The Lost Basic

by Tom Furman

There will be no deception or provocative introduction here. The photos will tell the story and history will be the evidence. I’m fully aware it is anecdote, but let’s live with that. Squatting on the toes is missing from most trainee’s “go-to” bag of tricks. It was a part of the basics of most of the old York courses and old time strongmen.

It was more common in the forties, fifties and even sixties, but the lower loads, due to leverage disadvantage made the standard squat more attractive. We know how that goes. Squatting with boards under the heels like Arnold and Dave Draper did slowly moved to flat footed squatting, Texas style squat and today’s power squat with a monolift. Moving 1000 pounds is possible through better training, but almost certainly better drugs, better training apparatus and support garments that challenge the boundaries of modern petrochemical technology. It’s also from a change in style to optimize, leverage, distance, physics and the judges rulebook.