Minimalist trainers I have known: the Fantano Bench press
26 May 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
For a guy who hated to talk about powerlifting, Ken Fantano had sure as hell thought long and hard about powerlifting biomechanics: his treatise on bench pressing was light years passed anything I’ve ever encountered, before or since. He’d sit at the glass-topped counter of his funk-a-fied gym, the Muscle Factory, find a scrap of paper and a pencil and begin a detailed explanation on how and why he and his amigos benched the way they did. He had bear paw mitts and looking at him you would have thought he’d be better suited to use crayons but when he picked up pencil he exhibited a deftness and neatness in drawing that fairly screamed “Art student!” Actually his drawings owed more to structural engineering then art. He would produce a series of drawings, precise little bench press replications, each captured a different portion, a different point-in-time of a Fantano-style bench press. He would quickly and expertly sketch a stick figure lying on a bench and as he drew (left handed) he would run down his approach. His commentary was quiet yet infused with insight, disconcertingly laced with expert use of sailor profanity. It was spellbinding for those who understood bench pressing. “First mistake Mart: everyone lowers the barbell too high on the chest…we touch the bar low, way low, just above where the belly meets the sternum.” He would abandon Stick Man Drawing I and start a second stick man bencher, this one with the bar on the chest, “All kinds of things happen as the bar is lowered…the legs are progressively loaded with more and more tension and the leg tension maxes as the bar touches the chest. WE purposefully let the bar sink into the chest. Pause the weight…then BAM! Commence the push. To start the push party jam the legs backward, hard, towards the chest, we want to create a jolt.
“A correct leg drive starts at the feet travels through the legs and ends up in the prone torso. Send a freaking shock wave though the torso Mart….time the bar push to start at that exact instant when the leg shockwave passes through the torso and under the barbell. When the shock wave arrives at the chest/shoulder/arm region, the jolt is combined with a really violent expansion of the chest and waist.” Ken had learned how to expand his chest/waist so dramatically and powerfully that he had blown apart the half-dozen rivets that hold the monster steel buckle onto a 5-inch wide powerbelt. He exploded belts on two or three different occasions. “The leg drive and chest/waist expansion get the bar moving.” He was explaining how to generate momentum out of thin air. “The bar is moved upward explosively. Do it right and the bar leaps off the chest. It is dependant on the timing and execution.” I paraphrase all this, expletives deleted. “As the bar leaves the chest and heads to lockout, use an arc-pathway, don’t push straight up, allow the bar, started low on the chest, to arc up and back, in a slow, gentle curve.” Ken would draw a second barbell at lockout on the drawing of the lifter with the barbell on his chest. He’d then draw a dotted arc line from where the bar sat, low on the chest in takeoff position in picture one, to the centerline on the bar in the completed position. Ah, what a perfect explanation – the optimal arc should look like that! He explained why. “The use of an arc instead of a straight upward push places the triceps in an ever more advantageous push position.” Then he’d walk over to a bench and demonstrate. It all made perfect sense and seeing him bench was like Tiger Woods practicing golf swings just for you, up close and personal.
I loved the vibe of the Muscle Factory and immediately threw in with Kan and his crew when I relocated to the Connecticut seashore in 1988. We were all cut from the same cloth. The flavors and nuances of powerlifting in the West Haven/New Haven area were subtly different from the varieties practiced at my home base: Mark Chaillet’s legendary power gym in suburban Washington. At Challiet’s the emphasis was on squats and deadlifts; at Ken’s Muscle Factory the emphasis was on squats and bench presses. Elite powerlifters seek to better themselves so we quiz each other. Ken knew of me before we met. He quizzed me on the Cassidy/Chaillet/Coan approach to squat/deadlift. We exchanged tactics, chaos theory scientists working on the same problem comparing notes at a conference. Rather than be defensive or biased, defending or impugning the merits and deficiencies of each other’s system, we did a Vulcan Mind Meld. We took from one another on everything. He wanted to see and follow my deadlift approach, I certainly wanted to experience his bench press expertise first hand – we didn’t just talk about each others ideas we tried them; test rode them in the gym. It was a joyful time and place to be a hardcore powerlifter. I used to schedule my “rest days” to coincide with Ken’s heavy bench day. After working as the ramrod at the steel warehouse, I’d drive ten minutes south on the coastal highway to West Haven. Turn left at the statue in the town square; take an immediate left behind the Pizza joint, pull into the big, always empty parking lot, park and walk into the MF.
I would sit at the counter and drink a cold Miller beer and watch them bench: it was better than watching a rock concert. The bench press training partners were: Danny D (590 bench, 920 squat), Big Jean (400-pounds, 24-inch calves, 600 bench no shirt; squat 950) Jean took second place at the USPF Nationals one year. Ken (640 bench, no shirt; 950 squat; 720 deadlift) The MF was stuffed to the rafters with men like this. Danny D once took a giant powerlifting trophy, a replica of a monster lifter pulling 800, a plaster monstrosity that stood 2-feet tall, he took a spool of wire and wired Dead Lift Man to the front bumper of his massive work truck. Slightly deranged, Dan was athletic and explosive, strong as hell. He took second place to the late great Dave Pasanella at the APF Nationals in Florida. Jeff B, later to go into the witness protection program, tore both his quads on a 3rd attempt squat with 848, I held his had as he lay on the platform waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Danny walked over and said a few heartfelt words to his fallen competitor. I’d never laid eyes on him before that day and my shock could not have been greater when I began training at the MF and found out Dan was Ken’s training partner and protégé. Mic Golden, later a coach for Team USA on the international level was thrown in this mix. Saul Shocket passed through, Kevin and his incredible Amazon sister…Fat Pat and a ruddy-faced 300-pound Irish kid who could sing exactly like Bob Dylan and at the drop of a hat would belt out (at ear-splitting volume) “It’s all over now Baby Blue” or “Stuck in Memphis with the Mobile Blues Again.” What a crew! Plus the infamous wiffle ball games in the parking lot often erupted into brawls and more than one competitive lifter sustained injury from overzealousness in a wiffle ball game.
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