Powerlifting Mentality About Size

behexen · December 12, 2013, 10:31pm

In light of Andrey setting the raw powerlifting record I got thinking about how little I’ve cared about the smaller weights and records. I was always a small guy growing up and looked up to big strong individuals. The 300lb.+ mammoths hitting 700lb. or 800lb. squats sucked me in like a tractor beam. I mean no disrespect by this but I’ve just never been as awe struck by the smaller guys who are no doubt doing just as impressive of feats but the smaller frame and smaller weights just don’t strike the same emotion in me as the big weights.

So I ask, 1.Do people who compete in the lower weight classes actively cut weight for years or is this something they do as they age and grow over time until they can reach the larger classes.

Am I the only one who seems to feel this way or is this a commonly shared trait amongst powerlifters.

Again I mean no disrespect to any of the lighter weight competitors, you all work hard and deserve all the credit for your efforts. Just something I’ve noticed about my own interests.

T3hPwnisher · December 12, 2013, 11:03pm

I cut the the lowest weight I can while keeping my strength because that means I am more competitive versus not doing that. I still actively train to get bigger and stronger, but I only put on size when it’s necessary to add strength, as to do otherwise would be silly for a powerlifter.

As for point 2, I powerlift for me, rather than other peoples’ enjoyment of my lifting. It’s a boring sport honestly, I can’t imagine worrying about spectators on either side.

ouroboro_s · December 13, 2013, 2:19pm

Speaking as a small lifter, I maintain a lighter weight to be as competitive as possible. I can more easily be at the top of one weight class (57kg) rather than the bottom of another (63kg). Mostly I compete for myself but will look at all the women lifting around my weight and try to make strategic decisions from there.

Maybe we find it more interesting to watch the group most similar to our own size. I don’t watch the men all that much because I can’t relate to the weights and size. However, to watch a 57kg woman squat over 200 kg is much more interesting to me.

osu122975 · December 13, 2013, 3:48pm

I wanna lift as heavy as possible. So weight classes don’t mean anything to me. If you find you are stronger at a smaller weight class, it’s probably because your leverages changed for the worse. There’s always give and take.

There are 198ers pulling the same weights as SHW so in the DL it doesn’t matter that much. Bench and squat are all together different. A bigger base generally means a bigger lift. Leverages and technique are EVERYTHING in lifting heavy weight. You will only ever get so strong and lift so heavy before you hit a wall. Then you gotta start looking at different aspects of lifting weight in order to keep making progress.

Some people are enamored w/ the pound for pound strongest lifter. I personally don’t care about that. Whoever moves more weight is stronger - PERIOD!

No doubt in my mind if the goal is to lift more weight and the smaller guys can gain the necessary body weight to achieve that, then they will or would. Unfortunately, most of them are limited by their genetics.

Rock978 · December 13, 2013, 10:51pm

Could care less about bodyweights. Powerlifting is about moving as much barbell weight as possible, end of story. People who worry about bodyweight ratios seem to me to be people who are looking to hide from the reality that some of the big guys are a lot stronger than they are.

Put it this way – Benni Magnusson and I have very similar bodyweight:deadlift ratios. It means absolutely nothing. I still have miles to go to reach what I feel would be respectable PRs, and even if I were to reach my most far-stretched lifetime goals, I still wouldn’t be half the lifter Benni is.

DAVE101 · December 13, 2013, 11:19pm

A small guy lifting 1,000 lbs is more impressive than a bigger guy lifting 1,000 lbs.

budreiser · December 13, 2013, 11:18pm

Its a stupid fucking mentality that a bunch of fat ass shw’s have. People in lighter weight classes aren’t there because they spend their whole lives cutting. I’m 5’6 on a good day. I could bulk up to 220 but it would just be sloppy weight. I wouldn’t be anywhere near as competitive as I am in the 181’s. I also like getting laid and not being a fatass really helps.

TheMasterTurtle · December 13, 2013, 11:37pm

Being 5’6 the smaller guys are a lot more inspiring to me. As someone said upthread often times you’d be more interested in people with similar circumstances to yourself.

