Hey guys...someone just emailed me about this topic...
Whether you believe it or not...at Diamond Gym in Maplewood, NJ around 1998/1999...I did use the 190 lb dumbells for a set of partial press shoulder presses. When I say partial I do not mean bouncing them...I just did not lock out at the top....if I remember correct it was for a set of 3-4 reps...
Shoulder presses, in any form, have always been a movement that I did have freakish strength. At the age of 18 I could behind the neck press with 405, which lead to my earliest injuries...it was not smart....On the hammer military press I can do a set of 12, depending on the day and my energy levels, loaded with 5 plates on each side....when I was training with Trevor Smith, RIP,Trevor pushed me to new levels of strength...Front military press on the Smith machines?..a set looked like this:
635 x 2, with 1 forced....
drop the weight to:
495 x 2-4, with 1 forced
drop the weight to:
315 x 2-4, with 1 forced
drop the weight to:
225 x 2-4, with 1 forced
drop the weight to:
135 x failure...usually only 4-6 reps
then doing partial with this for what seemed an eternity, and then...
dropping to the bar only to have Trevor lean on it while I had to complete 4-6 full reps...
I know there are going to be those that do not beleive...but many forget I spent from age 13-20/21 training with world champion power lifters...these guys were mutants!...they were so strong and I was lucky that they taught me that inorder to build solid base I needed to be as strong as I wanted to look.
Now?...I have a lot of injuries, but many fond memories of great training sessions...the 190's at Diamond Gym would not have been so hard to move had they not been so long...anyone that has ever trained there or seen older style dumbells like this? they were harder to balance side to side than they were to move up and down...
Ronnie is awesome, and very strong...but just so you guys know?...I have trained with power lifters that were in the 165lb class...and could military press over 400 pounds...some of them benched in the mid 500's to low 600lb range...they did not look like bodybuilders...strength and cosmetics are too very different things....