Power Lifting Gear

The world record bench press is over 1,000lbs. Super benchers are occasionally unable to bend their elbows enough to allow lifts as heavy as 800lbs to touch his chest. One of the secrets of these super-humans is their "gear," specifically, their "bench shirts." Clearly the space-age denim-polymer-adamantium bench shirt provides an inhuman rebound when a loaded bar finally makes contact with his body.

I've known the above to be true for awhile. And that knowledge has biased me, creating assumptions about "gear" in genearl, gear that has nothing to do with bench shirts, to include knee wraps, straps, belts etc. The few times I've seen lifters come to the gym and use serious gear (a bench shirt or squat suit) I'll admit I thought a little less of them. Maybe it was partly due to my jealousy of their 500lb squats. It was almost certainly due to reading Rip's opinion of them. Either way, it turns out I was a little too smug.

It was reading this article, by Gary Gibson, that broadened my thinking. FYI, in a technical sense, even a barbell can be thought of as gear.

The shoulder girdle will contract tighter in the presence of a barbell while engaged in an overhead press than in the absence of the barbell. Similarly, abdominal contractions are tighter in the presence of a belt when performing a low-bar back squat than they could in the absence of a belt. Just as the shoulders push against the bar in an overhead press, so do the abs push against the belt in a low-bar back squat. So, by failing to use a belt when performing a low-bar back squat, we are not allowing our abs to contract as tightly as they otherwise would. We are denying ourselves the chance to work as hard as we can, and by extension, the failure to push as much weight as possible denies us the chance to become as strong as we can.

Using a belt doesn't just train a person to squat when using a belt.

By using a belt, we increase the amount of weight that we can squat without a belt.

Will I be jumping into a thousand dollar space-age bench shirt anytime soon?

No.

Will I be using a belt once I reach a squat weight approaching some semblance of respectability? (Perhaps 1.5x bodyweight?)

Absolutely.