Remembrances of days past, blurb improv
15 August 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
In jazz there is an essential element of improvisation and this blurb is a literary equivalent of a riffed jazz soloI sent Lee a box of photos and asked him to pull one out at random and post ithe has selected a photo of myself and Ed The Giant Killer Coan, the greatest powerlifter ever to walk the face of planet earth. Incredible Eddie has posted accomplishments monumental both in absolute terms and when using the longevity benchmark. This photo was snapped in the mid-nineties outside QUADS Gym in suburban Chicago. I had flown in to stay with Ed when I was writing my book on Ed, Coan: The Man, The Myth, The Method. I was staying in a spare bedroom in Eds home in Evergreen Park and we had driven over to QUADS for a workout when Raph Moyden snapped this photo as we were headed inside. Ed was at the peak of his awesome powers: he stood 5-5 and in this photo weighed around 225. He could squat 1000, bench press 550 for a double wearing a tee shirt and was capable of a 900-pound deadlift for two dead-stop reps. I was weighing around 220 and had just returned from the national masters powerlifting championships where I won for the fifth time, having squatted a 704 national record and deadlifted a sub par 660. At 5-10 in height I never was able to develop the density-per-inch necessary to be a truly great lifter. This photo graphically illustrates the compactness necessary to achieve power greatness and shows the difference in structure between two men of identical bodyweight.
Coan was a one man revolution. Yes he was genetically gifted (though short, he wore an 11.5 shoe size and had gigantic hands, the size of a 6-3 guy) but he began setting world records weighing a slim 181 pounds and continued his record breaking spree for the next twenty years. He set records in four different weight divisions; as a 181 pound 20-year old he squatted and deadlifted 790-pounds and bench pressed 500. When he moved to 198 his leverages began to come into play and he shattered world records like they were matchsticks. At the Chicago national championships in the mid-eighties Ed squatted 871, bench pressed 500 on a ripped pectoral and deadlifted an astounding 871 poundsa mark that stands to this day. When he moved his bodyweight to 220-pounds all hell broke loose and he began routinely posting lifts that exceeded the best lifts of the athletes in the 242, 275 and super heavyweight classes. It was as if Sugar Ray Leonard at 154-pounds captured the heavyweight boxing title by decimating Ali, Frazier, Foreman and Mike Tyson. Eventually he moved to the 242 pound class and posted a three-lift total (2452 if memory serves) that exceeded the most anyone had ever lifted in any weight class regardless of bodyweight. Best of all Ed used next to no supportive powerlifting equipment. He never used the hideous monolift and always lifted in front of the strictest judges; IPF and USPF. His squats were pridefully deep, his bench shirt was so loose he could put it on by himself and his deadlifting ability was peerless. The current all-time best deadlift is 936 pounds, a scant thirty-three more than Eds competition best and set by a 380-pound man.
Ed was a phenomenon and compounded his absolute greatness with longevity. He set world records over a twenty year span an accomplishment that I believe is unrivalled in any sport. Being hardcore Irish (his mothers side of the family was part of the Daly political dynasty) he and I always got on. His training revolutionized powerlifting and to this day I use his approach. Up until Ed, strength athletes concentrated on ultra-low repetitions, usually 1-3 rep sets. Ed and Uber-athlete Doug Furnas began using 5-rep sets to near exclusion. Their reasoning was that 5s offered an ideal compromise between low rep strength sets (that used a lot of nerve and led to burnout) and the high rep sets bodybuilders used for tissue building. During a classical 12-week pre-competition peaking cycle, Ed would concentrate on 8-rep sets (across the board) for the 1st two weeks then switch to his beloved 5-rep sets for the middle eight weeks. In the final two training weeks leading up to a competition he would hit doubles. It was a template that allowed him to build incredible muscle size yet still kept him in the anaerobic neighborhood where he could peak maximally with only two to three weeks notice. His approach jived nicely with my own basic training under McCallum and Cassidy and I passed Eds system onto Kirk Karwoski who in turn used 5-rep sets as the spinal backbone of his training template. To this day 5-rep sets are my default rep range. Ed was a pristine technician who studiously avoided supportive powerlift gear at all times except when he swung into competition preparation. He could squat and deadlift 850-pounds without wearing any gear whatsoever.
A class act Coan had the misfortune of being a giant in a splinter sport, never making a dime, never complaining about the unfairness of being the best in the world while laboring away tirelessly in relative obscurity. 100 years from now powerlifting will still exist in some form or another (the athletic applicability of the three lifts ensure that it will never die) and those distant power aficionados will pore over Coans accomplishments as we look back at Mozart. No kidding.
Tags:Popularity: 1% [?]
Related Posts:
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
