Hail to the Dinosaurs!
Dinosaur Training owes a very big debt to a
man named Carl Flannigan.
I met him when I was in my 20s, at an old
school, black iron gym where we both trained.
Carl was a retired ironworker here in Louisville.
People called him Big Carl.
Carl was a big, strong, powerful man, with hands
the size of baseball gloves. He was a legend among
the ironworkers in town. They said he was the
the strongest man they ever knew.
And he was still strong when he was older.
He used to do quarter squats with 700 to 800
pounds -- and deadlift lockouts with the same
weight. That was around age 65 or so.
Back then, the gym didn't have a power rack.
Carl did his partials on an old-fashioned "step"
style squat rack.
Anyhow, Carl liked doing heavy partials. I asked
him whether he had ever used a power rack. He
said no, and asked what it was.
So I told him about power racks and power rack
training.
He got really interested in the idea.
So did the gym owner.
Long story short, the gym owner traded Carl a
free gym membership for a year in exchange for
building a power rack.
Now, for an old ironworker, building a rack was
pretty easy. Carl made is super big and super
strong.
He brought it to the gym and bolted it to the
floor and a concrete wall.
That was almost 30 years ago, and the rack is
still there -- and still going strong.
Carl and I were the first people to use that rack,
and for a long time, we were the only gym
members who used it regularly.
It worked pretty well. I gained close to 40 pounds
of muscle with power rack training -- and built
some very serious strength. The rack built so
much strength that I began competing in power-
lifting and bench press competitions, where I won
a number of state and regional championships,
and five national Bench Press championships.
I wrote about it in an article published in Stuart
McRobert's old Hardgainer magazine, and that's
what started my writing career.
If it had not been for Carl Flannigan's power rack,
I probably wouldn't be typing this -- and you
probably wouldn't be reading it.
So I want to say THANK YOU to Big Carl -- and
to everyone else, let me close with this:
If you want to build maximum strength and
muscle mass, power rack training is the way
to do it!
It worked for me -- and it worked for Big Carl.
And it's worked for many other Dinos all around
the world.
Yours in strength,
Brooks Kubik
P.S. I cover power rack training in Strength,
Muscle and Power, Dinosaur Training and book
no. 1 in the new Dinosaur Training Strength
Archive series:
a. Strength, Muscle and Power
http://www.brookskubik.com/strength_muscle_power.html
b. Dinosaur Training: Lost Secrets of Strength
and Development
http://www.brookskubik.com/dinosaur_training.html
c. The Dinosaur Training Strength Archive
http://www.brookskubik.com/dinosaurtraining_archive.html
P.S. 2. My other books and courses, DVDs, the
Dinosaur Files newsletter and links to my Kindle
books are right here:
http://www.brookskubik.com/products.html
P.S. 3. Thought for the Day: "Strong is good.
Super strong is even better." -- Brooks Kubik
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