Why Would You Want to Use Gear?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
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Explain to me why you would ever want to lift any way other than raw? I know that this thread will be pretty ugly. But maybe someone will give a good answer and help me understand.

A few weeks ago I was ready to hit a new Pr. When I did it, guy filming it for me said “that’s a good lift”. I watched the video. I wasn’t convinced. I thought that it might be a little high, but I really couldn’t tell. I got home, put it on my computer, paused at the lowest point. It was a inch high. I was aggravated. I tried to tell myself, eh, close enough. But it didn’t work at all. When I woke up, before I even got out of bed, I was aggravated about my lift. Went back to the gym, did the lift again, hit parallel. There was no satisfaction in the lift when it was high, no sense of accomplishment, because it wasn’t correct.

I kind of apply the same thought process to a geared lift. You can get really strong raw. And that is a great thing. Why would you want to wear gear? Why not just train and do the same weight raw? If you can’t lift the weight, then you don’t need to be lifting the weight.

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ut oh

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Dude, you take gym lifts way too seriously.

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Oh Shit…

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Boring.

If you bother with this topic, at least have the decency to present some reasonable argumentation.

Hint: you didn’t.

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Because if you compete in the sport of geared lifting, it would be dumb not to use gear. It’d be like stepping up to the plate in baseball but not using a bat. Geared powerlifting is a sport, not something you took a video of in the gym.

You are tossing around wiffle ball in your backyard and using that to complain that college baseball players use aluminum bats.

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The beauty (as well as the bane) of this sport is that there are federations and divisions to accommodate everyone’s competitive preferences. As such, I don’t understand why there are such strong opinions about opposing choices. And it’s not like other sports don’t have “gear” that provides enhanced performance. Take rock climbing shoes, for example . . . You think rubber soled and sided shoes don’t give a decided advantage over standard hiking boots?

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[quote]kpsnap wrote:
The beauty (as well as the bane) of this sport is that there are federations and divisions to accommodate everyone’s competitive preferences. As such, I don’t understand why there are such strong opinions about opposing choices. [/quote]

This.

“Why do people do things I don’t enjoy? Why don’t they just do the things I enjoy instead?”

There are people into way freakier shit than geared lifting.

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I lift raw so I compete raw. It is my preference. Some people like to lift in gear. Its a different challenge all together. Some people like variety. This argument is always brought up by raw lifters. Gear lifters see a good raw lift and can appreciate it. Why the fuck cant we be happy for someone who has the balls to get under 1000lbs squat suit or not.

My questions are, why care? are you envious of the attention that gear lifters get? does it make you upset they have a higher total? Are you comparing yourself to geared lifters? Do you even compete?

I lift raw in the 275’s so I compare myself to others who lift raw 275. I have no hatred toward gear lifters.
In fact I respect the way they compete and push the envelope. Is gear lifting for me? No, but in 7 years who knows maybe it will be.

Just know this, if you are an elite lifter, gear or no gear, you worked your ass off to get there. And to knock someones preference because its not for you is stupid. Especially when if you even compete, you are not being compared to them.

And if you think its easy or cheating, prove it. Get some gear and get under the bar and beat them.

I respect your opinion of wanting to lift raw. But this is powerlifting and like it or not there will always be a gear category. In fact that is where all the money is.

and before anyone asks, yes I am mad bro

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[quote]BigRedMachine87 wrote:
Explain to me why you would ever want to lift any way other than raw? I know that this thread will be pretty ugly. But maybe someone will give a good answer and help me understand.
[/quote]

In addition to lifting weights as a hobby I enjoy cycling, particularly mountain biking. As a TN guy yourself, you may know that we have some epic trails around here in the Nashville area. I’ll use this example to possibly put the gear thing into this perspective.

I own a fully rigid aka no suspension of any kind, mountain bike that has ONE gear or a single speed as they are called, yeah obvious huh, lol… I fucking LOVE this bike because it’s just me and the trail on a simple machine. No frills and thrills.I can’t rely on gears to get my sorry ass up hills. I either put up or have to walk up them bitches. Since I have no shocks, I have to chose better line through the woods or I get beat to fuck by the trail. This is my “raw” bike…lol. As fun as it is my average speed on this thing is 5 mph and I can go about 6-8 miles before I am beat up and exhausted from all the extra bike handling I must do to operate this machine.

I also own a full suspension mountain bike with 5" of travel, disk brakes, 27 gears, aluminum frame etc. This bike is bad ass too and I ride those same trails. Only with this bike I can go about 9-10 mph and ride 12-15 miles before I am beat. Assuming I maintain my “form” by choosing good lines on the trail this bike allows me to perform better than I otherwise would on the “raw” bike.

All in all it’s still ME peddling these machines and steering and crashing etc.

to quote Ice Cube, “do yo thang man, fuck what they lookin at”…

to close, I thought gear was kind of silly at first too. Then with nagging hips all the fucking time I bought some briefs on sale. I immediately starting using them, not all the time but frequently & I felt great and I could train HARDER than I otherwise could. Guess what, when I lifted raw again my numbers improved. Since I felt better, I could train more often, which further improved my numbers.

So having said all this, I’ll ask YOU a question. If POWER LIFTING is truly your passion, then why wouldn’t you do, or at least consider everything within reason to get more weight on the bar?

