This weekend I finally got to try out my new Metal Canvas Squat suit!

God I love gear!

At first sight, I knew this was a serious suit! The straps are wider than most canvas suits, but also thiner. This is cool because the width displaces the weight well on your back, but the thinness lets you keep a feel for the weight.

The side panels are polyester, which seems to give it just a little bit of stretch and rebound, and the legs have three strips of velcro so you can adjust the size. I did have some concerns about this velcro not holding up under heavy weights, but at least for this session, I didn't notice anything off. The suit is definately a little big on me, so I will have the side panels taken in a bit. The hips feel great, and the legs are adjustable, but they are too long. I think I may have the bottom velcro strap taken off, leaving me with two. right now it's so long I won't be able to get knee wraps on. I doubt I'll moss the bottom strap because it's currently flaring out, and doesn't give me any support anyway.

Under the suit, I wore an old pair of Jack briefs which are pretty old and don't give me a ton of support anymore, but since I'm still trying to transition into gear, less is still more at this point.

Warmed up raw to 320, then put my brief on with 410.

Got the suit bottom on next and went:

500 x 1

590 x 1

640 x 1

Put my straps up, then finished with this easy 680.

 

 

It took me a while to hit parallel but once I got there, I stood up easily with it.

Felt really easy considering the suit is loose and I didn't have wraps. I also didn't crank the straps tight.

I'm really looking forward to working in this suit and taking it to a meet in a couple of months! At some point, I may get one a size smaller, but for now, I think the minor tweaks I described above will do the trick.

So far the Metal Canvas gets a big bloated two thumbs up from this whorer of gear!

Did my typical assistance work of 4 sets of 12 glute ham raises, Cable pulldown abs, and dumbbell side bends.

We also did a straight leg deadlift variation, but we stretched a band from one side of the frame to the other, so that our hips stretched the band as we lifted the weight.

I know, the above description sucks, so I'll try to get video of it next time.