Hoornstra Raw Benches 675 Pounds at Gaspari Nutrition's Kings of the Bench X

**Sean Katterle** · 07-18-2014, 05:07 PM

Originally Posted by swingslammer

Arcidi and Clark had bench shirts......in the 80s?

Is this a shirt? There is no question Hoornstra's bench was slower and had a full pause where this one does not.

Yes, all of Arcidi's benches that were above 666 pounds were performed wearing an early 1980s style bench shirt.

Arcidi was at the center of the bench shirt controversy when the shirts first came into being. At the time, he had a 666 raw bench record and was being closely followed by Bill Kazmaier, who was in the books with a 661. The race was on to become the first man to officially benchpress 700 pounds. Arcidi drank the Kool Aide, against Kazmaier's recommendation (who'd switched over to strongman and who'd also suffered a pec tear while bending rebar.)

Arcidi used a shirt to get up to 700 pounds, but he didn't get the fame he was looking for. The community became wise to the shirts and their numbers boosting effect. When Arcidi tried to return to real, raw lifting, he was never able to get a 700 passed and so James Henderson was accurately credited as being the first man to ever bench a 7 hundo (there's only been 4 men in history with the capability of breaking that fabled barrier.)

Now Arcidi is anti bench shirt (better late than never) and he's a Hollywood supporting actor (and an actor in commercials) and he's seen all of his records wiped out, by the newer and stronger versions of the shirts he helped to usher into the game. We're getting rid of the shirts, after they ruined the benching in the late 80s through early 2000s, so all shirt benchers are now being recognized for what they really are and were; frauds, well meaning or not.

**Sean Katterle** · 07-18-2014, 05:09 PM

One of those famous 700 pound raw benches was hit at our 2012 show in Las Vegas.

**s2h** · 07-19-2014, 01:53 AM

when i saw the video of the 675lb lift..the first thing that came to mind was comments would be made that he didn't lock out..in a sense his arms were not locked out at the elbow..

when i competed in bench press meets(a long while ago)we were never required to bring the bar past the starting point(going back up)...and similar to this lift a "start" call was given with a minor pause to achieve the start point..the reason for returning to the start point and not past too a absolute straight lock out was to prevent injury and/or bar accident due too their is a stability factor involved when you dead lockout a extremely high weight along with different lifters take a vast array of grips which could make locking dead out even more risky..

i thought it was a good lift by my understanding..

i don't think the bashing of shirted lifters is needed...well unless there hogging up the squat rack for 3 hours to do 4 sets...to each is there own..