Sunday, January 14, 2024

An Olympic-Lifting Perspective - John Coffee (2001)







From the May-June, 2001 Issue (#72) of Hardgainer magazine.
Courtesy of Stuart McRobert.






I expect many readers don't have the almost forty years of experience Olympic weightlifting I have, and may be taken in by the arguments of some of the detractors of Olympic lifting. 

I first became interested in physical culture and weightlifting in 1956, when I was 10 years old. This was the year that Paul Anderson won the Olympic superheavyweight gold medal at the Melbourne Olympics. Since he was from the same state I lived in, Georgia, it was hard for even a 10-year old boy not to know of Paul Anderson.

I believe it was 1957 when I sent off for a George F. Jowett course. In 1958, like many of the other boys in my neighborhood, I acquired a 100-pound barbell set and started trying to build some muscle on my 12-year-old body. 

The big lifts for us in those days were the standing press, and one- and two-hands clean & jerk, always working to our limit single. Maybe we were just lucky, but I can't remember any of us even having so much as a sprained wrist from the effects of this youthful folly. 

As far as I knew, there were no squat racks or bench press benches in the whole town at that time. 

In 1959 I bought a copy of Bob Hoffman's "Better Athletes Through Weight Training," and of course this book spoke about the benefits of Olympic-lift training for athletes in all sports, particularly sports involving great strength and power, like football, which was the main sport I participated in while in high school. 

I'm far from being genetically gifted, and at 5-7 and 155 pounds at the time, it was only through weight training, including lots of presses and two hands clean & jerks, that I was able to enjoy a measure of success in football and even compete with boys taller and heavier than I was. 

By 1963 we also had squat racks.

In 1965, a friend of mine, David Jones, and I began lifting on a team from Savannah, Georgia -- Savannah Barbell Club run out of Howard Cohen's Gym. 


      

than Above and below:
Howard Cohen



About once a month David and I would make the three-hour drive from our hometown of Eastman, to Savannah, to train with the gang at Howard's Gym. And we made the circuit of south-eastern weightlifting meets. 

David Jones, much more gifted than I, eventually was able to win first place in the Senior Nationals a couple of times, and also won silver medals at the Pan American Games in 1979. Howard Cohen and his son Michael, as well as David Jones and many of the characters from that era, are still involved with the sport of Olympic lifting as meet promoters, coaches, etc., so it's been pretty much a lifetime pursuit for all of us. 

In the summer of 1971, while on a trip to Florida with my girlfriend at that time, I went by Deland and spent just about a whole day with Arthur Jones, etc. I remember seeing some of the first Nautilus machines being welded together behind Arthur's modest home in what appeared to be converted chicken houses. Later in the afternoon I was put through my paces by Mr. Jones himself. 

I remember doing the old manual hip-and-back machine to failure, then barbell squats with 185 pounds to failure, and last, leg curls. Certainly, the heavy low-rep Olympic-lift training I was doing at the time didn't prepare me for the kind of work I did that afternoon, and I believe my quads, glutes and hamstrings were deeply sore for almost a week after that experience. 

I even talked with Arthur about moving down to Deland and training on the Nautilus machines to improve my Olympic lifting. Arthur was all for the idea of my being kind of a guinea pig in this experiment, but I never did get around to doing this, and from what I know now I expect it was just as well that I never did try this experiment. 

Nowadays, at over 50 years of age, much of training is done on various Nautilus, Hammer, Cybex and Flex machines, but in my youth, practically everything I did, for many years, was only with an Olympic barbell. 

It was about this time, late sixties and early seventies, that I started training some athletes, particularly football players. Power cleans, high pulls, squats and pressing movements were the mainstay of the training. 

In 1980 I opened Coffee's Gym in Marietta, Georgia, a northern suburb of Atlanta, and started recruiting and training Olympic lifters. We've had pretty good success at this endeavor. 

During the last forty years I've no doubt taught Olympic movements to hundreds of men and women -- many people who wanted to learn Olympic lifting so that they could compete, and many who wanted to learn Olympic lifting movements in order to become quicker and more explosive in other sports, as well as a few who just wanted to do the movements simply because they look like a fun challenge, and a change of pace from the usual workouts. 

Olympic lifting as I have taught it, has always been a safe and relatively risk-free activity. You can imagine how I resent the comments of detractors who very likely have only a very limited experience with Olympic lifting type movement and who would probably be incompetent to try to teach anyone how to perform these exercises, yet set themselves up as the voice of prudence and wisdom, and warn of the dangers of performing these movements. 

