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Other/Mixed USAWA Heavy Lifts

Other strength modalities (e.g., Clubs), mixed strength modalities (e.g., combined kettlebell and barbell), other goals (flexibility)
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JeffC

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The Heavy Lifts have crept back into my thoughts again. Hand and Thigh, Hip Lift, and Back Lift. I have been researching setups and equipment.


@Steve Freides Your video was one of the first I found. Great apparatus. I can adapt my Axel for my Heavy Lift Bar, and make a Hand Bar from 1" x 28" cold rolled bar stock with an eye welded to it. I already have suitable lifting chain. I found someone to make me a Hip Belt but it fell though. I was looking into http://www.roguefitness.com/belt-squat-belt, but a legal belt is 4". I don't plan to compete this belt could work. Do you know where I could find a Hip Belt?

A Back Lift Platform is easy to build for my power rack, and has intrigued me since I heard of Cyr, Anderson, and (early 90's WSM competitor, and fellow Eastern Canadian) Gregg Ernst. The most weight can be lifted in the Back Lift.

I'm also thinking of the USAWA Oldtime Lifts for heavy partials to finish my practice.
 
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@Geoff Chafe, someone associated with the USAWA is now selling hip lift belts, or at least they were shortly after I had mine made by a local luggage repair person. Because I've been unable to get back to a USAWA meet for the last couple of years, I've lost touch with the organization, but usawa.com is still there, and there was also a Facebook group. I would ask there.

The bar was made for me, after getting specs from some of the USAWA folks, by a local welder.

You're reminding me I should get one of their hip lift belts. Mine is different, and there is definitely some time to adapt to whatever belt you're using - I was black and blue for a while there.

You're also reminding me that I was considering going back to these two lifts (hand and thigh, and hip lift) during the 3-month off cycle that I'm about to start - always fun to put lots of weight on the bar.

-S-
 
@Steve Freides Have you trained the H&T and HL as a way to strengthen your Conventional Deadlift or separate as their own lifts. The technique compared to Deadlifting is very different, but in the video you use the same hip extension as a Deadlift.
 
I only trained the hip lift once for half a year or so, and did very little with the hand and thigh lift. In both cases, I didn't give much thought to lift-specific technique, I just did what I knew how to do. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on different techniques.

There is one difference I'm away of with the hand and thigh lift, of leaning back more to get the bar up, I tried and put away because my spine isn't terribly fond of extension exercises. Were I to revisit the hand and thigh lift, I'd revisit that issue as well. Since doing the H&T in that video, I've also done some rack pulls, and I feel like those have a better carryover for me to my deadlift, particularly because I do them with a generic PL bar so there is good grip work in there for me.

For the hip lift, I'm not aware of any major difference - it felt like the top of a deadlift to me.

I just did the lifts to do them, hoping there might be some carryover but mostly just for the experience of doing them.

-S-
 
I was thinking how can guys hold on to 1200lb, 1400lbs, 1900lbs, and Mike Burke's and Mark Felix's records over 2000lbs in the Hand and Thigh. The Hand Bar has a chain attached to an anchor point so it takes the rotation element out, and they use the weight to their advantage by pinning the fingers closed against the thigh. I think that is why they lean back. They are getting the shoulders as far behind the bar as possible to clamp the fingers and Bar against the thigh to hold the weight in the hand. Other than Andy Boltons 1008lb Deadlift I have never heard of such weights without straps.

For Deadlift carryover lockouts in a rack would be more benificial. I have been doing heavy lockout holds, and I thoroughly enjoy them. The H&T is very specific.
 
The other thing, @Geoff Chafe, is that I play musical instruments for much of my living, and whatever I do in lifting has to agree with that. Having my fingers pinned against my thighs like that didn't feel great. (Hook grip is another thing I've tried and don't do. I got used to it with my left hand but my right thumb started bothering me and I couldn't figure out a way around that, so no hook grip for me.)

-S-
 
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Here is an Oldtime Strongman performing the Hands Alone Lift. It is a Kennedy Deadlift using a Weight Bar and Hand Bar. I think it could be lifted in any style where the hands do not contact the thighs. Another reason to build an Weight Bar.
 
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@Steve Freides I do a lot of grip training, and I can appreciate you needing your hands for your profession. Sometimes my hands are so trashed I cannot start a nut on a bolt without discomfort. After my Bear Fat Grip Deadlifts last week my grip was done for a few days.
 
