Topic: Former Weightlifting Star

[Buck Ramsay]

So, I go to the gym early this afternoon to have a small work-out, I will be doing starting attempts Monday in preperation for the World Universities next weekend, and Dursun Sevinc former silver medalist at the World Champs (1997-170, 205) comes in our facility here at UofT with a few athletes he's coaching. I knew he had come to the Toronto area as he had competed here a couple months back. He did some modest weights there (130-160 I beleive) he hadn't been training consistantly and trying to recover from old injuries. SO, I took the oppurtunity to talk to him today and he was very willing to talk about his weightlifting experiences etc.

I remember watching an Ironmind tape once and Strossen talked about how he was one of the strongest guys in the competition. Well, this is an understatement. He was stronger than most the supers. He told me the first time he went to the training centre in Turkey as a 16 year old he back squated 200k, apparently this was enough for him to be able to come back the next day and train  This was with no gym experience.  Well, long story short, his best training lifts were 180 snatch, 210 clean and jerk (220 power clean), 400k back squat, and 300k front squat. I still chuckle thinking about how rediculus those numbers are for a guy that weighs 85K.

He ended up training today a little as well, working up to (with about 3 warm-up sets) a 230 back squat, coming back after a 2 month lay off. This was done with an extremely slow decent, a pause at the bottom, and another intentional pause halfway up in the sticking point. His entire legs have to be about as long as my calves, and I don't have long legs, its rediculus. And he's about 5'7" weighing 80K right now.

He also said that when Abadjeev came to Turkey with Naim, he was training under him. He just said, "****ing Abadjeev...." Apparently at one point he had him training 6-8 hours a day for a period of several months. He said this wasn't smart training, he said he had him do 20 singles with 210 C&J in training and after he went to the hospital and as it turned out needed to get surgery to repair his newly torn rotator cuff. Apparently this wasn't unusual doing loads of singles in either lift. Talk about survival of the fittest. Altogether he didn't think highly of Abadjeev's training methodology.

All in all, an inspiring experience a week out from a big comp. Oh, and he asked me a few questions, and I told him I recently did a P.B. front squat with 195, and he kinda laughed and said I need to 'get strong'. So I asked him how to go about that, and he just put his hand to his mouth and said 'tablet'.  We all got what he was saying, and had a good laugh at that one too.