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[quote]scottkoscielniak wrote:
I lift raw so I compete raw. It is my preference. Some people like to lift in gear. Its a different challenge all together. Some people like variety. This argument is always brought up by raw lifters. Gear lifters see a good raw lift and can appreciate it. Why the fuck cant we be happy for someone who has the balls to get under 1000lbs squat suit or not.

My questions are, why care? are you envious of the attention that gear lifters get? does it make you upset they have a higher total? Are you comparing yourself to geared lifters? Do you even compete?

I lift raw in the 275’s so I compare myself to others who lift raw 275. I have no hatred toward gear lifters.
In fact I respect the way they compete and push the envelope. Is gear lifting for me? No, but in 7 years who knows maybe it will be.

Just know this, if you are an elite lifter, gear or no gear, you worked your ass off to get there. And to knock someones preference because its not for you is stupid. Especially when if you even compete, you are not being compared to them.

And if you think its easy or cheating, prove it. Get some gear and get under the bar and beat them.

I respect your opinion of wanting to lift raw. But this is powerlifting and like it or not there will always be a gear category. In fact that is where all the money is.

and before anyone asks, yes I am mad bro[/quote]

I was going to type something like this. Couldn’t agree more.

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Because other people enjoy the sport of powerlifting.

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I guess after squatting, benching and deadlifting “raw” for about 15 years, I just started to feel bored of the lifts. As my goals and priorities changed, my maxes went up and down but I’ve essentially done the power lifts since I was in high school.

For me, I started geared lifting because I had the opportunity to train at one of the best multi-ply gyms in the country. When I first started, I hated the idea of a magical suit that added pounds to your lifts. After I tried it (emphasis there), I learned to appreciate it. Geared lifting is much more difficult than raw lifting. The margin for error is essentially nothing.

I don’t know why raw lifters are so opposed to geared lifting. To me, it’s simply the next progression in your power lifting career. By the way, do you notice that a lot of times when geared lifters take their gear off they are strong raw too? All of my RAW lifts have gone up since using gear.

I can’t believe I even typed all of that. This “why do equipped lifting” conversation reminds me of when I was a kid I was afraid girls would give me cooties.

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[quote]frankjl wrote:
I guess after squatting, benching and deadlifting “raw” for about 15 years, I just started to feel bored of the lifts. As my goals and priorities changed, my maxes went up and down but I’ve essentially done the power lifts since I was in high school.

For me, I started geared lifting because I had the opportunity to train at one of the best multi-ply gyms in the country. When I first started, I hated the idea of a magical suit that added pounds to your lifts. After I tried it (emphasis there), I learned to appreciate it. Geared lifting is much more difficult than raw lifting. The margin for error is essentially nothing.

I don’t know why raw lifters are so opposed to geared lifting. To me, it’s simply the next progression in your power lifting career. By the way, do you notice that a lot of times when geared lifters take their gear off they are strong raw too? All of my RAW lifts have gone up since using gear.

I can’t believe I even typed all of that. This “why do equipped lifting” conversation reminds me of when I was a kid I was afraid girls would give me cooties.[/quote]

Don’t believe that raw lifters are opposed to geared lifting. There are some, but they are the vocal minority, and in most cases they aren’t even actual raw lifters because they don’t compete. They just train and call themselves “raw” even though they never stepped on the platform.

I got nothing but respect for gear. After trying to squeeze my ass into an Inzer champion, I can’t even imagine what multi-ply is like.

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Sweet I’ve been looking for more retards to add to my ignore list

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I lift geared because it’s like using a condom during sex, bebe.

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Powerlifters are usually not the most cerebral. Don’t expect a good/reasonable/logical answer! HA!

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But seriously, when I started powerlifting in 1996, I competed collegiately, through USAPL. At that time, raw was non-existent and if you wanted to compete you at least competed in single ply gear. In USAPL, with the collegiate lifting pool, that meant if you wanted to stand a chance you used single ply gear.

After using up all of my collegiate time, I competed in the open level. Then USAPL started having a raw division, that was actually well contetsted. So I made the switch to raw lifting ~3 year ago. I chose to make the switch because I felt that to be successful at geared lifting, I had to spend a significant amount of time learning how to use a piece of fabric. It was a royal pain, training by myself asking others to help me get the equipment on/off.

In powerlifting, inherent in its name is not using a tight piece of fabric. It is not equivalent to tennis, golf, baseball, where inherent in the definition of the sport is the use of equipment.

Beef

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[quote]beefcakemdphd wrote:
But seriously, when I started powerlifting in 1996, I competed collegiately, through USAPL. At that time, raw was non-existent and if you wanted to compete you at least competed in single ply gear. In USAPL, with the collegiate lifting pool, that meant if you wanted to stand a chance you used single ply gear.

After using up all of my collegiate time, I competed in the open level. Then USAPL started having a raw division, that was actually well contetsted. So I made the switch to raw lifting ~3 year ago. I chose to make the switch because I felt that to be successful at geared lifting, I had to spend a significant amount of time learning how to use a piece of fabric. It was a royal pain, training by myself asking others to help me get the equipment on/off.

In powerlifting, inherent in its name is not using a tight piece of fabric. It is not equivalent to tennis, golf, baseball, where inherent in the definition of the sport is the use of equipment.

Beef[/quote]

I couldn’t agree with this more and minus the competing on college, it perfectly describes my time in the sport.

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I think geared lifters look ridiculous. It’s like taking steroids; if you can’t lift it yourself, why bother?