Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Ed Coan, 71 World Records and Still the GOAT of Powerlifting (Lifting Legends #2) | Ep 369
Transcript
- 0:02Philip Pape: If you're someone who loves to lift and respects the legends who built this sport and you want to understand what separates good lifters from the greatest of all time, but you've wondered what made the old school champions so dominant when they had less technology, fewer resources and simpler methods, this episode is for you.
- 0:21Philip Pape: Ed Cohn set 71 world records and became the lightest man to total over 2,400 pounds.
- 0:27Philip Pape: At 218 pounds body weight, he moved weights that seemed crazy.
- 0:31Philip Pape: His secret was not advanced programming.
- 0:35Philip Pape: It was something that built champions then and still builds champions now, but most modern lifters never master it.
- 0:41Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.
- 0:59Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Hape, and today we're going to talk about the life and philosophy of Ed Cohn, arguably the greatest powerlifter who ever lived.
- 1:08Philip Pape: Now you know that feeling when you're scrolling through your fitness content, your Instagram feed, your Facebook wall, and you see another new training method or a secret technique that promises to unlock your strength potential, and you've never heard of this thing before.
- 1:22Philip Pape: Well, ed Cohn built his legendary career on the opposite approach.
- 1:25Philip Pape: While today's lifters chase complexity, cohn mastered simplicity.
- 1:31Philip Pape: While influencers sell angles and hacks, cohn relied on progressive overload and passion-driven consistency, but with some nuances, some interesting background that we're gonna get into today.
- 1:43Philip Pape: Now, if you want to master these principles yourself the fundamentals that build legendary strength like progressive overload I have a free guide for you that breaks down how to apply this concept to your training.
- 1:56Philip Pape: You can grab it free at witsandweightscom slash free or click the link in the show note for my progressive overload guide.
- 2:03Philip Pape: It's a great blueprint for building strength the Ed Cohn way, systematically, sustainably.
- 2:07Philip Pape: It gives you details on the different ways to progress in your lifting sessions, very explicitly, one method after another, and tells you how to apply it so that you can finally make progress Again.
- 2:19Philip Pape: Click the link in the show notes to download my progressive overload guide.
- 2:22Philip Pape: All right, let's meet the Mozart of strength.
- 2:26Philip Pape: That was his nickname, ed Cohn, ed C-O-A-N.
- 2:29Philip Pape: If you've never heard of him, I'm gonna give you a little bit of his background and then tie what he did to why this matters today.
- 2:35Philip Pape: So his story starts in 1963.
- 2:38Philip Pape: It wasn't in some prestigious gym, it wasn't some elite coaching program or anything like that, but in a basement, as all these programs start right In a basement.
- 2:47Philip Pape: He was a bullied kid and he refused to stay weak.
- 2:51Philip Pape: He was 155 pounds, he was getting picked on and he did what millions of teenagers have done in the past he decided to get stronger.
- 2:58Philip Pape: Now I wish I did that back then.
- 2:59Philip Pape: I didn't, but he did.
- 3:00Philip Pape: And he did something a little bit different, though he didn't just hit the weights randomly like a lot of us did at that age Again, not me, but I, you know, I had a cousin, I knew some friends who were just, you know, slam some weights in the garage, really no rhyme or reason.
- 3:14Philip Pape: I see that today with young kids, and you know it's.
- 3:17Philip Pape: It's one thing to have fun I love that.
- 3:19Philip Pape: It's another to continue in that method into adulthood where it doesn't actually benefit you because you are not progressing.
- 3:26Philip Pape: Well, what did he do?
- 3:27Philip Pape: He studied Arnold's education of bodybuilder education of a bodybuilder, which is a fantastic book and that's different from his encyclopedia of bodybuilding.
- 3:37Philip Pape: So keep in mind, arnold wrote a lot of great stuff over the years.
- 3:39Philip Pape: He's a great writer, fantastic life.
- 3:41Philip Pape: Go check out any of his stuff.
- 3:43Philip Pape: But this was education of a bodybuilder.
- 3:45Philip Pape: And he bought an Olympic weightlifting set, he got some isometric cords and he started training in his basement.
- 3:51Philip Pape: You know, all alone.
- 3:52Philip Pape: He was determined, he was focused, kind of sounds like a lot of the story of these folks when they were at that age who ended up becoming greats.
- 3:58Philip Pape: And so over months he worked with isometric cords, which are effectively cable exercises that require isometric holds, and, you know, basic equipment.
- 4:08Philip Pape: And he built strength.
- 4:09Philip Pape: But he also understood the principle of progressive overload that still a lot of people today don't understand or don't apply.
- 4:15Philip Pape: And you know he wasn't just this kid messing around with weights.
- 4:19Philip Pape: He seemed to take it seriously and, you know, perhaps he enjoyed it, perhaps he realized how much it benefited, perhaps he had a genetic, you know, growth potential that he was tapping into, but it's.
- 4:29Philip Pape: It's kind of a systematic thinking that I really appreciate in someone.