Reed · December 14, 2013, 2:19am

I’m 5’7" and I used to think my size was a crutch until I met Sam Byrd. Sam as 198-220 lifter Squats 800+ on a off day fucking unequipped, has pressed 500, and pulls into the 700s. I love seeing the most weight put up end of story body weight ratio be damned. Just because I’m a smaller in stature I refuse to except this means I’m destined to pull smaller in stature weights.

HeavyTriple · December 15, 2013, 3:02am

[quote]budreiser wrote:
Its a stupid fucking mentality that a bunch of fat ass shw’s have. People in lighter weight classes aren’t there because they spend their whole lives cutting. I’m 5’6 on a good day. I could bulk up to 220 but it would just be sloppy weight. I wouldn’t be anywhere near as competitive as I am in the 181’s. I also like getting laid and not being a fatass really helps.[/quote]

Love it. The fatties can keep their extra 100 pounds of total and I’ll keep a healthy body that’s still stronger than most of them.

I tend to see that attitude in really shitty powerlifters, though. It’s the fat guys who aren’t really competitive in their respective classes that I hear running their mouths.

HeavyTriple · December 15, 2013, 3:11am

[quote]osu122975 wrote:

Some people are enamored w/ the pound for pound strongest lifter. I personally don’t care about that. Whoever moves more weight is stronger - PERIOD![/quote]

Not really. If the range of motion is shorter, there is less work being done. You can make it black and white like that, but I’ll still take the guy moving 400 pounds over a 16-inch ROM over the guy moving 410 over an 8-inch ROM.

Patent nonsense. I can weigh a lot more than the 200-210 range I choose to stay in, but I’ve done it and it sucks. I’d much rather feel good and get as strong as possible in this weight range than chase a dream that will leave me a wheezing heart attack waiting to happen for the absurdly inadequate prize of: Slightly More Weight Lifted.

I really hope you can out-total the 198s on this site lifting in the 1500-1600 range if you are going to spew such ignorance.

halcj · December 15, 2013, 10:54am

I think there will always be an added element of awe at the weights lifted by bigger lifters. Lightweight lifters are still impressive.
On the subject of height, surely a high weight : height ratio would be helpful, especially in the squat and bench? Hence, a 5’7" lifter would generally have an advantage over a 6’3" lifter if they were both in a heavy (but not superheavy, where it might even out) weight class?

I would think that lacking height gives a potential advantage in a lower weight class, and does little to limit performance in heavier classes, thus being a slight advantage for most? Even SHWs are often ~ 5’10" or less, and this doesn’t hinder them; it’s a shorter ROM.

ouroboro_s · December 15, 2013, 3:56pm

[quote]halcj wrote:
I think there will always be an added element of awe at the weights lifted by bigger lifters. Lightweight lifters are still impressive.
On the subject of height, surely a high weight : height ratio would be helpful, especially in the squat and bench? Hence, a 5’7" lifter would generally have an advantage over a 6’3" lifter if they were both in a heavy (but not superheavy, where it might even out) weight class?

I would think that lacking height gives a potential advantage in a lower weight class, and does little to limit performance in heavier classes, thus being a slight advantage for most? Even SHWs are often ~ 5’10" or less, and this doesn’t hinder them; it’s a shorter ROM.[/quote]

Intellectually I think this is true. I’m 5’6" and weigh 124. I’m tall for my weight class most of which is leg. When I watch all the 5’ women squat it looks like they barely have to move at all while I feel like I’m moving through time zones.

StrengthDawg · December 15, 2013, 4:08pm

[quote]ouroboro_s wrote:

When I watch all the 5’ women squat it looks like they barely have to move at all while I feel like I’m moving through time zones.
[/quote]

LMAO!! This is Great O… I’m totally stealing this

on the “more weight = stronger lifter” thing… IDK, if I see a 400# dude squatting 800# I am not as impressed as a 200# guy squatting 500#. One is 2 x BW and the other is 2.5. Yeah i get the 800# is more, but come on. If I were to lift against the middle school kids would this same “more weight” thing still be applicable? Prolly not right…

kgildner · December 15, 2013, 5:13pm

I can more or less understand where each of the posters in this thread is coming from, but I’m personally still more often impressed by stronger bodyweight-ratio lifts than by stronger absolute lifts. It probably has something to do with the most extreme end of the spectrum (SHW, geared, limited ROM) being much more abstract to me. I’ve always been a pretty lanky person, have never lifted with any gear and can’t really identify with 300+ lbs dudes who do so.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still mind-boggling to watch Benni Magnusson deadlift a trillion pounds, but I personally am much more amazed by things like this:

OmniStyx · December 15, 2013, 7:47pm

I stand around 5’9" at 175-180 pounds. I generally watch 198, 220, and sometimes 242 lifters. They big enough where they’re putting up huge numbers, but they’re typically not so big that they’re leverages differ so drastically from my own. Watching Andrey hit 970x3 is awesome, but he is so much larger than me that I can’t really relate to it. Watching lifters lighter than me or around my weight is alright, but it doesn’t give me as high of numbers to shoot for.

I’m surprised Wilks hasn’t come up in this discussion yet. I think it does a pretty decent job of embodying impressiveness of lifts. A 150 lifter squatting 450 is pretty good, but a 250 lifter hitting 750 to me is much more impressive, and the Wilks coefficient is also significantly higher for the 250.

In terms of what I want to achieve for myself, I plan on getting as strong as I can in 181 without moving up to 198 unless the added weight would help me be more competitive. I would ideally like to compete as a 198 eventually, but my body starts hating me whenever I get around 180 pounds and it does everything it can to bring my weight down. Stupid IBS…

some_dude1 · December 20, 2013, 1:44pm

I’m impressed by anyone that can out-lift me, regardless of what they weigh.

osu122975 · December 20, 2013, 3:25pm

[quote]HeavyTriple wrote:
Patent nonsense. I can weigh a lot more than the 200-210 range I choose to stay in, but I’ve done it and it sucks. I’d much rather feel good and get as strong as possible in this weight range than chase a dream that will leave me a wheezing heart attack waiting to happen for the absurdly inadequate prize of: Slightly More Weight Lifted.

I really hope you can out-total the 198s on this site lifting in the 1500-1600 range if you are going to spew such ignorance.
[/quote]

In powerlifting, more weight lifted = stronger lifter. No doubt there are unhealthy lifters. Powerlifting isn’t just strength, it’s also leverages.

You choose to stay at that weight because you feel better. That’s great. Gaining weight isn’t necessarily gaining fat as you are assuming.

It is impressive to watch smaller bw lifters move big weights, just not as impressive as whoever lifts the most weight. Dave Hoff has totaled more than anyone in the world (by multiply standards) at 275 - not a SHW. Ed Coan is a perfect example of gaining weight brought bigger lifts yet Ed wasn’t obese. Gaining weight doesn’t mean gain 10% extra body fat.

It’s all in the eye of the beholder. I’ve had a couple co-workers say they wanna get stronger but won’t do what’s necessary to get stronger (too afraid of losing their abs and not able to impress girls) Maybe some lifters are more worried about getting girls than moving more weight? I don’t know, but my goals are to move more weight. I’m already married - LOL!

[/quote]I really hope you can out-total the 198s on this site lifting in the 1500-1600 range if you are going to spew such ignorance.[/quote]

Why? What does it matter? Still doesn’t make me wrong that in powerlifting, the guy who moves the most weight is the strongest lifter. Fat ass or skinny ass, the guy who lifts the most weight is the strongest. What engine makes more torque, a Honda 4cyl or a Chevy 350? Doesn’t mean that the Honda engine isn’t good and strong, but it ain’t got more power than a 350. Size matters. (No pun intended).

budreiser · December 20, 2013, 8:30pm

[quote]osu122975 wrote:

Why? What does it matter? Still doesn’t make me wrong that in powerlifting, the guy who moves the most weight is the strongest lifter. Fat ass or skinny ass, the guy who lifts the most weight is the strongest. What engine makes more torque, a Honda 4cyl or a Chevy 350? Doesn’t mean that the Honda engine isn’t good and strong, but it ain’t got more power than a 350. Size matters. (No pun intended).

[/quote]
The strongest guy is the one who lifts the most within his/her weight class. it matters because its retarded to compare weight classes to each other. It’s like comparing top fuel to funny car in drag racing or any other category in drag racing.

Paul33 · December 20, 2013, 9:42pm