How to Lift Weights in One Easy Lesson, Part Three -- Harry Paschall

Seconds Pass

Gnats nap,

minute-maggots hatch,

time flies buzz within our heads.

Infinity gone missin'

at the hands of a Timex.

Feb. 2023. 192 pages . . . offers the first sustained analysis of films about aging and dementia through a temporal framework. Analyzing the aesthetics of Films like A Moment to Remember (2004), Memories of Tomorrow (2006), and Happy End (2017), Deng provided new insights into our understanding of how aging is temporally produced, presented, received and interrogated in and through cinema. Bringing together Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of difference and ideas on time, and building on scholars like Alia Al-Saji, Henri Bergson, Bliss Cua Lim, and David Martin-Jones, the book develops a conceptual framework of relational change -- of temporal performances -- and suggests that everyone and everything experiences time differently. 

Oh yeah, I started watching the new series with Arnold in the lead role, "Fubar" and am liking it a lot. Great setup, excellent casting, beautiful one-liners from all characters. And of course some very cool action scenes. There's a very good multiple season TV show from Latin America I am really enjoying. Standard plot, a young guy in an impoverished area turns to crime. But this lot really put the usual crap to shame here. Strong, very strong in all ways remembering of course that there will be lulls highs, lols, sobs, peaks and valleys and all that in everything.  

Impuros: 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9070896/ 

This book by the late Martin Amis has been adapted as a film, and I really wanna see this one. 

Movie:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_zone_of_interest

Okay, let's get to this third section of the One Easy Lesson. 

THE CLEAN AND JERK

This is the lift on which possibilities have never been plumbed. Rigoulot cleaned and jerked 402 lbs. thirty years ago {now we have a way of finding the date of this article in three parts. At a bodyweight of 222, Rigoulot was the first man to clean and jerk over 400 pounds, on February 1, 1929 He succeeded after eleven attempts. This Harry P. article is from around 1959. Possibly.} Rigoulot, being far ahead of his era -- because he had a good mental outlook and was not hide-bound by limitations. 

He believed that SPEED was the thing and he was right. Speed is synonymous with POWER. 

Note: Here's video of Mr. Rigoulot. Watch his one and two arm barbell snatches. The press is done according to the rules of his era and it's slow, as was required by those rulings. The snatch, one arm and two, are fast. This is a big guy for that time, no real blubber on that body, and his entire body just oozes strength in its appearance. The Look of Power personified. Check out his speed, and how solid his grooves on the snatches are. No fear of that weight whatsoever. 

Men like Pete George and Tommy Kono are proving this beyond question when they lift 365 lbs. as middleweights. Norbert [no last name needed] proved it with his 412.5 lb. clean & jerk in January 1953. 

{Hang on . . . here's a beautiful colorized photo, courtesy of Arthur Chidlovsky, of Mr. Lifting from '64, his snatch in Tokyo. It's beyond me how anyone can look at a good Norb photo and not be overwhelmed by an uncontrollable urge to lift till ya drop to a knee and praise the glory of the barbell. Somethin' like that but all nice and poetic with maybe a slogan that fits on a hoody and a hat. 

 

He is a superbly fast heavyweight -- so fast the the split style does not unduly handicap him. We have said it before, and we now say it again, that a 500 lb. jerk is a possibility for some good heavyweight and over 400 lbs. is possible for a middleweight, and perhaps Kono will make this prediction come true. 

There are two sections in the Clean and Jerk, as its name implies, and this makes it the most strenuous of lifts, because an all out effort is necessary TWICE instead of once, as in the case of the snatch. Yet the really great effort is in the first section -- the Clean to the shoulders. 

The Jerk is relatively simple, providing the lifter has not exhausted himself pulling the barbell in. We therefore must concentrate on the clean -- since it is the key to a high poundage in this lift. 

Let us go through an actual effort . . . 

You approach the bar, relaxed, stoop with flat back and hook both hands a bit wider than the shoulders. Flatten the back and pull easily until the bar reaches the knees -- then, as in the snatch GIVE IT THE WORKS! Pull hard up and back -- go clear up on your toes and KEEP PULLING! When you feel the end of the pull, do the same thing as in the snatch -- JUMP DOWN and FORWARD under the bar, whipping up the elbows to slap the bar into the shoulders. 

When it hits the deltoids, keep the elbows purposely lifted, as HIGH as you can. Your jump forward lands you beneath the bell several inches in front of your original position; you hit bottom on the squat, back straight, and heave with your hips to take advantage of the rebound at the bottom. You come up just as in a deep knee bend. (And by the way, the best possible practice for this lift is doing squats with the bar held on the shoulders in front of the neck.).

Now you have the bar at shoulders, deltoids flexed to lift the weight, elbows high to the front. You stand straight up, take in a deep breath, flex the thighs slightly (and we mean SLIGHTLY! No big dip), drive hard upward and toss the bar lightly off the shoulders to the height of the eyes. 

The bar should go straight up, with the feeling that you are trying to send it backward over the head, and at this point you drop beneath the weight in a controlled fore-and-aft split -- just deep enough to allow the bar to fix itself well back of the head in a solid, rigid arm lock. 

The split must be FORWARD. Remind yourself to step forward under a jerk -- this is the essence of a good jerk. This is so easy to do it is pathetic whenever anybody loses a jerk. Any good heavyweight should be able to come up with 600 or 700 lbs. if you splits under such a suspended weight with arms locked.

Actually you only have to jerk, or heave the bell upward a couple of inches to get under it as Schemansky does. It is mainly a mental barrier that causes trouble in the second half of this lift. Chris Whittaker used to say, "I feel like I am just trying to hoist the bar on a shelf a few inches higher than my shoulders -- when it is there, the shelf will support it." He did the jerk so lazily and easily that it mystified the rest of us who were trying to do things "the hard way". 

Tommy Kono showed some of the experts how easy it was to do a jerk in London some months back, taking 335 lbs. in a light practice session and cleaning it easily, he jerked the weight overhead without moving his feet -- with just a short dip. Ten years ago they would have declared this absolutely impossible for a middleweight -- in almost any style. His superb mental attitude is the difference. He is thinking in terms of 400 lb. jerks, not 350 . . . 

Enjoy Your Lifting!     

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