- 4:33Philip Pape: And when he finally joined a real gym, this was in Chicago and he was inspired by the legendary Bill Kazmaier, who at the time was a very dominant, a strong man, ed, I think the story goes that he loaded up a barbell and squatted 500 pounds right off the bat.
- 4:48Philip Pape: Now think about that for a moment.
- 4:50Philip Pape: Okay, most lifters spend years trying to squat, you know, double their body weight or try to build up to anything close to that.
- 4:57Philip Pape: And he was hitting triple body weight squats as a teenager who'd been training less than a year all right at 155 pounds body weight.
- 5:06Philip Pape: So this is going to be relevant because it's going to be something that he repeats.
- 5:10Philip Pape: He continues to demonstrate this ratio of strength to weight.
- 5:14Philip Pape: That's pretty incredible.
- 5:17Philip Pape: Now, again, most of us spend years trying to improve our squat, our deadlift.
- 5:21Philip Pape: All of this and you know I'm an older guy that didn't get started to my 40s.
- 5:25Philip Pape: Not using that as an excuse, I just wish I can go in a time machine back to my 20s or my teenage years and see what would have happened.
- 5:31Philip Pape: But Ed was hitting massive weights as a teenager, not much training, and his approach apparently was one of just get the job done right.
- 5:42Philip Pape: No ego, not rushing it, just get in the basement, get the job done.
- 5:45Philip Pape: And so that kind of approach, that kind of mindset, really helps anyone who's trying to improve anything right.
- 5:52Philip Pape: For me back then it was playing saxophone.
- 5:54Philip Pape: Okay, I was a music nerd, but you know what I practiced every day.
- 5:57Philip Pape: I got really, really good, was able to go to a nice arts high school.
- 6:00Philip Pape: It was a great experience.
- 6:01Philip Pape: I was able to meet my wife at a gig in my 20s.
- 6:05Philip Pape: Even though I was an engineer I was also being able to play.
- 6:07Philip Pape: It has nothing to do with Ed Cohn, my point is just being systematic and focusing on something and improving it over time is the bread and butter of personal growth in any area.
- 6:18Philip Pape: Right?
- 6:18Philip Pape: So when we fast forward, that was the beginning.
- 6:22Philip Pape: Right Then, what Ed accomplished.
- 6:24Philip Pape: So if we look over the next two decades of his life, he set 71 world records, which just sounds impossible until you understand the dominance that he brought to different weight classes and different federations and obliterated the standards at the time.
- 6:41Philip Pape: So in 1991, he was 218 pounds and he totaled 2,402 pounds.
- 6:46Philip Pape: That was a 962 squat, a 545 bench and a 901 deadlift.
- 6:51Philip Pape: Insane, all right.
- 6:53Philip Pape: This was a 14 and a half percent increase over the previous world best.
- 6:58Philip Pape: So if, in in powerlifting terms, if we were to use an analogy of a sprinter, that would be like knocking one and a half seconds off the hundred meter world record.
- 7:07Philip Pape: And you know when records are broken, it's usually by tiny amounts, right, a few pounds here, a few pounds there.
- 7:14Philip Pape: When it comes to lifting, sometimes we see these step changes and Ed just shattered them, right, and so people were questioning, they were skeptical.
- 7:21Philip Pape: They're like are the weights even real.
- 7:22Philip Pape: You know, even to this day we question are they using foam weights in that video?
- 7:26Philip Pape: And so his best IPF raw in 1994, his total was 2,282 pounds and that was a world record and it became kind of the gold standard for drug tested lifting.
- 7:38Philip Pape: And then in the 1998 championships he pushed the equipped total to 2,463.6 pounds.
- 7:46Philip Pape: He had a 1,003 squat, a 5.73 bench and an 8.87 deadlift.
- 7:53Philip Pape: Now, if we look at other legends of that era, you've got Kurt Kowalski, you've got Dave Waddington, you have Gary Frank.
- 7:59Philip Pape: They were also setting records, but they didn't match this level of consistency across different weight classes and then this margin of victory that Ed Cohn was demonstrating, and so he was quite the winner.
- 8:12Philip Pape: Let's just say he was quite the winner.
- 8:13Philip Pape: You know, even I'm shocked, kind of learning, relearning about his history, which I've heard in drips and drabs over the years from powerlifters and from some of the guys I follow and listen to on podcasts.
- 8:21Philip Pape: But I'm going to call myself a young guy.
- 8:23Philip Pape: I'm in my forties, I didn't grow up necessarily with this culture, so I'm kind of figuring it out now and having fun researching and sharing with you guys on the podcast.
- 8:31Philip Pape: Now, these are just numbers, these are just records.
- 8:33Philip Pape: I think what made Ed the goat right, the greatest of all time, was how he achieved them, why his methods still work today, and that's where I like to make the connection from history to modern times.
- 8:44Philip Pape: So what have we lost today in fitness culture?
- 8:48Philip Pape: I think this is going to sound a lot like my Ronnie Coleman episode, but simplicity is is undervalued, right In terms of principles.
- 8:57Philip Pape: We're talking progressive overload, we're talking periodization and we're talking having a passion for this.
