With the explosion in popularity of raw lifting over the past few years (I’m guessing primarily due to people transitioning from Crossfit as well as the exposure of social media) I honestly never would have guessed that equipped lifting (more specifically multi-ply) would make a comeback. At the last few meets we held a couple of years ago there were maybe one or two equipped lifters. Yet, the APF Showdown at the Storm hosted by Perfect Storm Gym in Daytona at the end of July has a full day of equipped lifters.
When I spoke to Dave Tate about it a few years ago he said everything works in cycles and said multi-ply would make a comeback. I wasn’t so sure in this case, but it looks like he might be right.
Not to be left out, we have some of the Orlando Barbell Team giving it a try and doing pretty damn well.
Both Jeff Sanchez and Jon Burnham have put up solid raw numbers and have decided to give equipped lifting a try. Jeff is trying multi-ply and Jon single. For now they’re both wearing hand me down shirts, but are catching on quickly. They're following my method of working their way down the boards for bench combined with Stephen Harper's method of only doing singles lol.
Here’s Jeff benching 495 and 545 off of a 3 board last week in an old Karin Klein DD for now (which they don’t make anymore):
And 495 off of a 2 board this week:
It's cool to see these guys putting up more weight and enjoying the change. I'm happy to help them and will have more updates as they transition to equipped lifting soon.
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