I compile the Provincial newsletter for our association and this issue one of our members kindly contributed an article called “Even at a Crossroads, It’s a Great Time to be a Powerlifer”. Our country has had the recent inclusion of Classic or Raw to our IPF affiliate Canadian Powerlifting Association and there have been growing pains including the type of crappola in this thread. The contributor has competed for 25 years and is a raw lifter but has competed equipped in the past. He has the gift of unemotional examination of information. I’ve cut and pasted a bit of what he wrote because I believe it answers the ultimate question of ‘why gear at all?’
"Ultimately the fight is against gravity and the limits imposed by one?s own mind, yet powerlifter fights powerlifter in a specious argument of value. This isn?t helped by the I.P.F.?s decision to call their un-equipped competitions, ?classic?. Powerlifting in its? relatively short history has never solely been man/woman vs iron. It has always been a collaborative effort between man/woman and whatever ingenuity could be applied before rules were written to rein it in. ?Classic? gives the un-equipped genre a sense of seminal legitimacy that is wholly undeserved and contributes to the ideological divides that do nothing to foster the continued growth and development of the sport.
Both un-equipped and equipped powerlifting should co-exist symbiotically not combatively. Equipped powerlifting faces challenges because, while it represents the highest expression of skill in the sport, the public and most new, un-equipped competitors are completely ignorant of its immense demands. It is common for both the layperson and the ?raw? lifter to observe that the equipment lifts the weight and that ?raw? powerlifting is the purest test of strength. Both would be highly inaccurate at best. Powerlifting has never been about ?purity?. It has always been about pushing to 10/10ths of the rules to eke out every single last pound of performance. Unfortunately the optics of such are invisible to the observer. No one watching an equipped competition can see the required hours of technique work to tweak and learn the gear or feel the stresses of unique muscle actions required to successfully lift equipped. Nor can they feel the pain and pressure as the lifter forces his/her own body to compress and act as the spring storing the energy transmitted by their shirts or suits. All they can see is a tightly bound and wrapped lifter moving incomprehensible amounts of weight and they draw incorrect conclusions. In a perfect world, the legions of un-equipped lifters entering the sport would lead to some wanting to raise the bar, so to speak, and take on the challenge of equipped competition. Certainly in the past, if one wanted to compete at the highest levels, one had to rise to the demands of equipped powerlifting. Unfortunately, negative conversations creating adversarial relationships between equipped and un-equipped lifting threaten the natural progression previously enjoyed by powerlifting since its inception."
OBoile, you may recognize the prose of your team mate. I love the way he writes.
