Yeah, I never understood the allure of benching with those shirts.
My thought is, if you can't lift it without some tight, motion-restricting shirt, then that means you can't lift it at all.
I think it would make more sense (actually, just be fair) if every one of these guys would just compete without those bench pressing shirts.
"1"
The crazy thing is that Mendelson held the "raw" ( no bench shirt) record at around 718 lbs!
BUT, the biggest competition is with the shirts...go figure. So he went in that direction.
I did my best to find out why the bench shirt lifts were a bigger deal:
1. Obviously , the guys lift a lot a LOT more wt with the shirt, so the lift sounds more impressive.
2. Lifting attire companies ( like Inzer) had a huge influence on using shirts as the most prestigious.
3. Most of those "into" powerlifting prefer lifting with bench shirts and don't want to lift raw.
To me it's similar to drugged vs natural bodybuilding. The extreme drug use or extreme bench shirt lifts turn their sport into an oddity for all but the hardcore who really get into it.
* Notice that more popular mainstream sports, have enforced rules and even use instant replay to check on the official calls.
If Benching or bodybuilding ran NFL football, they would allow spikes , chains and metal armor as art of the uniform LOL.
It would end up being more like : Road Warrior,enter the Thunderdome LOL
