and wasn't aware that it was a bit dogmatic.

It's interesting how this frequent style of training has gone the way of the dinosaur, no pun intended. I have never personally researched how powerlifting and strength sports moved away from approaches like this to the once a week per big lift that became so popular. I'm not sure if powerlifting followed the path of bodybuilding, not how much of it has to do with drug use.

Bob Peoples is a legend. I have and read his book, Developing Physical Strength.

He was mainly lifting in the 1930s-1950s, before steroids. This shows us that performance-enhancing drugs are clearly not needed to become brutally strong.

Here is a good article about the dude:
The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban: The Bob Peoples I Knew - Bob Hise II

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

Quote of the day from the article DW posted: