Often, dudes who squat with the Puss Pad are carrying the bar up on their neck bones. A bar position SO Shitty, that’s it’s impossible to squat like that, without the Puss Pad. With the bar so high, they can’t squat down, so do a shifty forward knee slide then kinda bend over, instead of a squat. Then they start loading weight onto this terrible motion, learning and reinforcing an impossibly terrible squat.
It’s like they use the Puss Pad to cover their puss necks, to develop a heavier, shitty squat. If they ditched the pad, they would instantly get a better squat, because they would have to get the bar off their necks. But they won’t stop to go back to step 1.
For some reason, it’s frustrating to see other guys use douche equipment to “skip steps.” Like the dude who wraps his elbows with knee wraps to “bench” 3 plates in the Smith Machine.
If I saw Platz squatting, I’d be like, “Wow! He’s using that funky squat technique and bar pad to crush his legs!”
I get the manta Ray, but the pad doesn’t make any sense to me considering how big and squishy they are. No way to get tight or anything. I barely back squat though, so I could honestly care less what people use. Only thing I use the pad for is bench to add variety to ME days.
Yeah back when I started training, it was in a small, privately owned gym and the owner told all of us wrap towels around the bar when squatting. Reason was he didn’t want us to get sweat all over the bars. Back then we were like, “Ok, cool, whatever” lol. Didn’t make a difference to anyone. It wasn’t even a fixed rule that he actively enforced but I did it out of simple courtesy.
Which is why I don’t get why people make such a big deal out of the pad nowadays. How much higher on the hardcore scale can you get just because you’re not using one lol?
Wow that dude’s not using a pad! Charles fucking Bronson’s in the house guys!
I typically workout with no one (or just my training partner) around, and I confess that I typically have a better lift when I have an audience, especially when they are the “typical” gym goer…or old ladies, they make you feel stupid strong hahaha
I’m the same way–train alone, but occasionally have an audience (read: people standing nearby waiting on equipment). Like you, I tend to grind out a extra few reps in these situations, which makes me think I’m unconsciously slacking during my typical no-audience workouts.
I got my Westside Barbell t-shirt in the mail today.
Fanboy mode engaged.
Also, on the topic of an audience, Steve Pulcinella talked about how he used to drag women from the cardio section of the gym to watch him set PRs, because he always did better when women watched him lift.
Negative again, haha. This is a shirt I bought from Westside barbell, not the production company making the movie, which is unrelated to Westside Barbell.
I put up $40 for the kickstarter so that I can get a copy of the DVDs.
I tend to admire people’s abilities to manipulate shadows and filters on Instagram rather than the physiques themselves. It’s amazing what an art people have to turned it into.
That’s very true, there are some incredible physiques though. I think on average most gyms have maybe 1 or 2 top notch physiques, but seeing them all concentrated in one place makes it look like the norm.
It’s all relative. I always tell my first time competitors that almost everyone they’ll see on the stage is “the big guy” from their respective gyms. Of course once you line ‘em up more often than not the ones you typically view as big or ripped don’t seem quite as impressive.
The amount of tumblr and Instagram posts where chicks have contorted themselves to make it look like they’re Jessica Rabbit incarnate, used to make me feel like something was wrong with me because I didn’t look like them.
Upon finding the Youtube channels they are associated with, when you look at them in real time, they look so painfully normal. And by normal I mean a regularly healthy female individual with decent proportions.
Then I did some experiments.
I sucked it in, pushed my chest out, gave myself a huge back arch, and pushed my butt out. Standing up, bending over, laying to the side, laying on my stomach…dude. I managed to look like the compilation chicks on YouTube where all you’re really looking at is their butt. And I’m pretty graced back there.
It’s incredibly easy to add stuff where stuff really isn’t when you use angles. Filters and gradients make it even better (well, worse when you find out what’s really going on)
Most “fit chicks”, don’t even look like their photos online.