It may well be true that it would be dangerous for the detractors to teach power cleans (for example), to a rank beginner. It does not follow, however, that Olympic-lift movements taught by John Coffee, Ben Green, David Jones or Mike Cohen would be dangerous also. 

As you know, the Olympics in 1996 were held here in the Atlanta area, and since my gym was the only commercial gym in the area with lifting platforms and bumper plates, I let it be known that Olympic athletes in all sports were welcome to use my facility free of charge for 6-8 months before the games. I must have had dozens of athletes who were living and training in the Metro Atlanta area visit my gym for workouts. 

Mainly I had track and field athletes. 

These athletes, many of whom went on to win medals, trained almost exclusively in my small Olympic-lifting facility at the back of my gym, doing mainly power snatches, power cleans, quarter and half squats, lunges, stepups, straight-legged deadlifts, etc. 

Now, in my gym at the time were also extensive Nautilus, Hammer, Cybex, Flex, etc., machines but these athletes, jumpers, sprinters, hurdlers, throwers -- people mainly interested in developing great power-to-weight-ratio strength -- didn't seem to be interested in these fancy machines. They were welcome to use the machines, but they were interested in doing the things that worked for them.

I do realize that people were doing mainly the exercises they had done back home on the equipment they had back there, but I also have the feeling they were doing the exercises which work for them. Why would high jumpers do hack squats and leg extensions when they can do quarter squats and step-ups, movements more specific to the way they apply power.

Plyometrics, when done systematically and safely, seem to work also to improve quickness and explosiveness to a considerable degree, using various forms of explosive overload training. 

If proper technique and protocol are adhered to, it's possible to train explosively and still be safe. If a man's not robust and tough enough to do power cleans, high pulls, standing broad jumps, etc., how can he be robust enough to play football, rugby, basketball, etc.? 

At over 50 I no longer train explosively. Maybe I'll do some one-hand snatches or rep dumbbell power cleans and presses from time to time, just to break the monotony; but mainly, I do just standard bodybuilding stuff with free-weights, cables, machines, etc. I'm mainly interested in feeling good and staying alive a while longer.

The point I'm trying to make is that THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO TRAIN

I even do super-slow reps on Hammer machines sometimes, and enjoy training this way from time to time, but I'd get bored training this way all the time. 

THERE ARE MANY METHODS TO USE WHEN RESISTANCE TRAINING. As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as a "properly performed set" or a "properly performed rep." I'd hate to think that I must take every set to the point of momentary failure, but I do sometimes go to failure when I feel like doing it; and I certainly feel that athletes who want to develop their maximum in strength and development must train very hard and heavy at times. 

Training high-level strength athletes is tricky. It's part science, part art, and I don't think that anyone has cornered the market on how to train to get big and strong. 

There are many approaches that will work and have worked, and I get VERY SUSPICIOUS of anyone who says you MUST train his specific way if you want to get big and strong. 

Arthur Jones knew that in order to sell his Nautilus machines he had to represent them as being better than free weights -- very good salesmanship, not very honest perhaps. By now there are people who really believe the Nautilus mythology to be true, but these are individuals who have a very narrow perspective on the muscle-building and strength-building field. 

Casey Viator, one of Arthur Jones' original guinea pigs for Nautilus, has been around my gym for the last couple of years; in fact, he worked for me for a while. He tells me that when he was in Florida with Jones, in the early seventies, and bring touted as the example of what Nautilus methods could do, he always had barbells and dumbbells back at his apartment, and did some extra training that Arthur Jones didn't know about. 


 

Also, if you've ever seen a picture of a 17-year old Casey on the cover of IronMan magazine, you'll know that Casey already had most of this size and muscles before he'd ever heard of Nautilus and Arthur Jones . . . 

Note: Here's more from Mr. Viator on Arthur Jones etc.: 


Enjoy Your Lifting!  

 
      

































9 comments:

  1. That "Iron Man" photo date would be 1970, the year Viator won the AAU Teenaged Mr. America; then placed 3rd and won Most Muscular in the AAU Mr. America also in 1970. Viator is claimed to have been born in Sept, 1951, so he'd been around age 19 in that photo. Apparently, he'd placed 3rd in a Mr. Louisiana in 1968, then 6th in the AAU Teen Mr America in 1969, which seems to have within no more than two years after he focused on bodybuilding. Viator claims in one interview that, "I just seemed to grow doing regular sports, track and field, baseball, my arms and legs grew just from running and hitting baseball's, so naturally I was pulled toward training with weights. I responded quickly..." He apparently didn't meet Jones until Jones introduced himself to him after Viator's 1970 3rd place at the 1970 Mr. America.

    So, yep, as with "Heavy Duty" Mentzer, before he met Jones, Viator'd already built more muscle on his arms in less than two years than I added over my entire body in over five years.

    Meaning, th' boy started with them goooood genetics. OlympicLifting, Powerlifting, Barbell-and-Dumbbelling, Universaling, Nautilusing, Wild Physique-ing, Bombin' n' Blitzin' (I always confuse that with "Donner and Blitzen"), Dynamic Tensioning, Daily Dozening While Shaving, Doing One-Legged Calf Raises On A Street Curb, Shouldering A Growing Calf ("Golden Calf?" I get those conflated too...), HIT, HV, MICKEYMOUSE...didn't hardly matter for that corn stalk. However he watered the plant, as long as he consistently and sufficiently watered, the corn grew.

    As some York "Muscular Development" magazine writers allegedly chuckled to Grimek when he discussed advice to answer a reader's question, "C'mon, John...but you grow muscle just doing a few pushups in a corner!"

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    1. BEAUTIFUL TRUTH THERE, JOE! The joke seems to continue, the scam abides. Being rather drunk and frisky here in the now, I have to say this motherfucker had GENETICS ON TOP OF GENETICS. Just for bodybuilding, though. He was likely talentless anywhere else, but why be cynical and demean our fellow creatures who whore their talents out for . . . I can't remember why I do it, just like this boob. Whew! Thank Cripes on a Cracker with a Side-a-BDSM blood for that. But sure . . . some of these types grow more of the muscle-lumps than you of I ever will . . . just by combing their hair and squatting to shite every bright and sunshiney morn. Where is the fairness? I will get back to ya, my friend . . . it may be buried under the garbage sac waiting for me to carry it to its final reward. Hell . . . this game don't change . . . only the faux-front Hollywood style does.

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    2. Agreed, "genetics just for bodybuilding...likely talentless anywhere else."
      No matter in the grand scheme o' unfairness of th' universe to me now.
      Only matters in, as you also say, "the scam abides", and for all the naive-15-year-olds-now-like-I-was-way-back-then" who swallow the faux until, as it did for us, the smoke&mirrors fall from their eyes. We all gotta live and learn the hard way, as my dad chuckled to a naive 15-year-old me...

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    3. Hehehe...yep. Same look I then gave to my three sons when each was a teen.

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  2. The Colorado Experiment was essentially photographic deception by Jones. John Coffee was too generous when he said " ...very good salesmanship, not very honest perhaps." There was no "perhaps" about it. The link to the 1984 Seminar wherein Viator says he was on a starvation diet of 500 calories a day at Jones insistence to reduce from about 190 pounds to 167 pounds. He just regained his muscular condition that he had previously developed using barbells and dumbbells.

    I just read the Colorado Experiment and Jones included his own results of "muscle gain" as "evidence" of what an average man could attain. If he got Viator to starve himself beforehand, I think it is safe to assume he did the same.

    Jones duped Peary Rader into publishing his 1970s writing in the magnificent IronMan. But at least Peary Rader published the unvanished truth when to hand.

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    1. Yes, the enormous difference in human beings . . . compare Jones and his approach to the Iron Game with Peary and Mabel Rader's view, and later, I believe it was John Balik who bought and took over the publication, all the while attempting to retain the Rader view. I have no idea where the line between human and snake is drawn, but am certain you know what species Mr. Jones was. Money-addicted ego-grubs turn my stomach and fill my shitter.

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  3. Great article; I had no idea Coffee was published in Hard Gainer. Reassuring to see that the debate regarding the olympic lifts for athletes is still raging over two decades after this was published. I've been going through my collection of old International Olympic Lifter magazines. There are some pretty good articles on Bulgarian and European training systems from back in the mid-70's. If you're interested I can type up a few and send over.

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    1. Hello Gray Cat! The first run of Hardgainer had some great stuff in it, that's for sure. I'd really appreciate your input here with some of that IOL mag info . . . and lots of others would too I bet. Please feel free to send ANYTHING you think fits in with this blog deal. dalecredico@yahoo.com

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