Meanwhile in the US …
Pat Mendes (now at 104kg) is steadily progressing after his comeback from his hip surgery.
Now he already squats 300kg again. Still far off of his 362kg (800 lbs) PR, but in an interview over at Lift Big Eat Big he mentioned that he does not want to be a super heavyweight again.
Update 01.07.2014: 290kg x2
Update: Here is his “Road to 300kg” video.
He also got a 190kg Bench that day.
Update 23.09.2014: Pat gets 295kg for 2
Does he really believe that doing hangs won’t improve your lifting? they are done by the Chinese, the Russians etc. The only reason the Bulgarians didn’t do hangs etc was because they were already technically sound in all areas.
He’s not saying that doing assistance/partial lifts might not help you correct specific technical faults, but getting at the fact that too many people get hung up on doing all kinds of special assistance lifts, which can be a bad thing because 1) the competition lifts are from the floor, your power narrow-grip hang snatch doesn’t matter 2) the full lifts allow you to lift the most possible weight (in most cases) 3) most people can not keep their technique consistent enough to get any more carryover of specific technique (lets say doing high hangs to work on explosive extension with the bar rather than hip slamming) from their partial lifts to their full lifts than from working on the same issues with full lifts (the lifter might get better at extending from high hang, but he won’t be able to hit the same positions and tekkers from the floor)…
So look on the former bulgarian records and then look on the present/ chinese/russian records… now you have an answer.
He should go to powerlifting instead. Easier on the wrists, no drug-testing in many feds, and plus he’s just good at it.
good point.
fact is: inspite his impressive squat and general strength his best weightlifting competition total is 389kg(??) @ +105. in london olympics 389kg would have reached for the eighth place in -94.
for me his next ban or surgery is more probable than his breakthrough on the international weightlifting stage.
At his peak, he could have totaled well over 2,000 lbs raw not even using a belt. 800/500/700 would have been pretty easy, and he didn’t even train for PL. I’m biased because I’m a powerlifter, but I would love to see what he could have done if he focused on PL rather than WLing.
Well by now he`ll be more smart with how much he uses since he`s been caught once, but it`s surprising to me that they caught him with Growth Hormone with can be a bitch to detect.
I get that he want to squat a lot of weight, but I can’t see the meaning in his divebomb, ass-dip technique..? It’s very hard on the body (esp. the knees) and doesn’t help him that much in snatch and C&J. You rarely see the Russians, Chinese or Iranian squatting like this. In the contrary you often see them squatting controlled and sometimes paused.
Plus even when he was at his best, it didn’t seem like he could transfer his massive squats into snatch and C&J numbers that correlated.
Well, when he was at his best and squatted 360Kg, he also snatched over 200Kg. So yeah, there was definitely some carry over. Numbers in competition are sth different, as he was also unlikely to be able to squat those massive weights while washing out the juice tracers pre competition, too.
The question isn’t if there is som carry over. The question is why squat like this when it takes such a toll and it isn’t necessary? Would fx. a 260 paused Front squat be much more sport specific and be more easy on the body?
Pat Mendes squatted some of the highest numbers in training off all active Weightlifters, but he wasn’t totaling more than some of the 94 kg’s lifters. Does that sound right in your ears? Does it sound like good transfer? Could it be a sign about having wrong priorities if you want the highest possibly total?
plenty of chinese guys (and women) bounce their squats though. they don’t all squat like xiaojun. and pat does do pause squats sometimes. is it so hard to imagine that maybe he knows what he’s doing and you don’t know better than him?
“Are you as strong as him, no? Then shut up!” That type of retoric arguments is just plain stupid. Is it so hard to imagine that he is a genetic freak who have trained very hard, but not very smart? There is move evidens that Broz loved using Mendes heavy squats to hype his dogmatic trainingschool. He trains relative newbies like the Bulgarian school trained their master of sports. You can just hope that aspiring weightlifters all over the world doesn’t get blinded by this.
Gregor, 300kg squat vid is US indeed. Avg. Broz Gymnasium.
Thanks for confirming
How tall is he?