Umm, no. He went and bombed, in spite of hype. He was young, so nerves can easily be to blame, but he was given every opportunity and advantage and just doesn’t have much work ethic. He wasted his natural abilities and had a crap run at wrestling - and I seriously doubt he made much money. It takes some time and a big following to really knock it down and he was a flash in the pan there too. All the natural ability in the world and he struggled. He could have made more money in Weightlifting with a little success and perseverance. The sponsorship stuff makes them a lot of money if there’s public interest. Imagine a successful American O-lifter and the opportunities there, if you can. Usain Bolt would be a pauper in comparison.
Only if extreme strength helps you in those sports. There are only a few sports that it really helps a lot. Even within those sports, other things may be more important. Strength in football is highly valued in a few positions, but is not the dominate trait looked for in most positions, and football is one of the sports in which strength is most valued.
I’ll say that several filters exist with strength, athletic ability, and sport. The absolute freaks (Bo Jackson, Randy Moss, Jordan), get filtered into pro sports. They are 6+ deviations away from the mean for athletic ability.
For powerlifting, I think in general the people who do it, are stronger than average on average (of course anyone can do it, but things like embarrassment keep people from doing it). IMO, we see a lot of people who are probably 1 standard deviation away from the mean for strength and up. Not many below that due to people wanting to do well at what they do. We probably don’t see too many people with 85 IQ scores competing in chess either.
Powerlifting is also mostly an adult sport. I got into it after high school sports, and some competitive college climbing. I wanted something to do, that I was pretty good at. I probably would not have done it, had I not been one of the stronger guys at my weight after a short time. I certainly wouldn’t have done it if I was below average.
Has a net worth of $4.5m from wrestling.
I would like that kind of money.
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Not giving up. It took me about 3-4 years of benching to hit 350. Keeping elbows and shoulders healthy matters a lot too (at least for me). I had to at times scale things back to be able to keep training.
I mostly only bench once a week. A few training blocks had twice, but I would get elbow issues doing that.
For me here it was volume. Working on getting stronger in the 5-8 rep range was the ticket. Didn’t seems as hard on the joints either.
That’s a lot more than I would have expected for two short runs. He was more fizzle than sizzle.
It’s why wrestling was the smart move. Much bigger payout in shorter time. It’s the crux of what I am saying.
Eat everything in sight and takes tons of steroids. Do a bit of benching too.
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He should have defected to the Russians, would have got better coaching.
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Are you insinuating that taking him to Nova Scotia to train him for the US team was a suspect move?
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I don’t know about his career at all, but if you want to be good at weightlifting then wouldn’t you want the best coaches in the sport? WL isn’t a sport where the top athletes train alone with no coach, and no Americans or Canadians are winning medals, they are obviously doing something wrong.
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Took me a good 10 years to get to 350, with regular benching though admittedly with hypertrophy rather than strength focus for most of that.
If I was willing to get fat though I’m 100% certain it would have come a lot faster, and weight gain is almost certainly what I need to break my current plateau. That or a much better arch.
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yeah this. Things like pec strains will set you back the most. Being able to do good amount of pressing and tricep work and NOT pissing off shoulders and elbows over the long term is huge.
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Some thoughts:
keep joints healthy as above
Get triceps really strong
Get triceps big
Get back strong from all angles
Stretch pecs hard after any chest or shoulder session
Excessively warmup for flat barbell bench
Do a blast of Westside/very heavy program each year(brian alsruhe one below is great)
Spend most of the time doing powerbuilding type templates
Do a period really submaximal work like Dan John 40 day program
Get some kind of deep tissue work on pecs and shoulders at least once every 6 months.
once a month even, if got some coin
This guy’s stuff was a game changer for me personally…
Alphas Westside spin …
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Hadn’t read this story from Dave and it was a great one. Now i need pizza and oil !!
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The one thing I hate is that this story keeps getting reproduced while missing what was supposedly THE key element to the whole thing: eating 2 candy bars every 1-2 hours. The theory was that it would keep your insulin jacked up the whole time, and that you could just put the chocolate in your mouth and let it melt so that you didn’t even need to chew. J M Blakely was big on highly palatable food for weight gain, and that was a big discovery in that regard.
Man, what an era, haha.
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I remember trying to get to 300lbs. I miss those days. 8pc chicken with biscuits from Church’s on the way to work. Drawer full of food at work. It was really hard to do even eating dirty.
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I topped out at 217 at 5’9. REALLY wanted to see 220 on the scale.
I’m 6’0 dead even. I hit 300, barely, for one and only one weigh in. Jared Spybrook weighed in with a sandwich in his hand trying to make Heavyweight. Those were the days.
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I’m surprised he didn’t get diabetes the way he was eating. Some of the things he said about food were pretty funny though, like there is an old video where he says “canned soda is an excellent source of water”. It was just a nonstop eating binge when he was bulking.
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Assuming you can bench 250lbs for at least a few singles:
Early in the week: Bench 250 for low reps and high sets (1-5 reps for 4-6 sets) RPE 8-9, 20-50 total pull-ups or Chest-supported rows, Superset favorite bicep and tricep exercise for 2-3 sets 20 reps. Keep the bench weight the same here, but try to do a little more each week.
Middle of the week: Bench 155lbs for high reps and low sets (8-15 reps for 1-3 sets) RPE 7-8, 20-50 total pull-ups or chest-supported rows, superset favorite bicep and tricep exercise for 2-3 sets 20 reps. Slowly add weight and volume to this day over time, but do not force it.
Late in the week: Your favorite overhead press for high sets and high reps (4-6 sets for 8-15 reps) RPE 5-7, 50 total pull-ups or Chest-supported rows, Superset favorite bicep and tricep exercise for 2-3 sets 20 reps. Focus on getting as much blood into the area as possible on this day.
Focus on building the volume up on the heavy session each week. Either add more total reps or do the same reps in less sets. So 3 sets of singles turns into 2x2, which turns into 3 sets of 2, then 2 sets of 3, then 3 sets of 3 and so forth. Once you can get to 250 for 5x5 on the heavy day, start adding weight and working backwards: 275 for 4x4, 300 for 3x3, 325 2x2, 350 x1. The light session should add weight and reps slowly while focusing on technique and adding muscle to benching muscles. The overhead should be about getting as much blood into the area as possible and adding muscle to the shoulders and arms while giving yourself a break from benching. Continue to squat heavy for moderate sets and reps on the days in-between to help keep the CNS prepped and save deadlifts for the day after overheads. Cut out all cardio if possible and eat as much as you can. I cannot emphasize the last point enough. An increase in BW is almost guarenteed to result in an increase in your bench. I regularly ate 4k+ calories getting my bench from to 405.