there's a story on the 75 york olympic plates but I can't find it anywhere. as i remember jcg had a pair of york 75 lb olympic plates made up they were made up to look like the deep dish 45's. the purpose was to humble guys. a guy would come in and think the 75's were 45's and wonder why they felt so weak that day. imagine you can clean and press 225 but with these plates the load would actually be 285 , a big difference.
I remember the stories about them too. I think they were posted to Joe Roark's Iron History board.
Edit -
Arms and Shoulders, Part Two - Harry Paschall -
http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2010/06/ (scroll down).
"Some dozen years ago we spent quite a lot of time around the York Barbell Club Gym in York, Pennsylvania. Probably the most famous strength and muscle stars in the whole world trained at York. Back around 1940 a big six-footer from the neighboring village of Carlisle named Jake Hitchens began to haunt the gym. Jake was not at all interested in strength, but he was enthralled by large muscular girths. He had the idea that the way to get big muscles was to do exercises with BIG weights. So he followed John Grimek and Steve Stanko through their exercise routines, but instead of using 25- to 60-pound dumbells in the various chest- and shoulder-building routines used by these mighty champions, he insisted on using 75- and 100-lb. dumbells. Of course, he couldn’t do the movements exactly like John and Steve, so he bent his arms at the elbow instead of keeping the arms straight, and thus reduced the strain. He did curls by bouncing, bending back, and swinging the bell; he pressed the bar overhead with a push and shove. He absolutely refused to do deep knee bends. Results: Jake grew 18-inch arms and a 50-inch chest. He was the first man, to our knowledge, to go all-out for “Cheating” exercises.
We would like to say, at this point, that Jake got very strong from this unorthodox practice, but this would not be so. He got bulk, this is true, but he was never anyway near as strong as he looked. We recall one time when the York boys played a dirty trick on Hitchens. There were four lifting platforms in the big gym, and each of them had a revolving York International bar. Jake liked to use the one on a platform close to the Dream Bench, so he could sit down and relax between sets. (The Dream Bench was so-called because so many lifters had rested on it while dreaming of becoming World Champion.) This bar, like the others, was usually loaded up with a pair of 45-lb. plates, which, with the weight of the bar, made up a barbell with a weight of 135 lb. (minus collars). Jake was accustomed to seizing this bar and doing a set of perhaps ten rough, violent presses to start his workout. Unknown to Hitchens, and to other strangers as well, the boys at the York foundry had cast a number of plates somewhat thicker than the regular 45-lb. discs, which looked exactly like the usual weights. These super-discs weighed 75-lbs. each. So one day the boys fixed up Jake’s favorite bar with 75’s instead of 45’s so that it weighed 195 instead of 135.
Jake, always a breezy conversationalist, came rushing into the gym, full of vim, vigor and vitality. He felt super, he opined, and would show the boys how to take a real rough workout. He grabbed his warmup bell. It went to the shoulders, a little harder than usual, but when he started to push it vigorously overhead his first violent shove only carried it as high as his nose, and it began to sink downward. The boys in the gym began to gather round. “What’s the trouble, Jake?” they asked solicitously. “Are you sick?” Do the weights feel heavy today?” Poor Jake was completely dumbfounded. He thought he was losing his strength. He tried the bar again, and again, and still couldn’t lift it. He asked on of the others to try it, and of course the weight of 195 meant nothing to guys like Grimek and Stanko, and they played with it like a toy. Poor Hitchens decided he should see a doctor, and reluctantly put on his street clothes and went away. The next time he came into the gym the 75-lb. phony plates had been removed, and Jake was back to normal."
