First tell me what John Fair and Bill Starr believe. One is an historian and the other a writer (for York) and an eye witness and knew the subjects of many of these events, and then let's go from there.
If you wish to believe outside that basic sphere of knowledge, then do so. The CIA made those WTC towers explode on 9/11. The list of beliefs goes on...
A sample of Bill Starr's writings in this area:
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Back to the Rack Pt 3
by Bill Starr
Those who had a connection to York had learned about the magic pink pills. Dianabol started out as a pink pill, and then the color was changed to blue. Don’t ask me why. The point is, those outside the circle remained ignorant of the athletes’ steroid use. Even after I moved to York to become Tommy’s assistant at Strength & Health, I still didn’t find out about Dianabol until I’d been there for six months. Once word started to spread, it swept across the country like a wildfire. The cat was out of the box, and as Ziegler predicted, it was Pandora’s box that had been opened.
I want to clear up a common misconception here: York lifters, other than March, did not get Dianabol from Ziegler. He adamantly refused any requests for the drug and encouraged Hoffman not to assist them in getting it from other sources. His advice fell on deaf ears. Hoffman liked the advantage the steroid gave his lifters and made arrangements with a physician in York who provided it free of charge. Dianabol became part of the recruitment package. Represent the York Barbell Club, and received protein, vitamins, sweats, T-shirts, travel expenses to meets and anabolic steroids. Not unexpectedly, with a residency rule requiring lifters to live in the area where their team was based set aside, the York team grew quickly. When it came to weightlifting, Bob Hoffman was the AAU.
Lifters from California to Texas to New York and everywhere in between discovered that when they started taking Dianabol, it didn’t matter how they trained. They still made fast gains. The opinion among lifters was that the great progress that March and Riecke made was a direct result of the anabolics and that isometrics was a smokescreen—a well-designed hoax to sell courses and racks. Isometrics and isotonic-isometrics fell out of favor as fast as they had shot to the forefront.
The truth of the matter, though, is that Ziegler’s rack programs did contribute to the gains made by the test subjects. And all the other lifters—such as Garcy, Bartholomew and Bednarski—also used the program he set down. What got lost because of Hoffman’s subterfuge was the hard-and-true fact that rack training is one of the very best ways to increase strength, particularly the isotonic-isometric system.
I have used it on advanced athletes at the three colleges where I served as strength coach. Every one of them responded favorably, and none were taking steroids. The gains they made were a direct result of the training system, not an ergogenic aid.
The primary reason that isometric training is not a part of strength programs today is coaches don’t understand the basic concepts well enough to be able to teach it to their players. And unless they were taught the system by Ziegler, they are totally unaware of the subtleties involved—or, more correctly, unless they were taught by the doctor or by someone who learned from the doctor. Coaches stay with what they know. It’s safer than venturing into uncharted territory, especially when their jobs depend on the progress made by their athletes.
Even so, when I teach isometric training to coaches and athletes at clinics, they learn the technique readily because it’s so simple. That’s another reason rack training isn’t in common use: Complicated is considered better than simple. Chains, rubber bands, elaborate machines and contraptions have to produce more strength than just lifting a weighted bar a few inches and then holding it against a set of pins for 12 seconds. That’s the current thinking, but it’s wrong. There’s no better way to gain strength than by doing isotonic-isometrics.
Obviously, you must have a power rack in order to use this system. On the ideal rack the holes for the pins are set close together, and the uprights should be wide enough apart to enable you to perform a wide range of exercises. If your routine includes overhead lifts, such as military presses or jerks, you want the rack to be higher than the finish position of the movements.
If the power rack that’s available to you doesn’t meet all of those standards, you can still do some isos. Whenever I encountered a rack that didn’t have the holes close together, I resorted to standing on two-by-fours to get the exact position I was seeking. Since I wouldn’t be moving my feet during the iso, it didn’t pose a problem.
The question arises: What positions in the rack are the best to do? The answer is, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. A bodybuilder would select different exercises from a shot-putter, and an Olympic lifter would do a different routine from what a powerlifter uses. In other words, your iso workout should be sport specific. For example, powerlifters have little use for overhead power, so there’s no reason for them to include any pressing positions in the rack. Instead they’ll benefit by selecting various benching placements.