If it's true that his bench is in the 600's raw but his shirted bench is over 1000 don't you find it a little too much that a shirt would add 400 lbs. to his bench?
No one is saying the guy isn't insanely strong but what the hell is the point of an artificial device adding 400 lbs. to your total number? That's nearly 70%.
that's a bit misleading, though. it only "adds" that much because his training doesn't focus on bottom end strength. i have no doubts if he was concentrating on raw all this time he'd have broken mendy's raw record by now.
if i get someone with a 405 raw bench into a shirt, chances are it'll be a long time before they can even get 500, no matter what kind of shirt it is. if i train that guy nonstop with bands, chains, and lockouts and get his top end strength high enough so he can bench 750 now, but his chest didn't get any stronger, that would leave him with a 405 raw bench and a 750 shirted.
so does that mean he gets 325 pounds from the shirt? of course not. remember at the beginning he wasn't getting even 100 pounds out of it because his triceps, shoulders, and likely lats weren't strong enough. the only way to "get" more out of the shirt is to "get" stronger in the areas most applicable to shirted benching. you dig?
it's really misleading when people read that so and so has a shirted bench 400 pounds over their raw because they think that a shirt can somehow add 400 pounds to the full ROM of the press when it's only the lower half. otherwise everyone with a 600 pound raw bench would be doing 1000+ in their shirts, but it's only two guys. not only that, but there are quite a few guys benching over 600 raw. kennelly, siders, nick winters, mendy, jeremy hoornstra spring to mind. out of them, only one has over 1000 pounds shirted (aside from gene himself).
nick's an even stranger case. he's going to break the raw record soon, probably going to be the first to get 800 raw. yet he doesn't get much of anything from a shirt. but if you listened to the message boards, he should be able to throw on a double ply denim and bench 1100.
