Juan car deadlifts a Volvo 340GL, it weighs 2209 lbs (he weighed 160
lbs at the time of the photo). Also its rear wheel drive (you can see the
gearbox hanging down). Its also fully functional with MOT and insurance.
Juan is lifting it by the tow bar and used it to tow things.
"Many years ago I used to hold to the quaint notion that wrist straps were a waste of time. After all if I couldn't hold onto the weight I wouldn't need the extra strength.
Of course, this was complete nonsense. I found that the increased weight I could lift lead to extra strength which could be used in other lifts. Ironically I also found that the extra strength gained in the strapped lifts lead to a stronger strapless grip.
For the carlift I trained using my 4×4 Bar (see ironclub.net for specifics on that). I achieved the carlift many years ago when I first lifted 363 kg in the 4×4 Sumo; last Summer I lifted 524.8 kg in this lift. so lifting cars is easy."As always, thanks APT,.........Juan
One day after reading Stuart McRobert's stuff I had the idea that I would build a power rack. There weren't any proper 4 post racks around (not for home use) so I designed away and went through hundreds of alterations and ended up building around 40 racks or so. I spent several thousand English pounds on this; to fund it I sold the racks.
If something is going to be made it should be rigorously tested. Calculations showed that the rack should handle a lot of weight. In engineering, calculations are always followed by actual physical tests. I figured the way to do this would be to see if the rack could handle lots of weight. Lifting heavy partials seemed to be one way of achieving this.
This is where I got to find my niche. Miraculously I gained on partials and got stronger in partials. I assumed this was normal; though people kept saying they were dangerous. I wondered how they knew this as they didn't do any partials. The argument would come back that they didn't have to jump off a building to know that was dangerous. I came to know this as HIT mythology. I had no intention of listening to it because prior to the power rack I had spent 10 years of not gaining on HIT.
Observing my ability to lift cars and strap busting 1000-lb weights, people would then say,
?Ah but it doesn't make you stronger in full lifts.'
To which I would reply,
?Do full lifts make you stronger at partials?'
Of course they didn't know because they were too afraid of lifting ?heavy'. However I managed to test a few people and it turned out that they weren't very strong at partials.
Along the way I designed several other items; 8' bars, deadlift frames.
These days, people will occasionally ?accuse' me of only doing partials. as though I care. It's true; I practised partials exclusively for about 7 years. The paradox, of course, is that now perhaps 90-95% of my training volume is based on fuller lifts; this is due to the fact that partials are very stressful and must constitute a small part of the volume of lifting. Of course the partials did make me stronger at full lifts, not miraculously so but I'll take that over nothing.
Juan
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