I have followed this thread with much amusement. How it evolved into the idea that the only reason people can express irritation with you is because you served in the military, thereby defending our right to do this, is beyond me. The thought that we owe you thanks and should keep our mouths shut is contradictory and self-aggrandizing in the extreme, but it seems to be par for the course with you.
Do you really think in this current Global climate there is a single person from USA on here who doesn’t have a relationship with someone who is serving/has served in the military? I can assure you that you are not the poster boy and at the end of the day, you brought negative attention to yourself by virtue of your posts.
The main problem I see is that this is the Powerlifting forum. Powerlifting is a 3 lift discipline. This is not the Bench Tough Guy orum.
What is fascinating to me is in more than 20 years involvement in Powerlifting the only, and I mean that exclusively, the only people I have come across whom seem to irritate everybody in the PL community is the bench only guys. You see them in the gym, and all you hear is “Bench, bench bench. I benched this, he benched this, blah blah blah. When I was 16 I benched 405 during football, blah blah blah, my cousin can bench 800#'s in his basement, blah blah blah.”
They all have great stories about what they have squatted and pulled, and even greater stories about why they can’t squat and pull anymore.
I literally know of not a single Powerlifter who would make posts on a forum like this as you have. In my mind, that’s the main reason for the push back you are experienceing. It would be an entirely different issue if you had hit a top 10 bench in competition recently, or whatever. Then, you would get congrats and perhaps questions on training but gym lifts are nothing to a competitor.
I won’t even address the sweatshirt over the bench shirt thing.
Not to mention, STB has an edge to him but he is a guy in the trenches trying to help people, who also has recent accomplishments in high-level sanctioned competition to back up what he says.
Your latest post about a bench routine is a step in the right direction, but it just appears to me you need to get over yourself and realize most full meet lifters are far more interested in maximizing all three lifts. This typically means they may never reach their full potential in a single lift but the dragon they chase is the total.
They don’t have time to sit around in the gym reenacting the old SNL skit, “How Much Can You Bench.”
