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TRF Posters: Do they lift things? What do they lift?? Let's find out!

Yeh he's clearly wearing a Rangers shirt in that article. 🤣
 
Bada-Bing! said:
Yeh shame Tom couldn't three peat but by all accounts Hooper fully deserved it.

Shame that couldn't watch it live considering a Tom and his brother were competing and have to wait til January to watch it 9 months after on C5.

What's Big Loz's channel?
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BigLozOfficial on Youtube (Laurence Shahlaei). By far my favourite strongman channel. He and his wife Liz had someone Facetiming events to them as they happened and were live streaming what was happening. On two out of the four days that the show was on, they were the top-grossing channel in the UK for Super Chats. Loz is Mitch Hooper's coach (along with a few other pros), so it was fun to watch him watching his athlete.

I have nothing against Tom Stoltman, but I'm not a fan of the way that he puts all his eggs in the WSM basket or his history of going through the motions at some competitions. I'd have found it bizarre to see move alongside JPS, MVM, Brian Shaw, Pudzian and Big Z as a 3+ time winner despite never having won an international competition outside of the worlds, so I was happy to see Hooper win. He's now won 5 of the 10 international comps he's competed in and is half way to a "strongman grand-slam". He came third in the Rogue and the Shaw Classic last year, so has a fighting chance of pulling it off. With better coaching and preparation, I could see him winning the Rogue, the Shaw Classic is the bigger challenge IMO. Brian tends to pick events that suit the static monsters, while Hooper is far from weak in static events, if the particular events chosen don't suit him, he could struggle to topple Trey Mitchell or an in-shape Brian Shaw.

The live stream thing comes up every year and the situation remains the same. Worlds is more akin to the filming of a TV show rather than a stadium show like Giant Live or the Arnolds. The company that owns the rights and produces the show would lose a lot more revenue by devaluing the exclusive broadcast rights than they would ever make by monetising a live stream. Also, it would be very much for hardcore fans only - including delays, the "wait party" live stream of the max dumbell event in the final took close to four hours! I've watched a whole Giants Live show in that time. Now that everyone does the same events in the groups, watching the same event 15 times (or 30 in the case of the Conan's) would be a bit of a test of patience too.
 
RedruthRFC said:
BigLozOfficial on Youtube (Laurence Shahlaei). By far my favourite strongman channel. He and his wife Liz had someone Facetiming events to them as they happened and were live streaming what was happening. On two out of the four days that the show was on, they were the top-grossing channel in the UK for Super Chats. Loz is Mitch Hooper's coach (along with a few other pros), so it was fun to watch him watching his athlete.

I have nothing against Tom Stoltman, but I'm not a fan of the way that he puts all his eggs in the WSM basket or his history of going through the motions at some competitions. I'd have found it bizarre to see move alongside JPS, MVM, Brian Shaw, Pudzian and Big Z as a 3+ time winner despite never having won an international competition outside of the worlds, so I was happy to see Hooper win. He's now won 5 of the 10 international comps he's competed in and is half way to a "strongman grand-slam". He came third in the Rogue and the Shaw Classic last year, so has a fighting chance of pulling it off. With better coaching and preparation, I could see him winning the Rogue, the Shaw Classic is the bigger challenge IMO. Brian tends to pick events that suit the static monsters, while Hooper is far from weak in static events, if the particular events chosen don't suit him, he could struggle to topple Trey Mitchell or an in-shape Brian Shaw.

The live stream thing comes up every year and the situation remains the same. Worlds is more akin to the filming of a TV show rather than a stadium show like Giant Live or the Arnolds. The company that owns the rights and produces the show would lose a lot more revenue by devaluing the exclusive broadcast rights than they would ever make by monetising a live stream. Also, it would be very much for hardcore fans only - including delays, the "wait party" live stream of the max dumbell event in the final took close to four hours! I've watched a whole Giants Live show in that time. Now that everyone does the same events in the groups, watching the same event 15 times (or 30 in the case of the Conan's) would be a bit of a test of patience too.
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Cheers, can't say I follow the WSM comps that closely. Tended to only watch the finals and of course last year when Tom won to defend his ***le sparked my interest again. I thought last year whilst he wasn't the winner of each individual event within WSM he was really consistent. The Ukrainian strongman who was leading after about 5 events was winning each one and then burnt out and crashed and burned on the last day IIRC. Tom played it smart just doing enough and finishing in the top 3 before winning the stones competition at the end to win overall.

Read Tom only scraped through qualiying this year, so maybe it's his strategy to save his energy for the world's then?

Wasn't it Brian Shaw's last WSM I was reading?
 
Bada-Bing! said:
Cheers, can't say I follow the WSM comps that closely. Tended to only watch the finals and of course last year when Tom won to defend his ***le sparked my interest again. I thought last year whilst he wasn't the winner of each individual event within WSM he was really consistent. The Ukrainian strongman who was leading after about 5 events was winning each one and then burnt out and crashed and burned on the last day IIRC. Tom played it smart just doing enough and finishing in the top 3 before winning the stones competition at the end to win overall.
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Consistency won it for Stoltman last year. Nobody expected Novikov to do as well as he did in the bus pull, but it seemed to take so much out of him the is performance fell off a cliff after that.

