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EE!1ǵKz(>>E,etJ(e O'Ҋ(@ŏS ( )cZ~QC*/J(Q)O(VEQ&EEs-on at its clinics. While the power clean and squat are essential lifts, a poorly conditioned back can be a weak link that reduces an athletes ability to transfer force from the legs in both these lifts. The result is the athlete will be forced to use lighter weights. This also places potentially harmful stresses on the ligaments and disks of the back. Although an exercise such as the glute-ham raise doesn t create the same stress on the muscles as a power clean or a squat, the additional work helps correct these weak links that may be preventing an athlete from achieving Upper Limit goals.<br>Dr. Mel Siff, a noted exercise scientist from South Africa, had an opportunity to train with the late Serge Reding back in 1971. This Belgian behemoth was the first man to snatch 400 pounds and was considered the greatest rival of the most famous weightlifter of all time, Vasily Alexeyev. Siff saw Reding squat, all the way down, without wraps, 880 pounds for 5 reps and perform repeated jumps a foot off the ground while holding 286 pounds in his hands!  When Serge Reding stayed with our family, he shared an enormous amount of material with me, recalls Siff.  He stressed that  core exercises (such as the squat and power clean) were of little value if even one minor muscle group is weak and lets you down in competition. <br> <br> From Pommel Horse <br>to Car Seat<br><br>Although the glute-ham raise had been used by European athletes since the turn of the century, American athletes were introduced to it in 1971 through Strength and Health magazine. The magazine showed pictures of Russian weightlifters performing the lift on a pommel horse in front of wooden stall bars.<br>American weightlifter Bud Charniga saw the article and decided to include the new exercise in his exercise arsenal.  What I did was take a padded car seat and nail it to a carpenter s bench. I then placed it in front of my power rack and hooked my ankles underneath my barbell so that I wouldn t tip over. <br>Because the car seat Charniga used was padded and had a much sharper curve than the pommel horses the Russians were using, he noticed something unusual.  I noticed that when I did the exercise, the curved surface of the car seat helped me flex my knees more so that I could get a greater range of motion. Although you can t directly attribute all his lifting success to one exercise, it should be noted that in 1974 after Charniga began performing the exercise, he snatched 352 pounds, only 5 pounds off the American record in his bodyweight division.<br>In 1979 Charniga visited Russia and found that every gym he looked in had a glute-ham station, and that the exercise was an integral part of the training of Russian weightlifters. He saw that weightlifters would often perform some variation of the exercise twice in a workout, once before the workout with light weights as a warm-up, and again at the end of the workout with heavy weights as a strengthening exercise. This sensible practice was also followed in the U.S. In fact, five-time national weightlifting champion Ken Clark, whose picture appears in the BFS Total Program Book, began every workout with several sets of back extension exercises. In 1983, at a body weight of 220 pounds, Clark clean and jerked 470 pounds, an American record that has yet to be equaled.<br>While in Russia, Charniga noticed that not much had changed in regard to how the exercise was performed since that first Strength and Health article, with the exception that some gyms had positioned straps to secure the