The Health Lift
KENNEDY – a modern HEALTH lift? | USAWA

I love this story. This gentleman sounds a lot like our @Steve Freides

Strength Through Muscular Development by Earl Liederman(1925)

"Another man in that gym, who interested me, was an old gentleman who was one of the few amateurs who frequented the place. I did not know his exact age, but from things he said I judged that he was a boy in Civil War days, and must have become interested in exercise in the 1870's; a time at which there was a vogue for a device called a "health-lift." All he was interested in was lifting weights off the floor; and he had made a contraption on which he could load a 100-pound weight and at the top of the affair was a handle, or cross-bar, which reached up about twenty-eight inches. This man had the theory that if every day you thoroughly exercised your back muscles, you would keep your figure, your health, and your strength into advanced old age. So every afternoon he would drop in and have a short session with his lifting-machine. He would pile on three or four hundred pounds, stand with legs straight, bend his body by arching his spine a trifle, and lift the weight by straightening his back. He would put on more weights and practice what professionals call the "hand-and-thigh" lift. He would keep his back straight and bend his legs at the knees, grasp the handle-bar, so that his knuckles would rest against the front of the thigh; and lift the weight by straightening the legs and heaving up the shoulders. After two or three repetitions he would pile on more weight, and it was customary to work up to 1,000 or 1,200 pounds before he quit. On one occasion to settle an argument he lifted 1,500 pounds dead weight in the "hand-and-thigh" style. I cannot tell you how long he had exercised in that way, but he must have been at it forty years when I knew him. And as he rarely missed a day, there was very good reason for his profound faith in his own method of keeping himself strong and healthy. As a result of his specialized work he had a most peculiar development. his thighs, both back and front, were unusually big and his calves were enormous. Naturally he had big chains of muscles along the spine, but the striking thing was the phenomenal development of the trapezius muscles, which are in the upper back just below the base of the neck. These muscles, when they contract, "shrug up" the shoulders, and when he did his "hand-and-thigh" lift and heaved his shoulders up, you could see these muscles bunch themselves into two enormous masses. Even when standing at ease these muscles were so big that they made his shoulders slope at a high angle up from the deltoids to the sides of his neck. No ready-made coat would fit him. His forearms - especially the outside parts of them - were covered with muscles so powerfully developed that there were big furrows between them. His grip was something to be avoided. His biceps muscles were pronounced in their size, but his whole upper arm was small compared to his forearm; and notwithstanding his ability to lift enormous weights from the ground he could not lift big dumb-bells over head."
 
I have my parts gathered for my Hand Bar, Chain and Weight Bar. I hope I will have some down time at work tomorrow to weld it up.
 
Tried some Reeves deadlifts last week. Got a few singles at 185. What a test of pain tolerance.

What kind of plates did you use. I have used bumper plates before, like a Snatch Pinch DL. Reeves used dished plates and lifted with the fingers on the rims.
 
What kind of plates did you use. I have used bumper plates before, like a Snatch Pinch DL. Reeves used dished plates and lifted with the fingers on the rims.
I have the dish plates but not deep dish.

They don't fit too snug on the barbell so they tilt towards me. You would think that would make it easier but it doesn't. Because of that I can't even get my thumbs on the plate. It's all fingers. It's really hard.

I love snatch grip so I'll probably just stick to that.
 
@MattM Rim Lifting and other finger tip lifting are noble exercises. I would think it should have a massive carryover to the KB Hook Grip and Swings. Similar sort of loading on the fingers.
 
@MattM Rim Lifting and other finger tip lifting are noble exercises. I would think it should have a massive carryover to the KB Hook Grip and Swings. Similar sort of loading on the fingers.
I won't give up on it. All of these odd old time lifts I've been trying lately require some serious armour building in weird places.

Steinborn squats on the menu for the first time tomorrow.
 
@Geoff Chafe, you are much too kind to compare me to that person.

I've done the USAWA Kennedy lift at one meet, at the Art's Birthday Bash meet in Western PA in 2014, if memory serves. I believe the lift had only recently been on the books at that time, and John McKean (holder of hundreds of AWA records) invited me to give it a try since the meet was a record breaker meet and there was no record yet in my age and weight class. I just checked the records online - my 405 lb. Kennedy lift is still the record for my weight class, even in the open age group. It doesn't seem to be an international event - no Kennedy lift is listed for the IAWA.

-S-
 
@Geoff Chafe, you are much too kind to compare me to that person.

I've done the USAWA Kennedy lift at one meet, at the Art's Birthday Bash meet in Western PA in 2014, if memory serves. I believe the lift had only recently been on the books at that time, and John McKean (holder of hundreds of AWA records) invited me to give it a try since the meet was a record breaker meet and there was no record yet in my age and weight class. I just checked the records online - my 405 lb. Kennedy lift is still the record for my weight class, even in the open age group. It doesn't seem to be an international event - no Kennedy lift is listed for the IAWA.

-S-
Steve, that is a good Kennedy lift. Eric Todd is hosting an Old Time Strongman Meet (USAWA) in September that features the Kennedy Lift. It is also going to have the Lurich Lift as an exhibition. The Lurich Lift is essentially a Hack Lift done with the bar at 18".
 
Nice, I agree!

I started doing hip lifts again over the weekend.

-S-
 
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