Bada-Bing! said:
Read Tom only scraped through qualiying this year, so maybe it's his strategy to save his energy for the world's then?
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I'm not sure "scraped" is very fair. He made a mess of the Conan's and came last in that event, but was fine other than that and the events were very well suited to Pavlo Kordiyaka. Given his ability on the stones, top 3 in the heat is going to see him through to the final, so I don't imagine he was sweating too much.

Bada-Bing! said:
Wasn't it Brian Shaw's last WSM I was reading?
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Yeah, and his last-ever competition will be the Shaw Classic. I imagine people might look at his performance and think that it's about time he hangs the tacky up. I'll be interested to see how he gets on in his own show though because I can't help wondering how much his epic stone-off in the heats against Rauno Reinla hurt his performance in the final. Come what may, he finishes his career as the second-best of all time after Big Z for me. You can't throw stones at him success against very strong competition, but he falls short of Z on sheer volume of wins and records left.
 
Nothing worse than getting to the gym for chest and the bench being taken (my gym is pretty small so only has one dedicated flat bench, which had a group of three people working on)

Flat bench is the only exercise where I fully hate any machine/cable alternative - did machine bench instead and it just feels like such an unnatural movement in my shoulders
 
TRF_Olyy said:
Nothing worse than getting to the gym for chest and the bench being taken (my gym is pretty small so only has one dedicated flat bench, which had a group of three people working on)

Flat bench is the only exercise where I fully hate any machine/cable alternative - did machine bench instead and it just feels like such an unnatural movement in my shoulders
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Comfortably the most annoying thing about the gym I currently use is that there are 4 bench presses, but each one is fixed at a varying level of incline/decline; only one of which is flat bench. So inevitably you'll have a few people all waiting to use the flat bench, while a couple of the others (the decline in particular) go mostly untouched.

Just have adjustable benches ffs.
 
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Haven't been to the gym in weeks, have slowly but surely lost the motivation since giving up rugby. Looking at some golf specific workouts because I find it far easier to train with a specific intent but my God they all look so boring. Like more boring than how boring people who don't like golf think golf is.
 
I switched to DB bench about a year ago now. Felt it much easier on the shoulders and seems to have worked well for hypertrophy.

As far as gym programmes I'm currently running a programme by Jordan Peters and English BB. Its main core is 1 all out set and then a back off all out set. It's a great programme overall.
 
Don't Skip Leg Day said:
I switched to DB bench about a year ago now. Felt it much easier on the shoulders and seems to have worked well for hypertrophy.
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Do you train alone?
I've always done barbell flat and dumbell incline - the thought of trying to get dumbells into position on a flat bench always put me off, I feel awkward enough lying down with an ez curl bar for skull crushers
The only people in my gym that I've seen doing heavy flat db bench have someone to pass them the second db when they're flat
 
TRF_Olyy said:
Do you train alone?
I've always done barbell flat and dumbell incline - the thought of trying to get dumbells into position on a flat bench always put me off, I feel awkward enough lying down with an ez curl bar for skull crushers
The only people in my gym that I've seen doing heavy flat db bench have someone to pass them the second db when they're flat
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I'd 100% recommend you start doing some DB bench.

I never used to do it before uni but our S&C coach swore by them. Nowadays I tend to rotate in 4-week blocks between doing BB and DB and my BB strength always inflates significantly more during a DB block. Really isolates your pushing muscles and takes away most of your ability to use any leg drive.

Getting used to doing them solo can definitely be tough at first but like anything else you get better at the kick-ups the more you practise them. Won't take long before it becomes second nature.
 
Will definitely give them a go next time the flat bench is taken (inevitably next chest day) then
 
I'm not massively strong so only lifting the 44kg DBs for my top sets of 9 reps but I've always found the DBs easy to kick up and lay back. Not sure if that's just practise or not but I've always really trained on my own and just kick those DBs into place.
 
Finally getting to go with some consistency recently. Running Brian Alsruhe's Mass Builder atm and its a lot of fun. Rotating t1 lifts which are accessory lifts each week e.g. log press last week, z press this week but still getting in the usual lift with t2. The giant sets keep you busy and pushing. Also means I'm usually done in less than an hour but have got a lot done.

Really seeing benefits in cardio, core and back. Probably not increasing my strength too much due to fatigue and lack of specificity but that's not really my concern at the minute and I'd say I'll be primed for a good push after.
 
I always found deadlifting the dumbbells the tricky part of a heavy DB press. Only gym injury I ever got was doing that, fortunate to get away with a mild back strain but far from enjoyable
 
Whore of Shame said:
I always found deadlifting the dumbbells the tricky part of a heavy DB press. Only gym injury I ever got was doing that, fortunate to get away with a mild back strain but far from enjoyable
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Literally the worst part of dumbell shrugs is picking them up
 

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