- 9:02Philip Pape: And I want to include passion on the list because I'm starting to see a theme that the guys and ladies who really excel they've got to love what they're doing.
- 9:11Philip Pape: I've been asked on a podcast before how do you go to the gym and lift when you don't like it?
- 9:18Philip Pape: And I'm like I don't get that because I like it.
- 9:20Philip Pape: The gym and lift when you don't like it, and I'm like I don't get that because I like it.
- 9:23Philip Pape: Now I like it because it gives me something, it gives me a result, but I actually like it for the sake of it, and not everybody does, I think although I think you can develop passion for almost anything when you get good at it.
- 9:32Philip Pape: It's just a passion born of hard work, as opposed to hedonism or pleasure, right.
- 9:37Philip Pape: And so his training philosophy is build strength, muscle will follow.
- 9:43Philip Pape: Don't overcomplicate the issue, right?
- 9:45Philip Pape: We see today a lot of noise around range of motion and different rep ranges and strength versus hypertrophy, and like crazy programming because everybody's trying to come up with something new.
- 9:55Philip Pape: I mean, I'm accused of that myself.
- 9:57Philip Pape: I come up with training templates for my clients and for Physique U and I'm like, okay, what can I do?
- 10:01Philip Pape: That's at least perceived as a bit different, unique and value-added, that's not already out there.
- 10:07Philip Pape: And you know what I end up doing.
- 10:08Philip Pape: I end up coming down to the basics of.
- 10:10Philip Pape: Well, guess what?
- 10:11Philip Pape: This program is actually kind of similar to this guy's over here and this woman's program over here, but I've taken the principles and put them together and that's almost the best you can do today because we already know it works.
- 10:27Philip Pape: And when we look at Ed Cohn, what was he doing?
- 10:28Philip Pape: He was training with one or two sets per lift, not necessarily three, four, five.
- 10:30Philip Pape: You know he was focused on form, like all those guys had to be, of course, to be able to lift into those numbers and do it without injury.
- 10:37Philip Pape: And then he followed progression cycles, like light to heavy, for example, very much like base to peak.
- 10:43Philip Pape: When you're peaking for a powerlifting meet, you go from high volume to high intensity.
- 10:48Philip Pape: For example, and my friend Tony P he's in the community, former client lifting buddy of mine, he's in my barbell club as well.
- 10:56Philip Pape: We get on each other a lot over messaging and he shared some really good thoughts about these legends of the past.
- 11:02Philip Pape: He knows a lot about them and one thing he mentioned is that the information is not the same as knowledge.
- 11:09Philip Pape: He said I think we lost something along the way that they figured out so much they did the hard lifting that it's irrational for the current fitness industry to ignore them.
- 11:18Philip Pape: And I think this is important today more than ever, because we have so much information but less wisdom.
- 11:24Philip Pape: I think we have more information than ever, but less wisdom.
- 11:26Philip Pape: Ed and his contemporaries, like Kurt Kowalski I mentioned him they were doing what we now call power building right, and I know some people don't like that term or they use it as a boogeyman in their social media posts.
- 11:39Philip Pape: It's just a combination of strength and hypertrophy and I see this message repeated over and over again now with people I respect.
- 11:47Philip Pape: Take my coach, andy Baker.
- 11:47Philip Pape: Right, he replied to somebody.
- 11:50Philip Pape: Somebody said hey, can I do your power building program but cut out all the accessory work, all the isolation work he's like well, it kind of defeats the purpose, because how do you get stronger without getting bigger?
- 11:59Philip Pape: So the principle of doing both has been around for a long time.
- 12:03Philip Pape: Right, and they didn't call it power building.
- 12:05Philip Pape: That's what we call it now.
- 12:06Philip Pape: That's kind of a buzzword, but they prove that strength and aesthetics are not mutually exclusive.
- 12:11Philip Pape: And that's important because I talk about this stuff all the time.
- 12:13Philip Pape: People come to me to what we call physique university and in my mind, physique is really just a culmination of all the things you're doing for your physical fitness that make you stronger, fitter, healthier and have longevity.
- 12:26Philip Pape: And so when we talk about strength training, the form of training that combines a little bit of high intensity with volume and frequency right, well-roundedness maybe is a better way to put it Power building is really a great, efficient approach and there are a lot of ways to progress.
- 12:44Philip Pape: And that's why I mentioned the guide earlier which you can grab at whatsonweightscom slash free or the link in the show notes.
- 12:49Philip Pape: It's a guide to progressive overload, because I find people are very confused by this, and that's going to show you how to systematically increase your lifts without worrying about, you know, complicating it very much, like Ed Cohn and his ilk have inspired us to do and inspired me to do as I'm looking into their history.
- 13:05Philip Pape: So, ed Cohn, he wasn't just a lifting machine.
- 13:08Philip Pape: You know we like to put these people on pedestals as if they're these robots that we want to analyze, but apparently he was very humble and thoughtful and you can go watch videos of him.
- 13:17Philip Pape: And you know there's a lot of ego driven personalities that dominate these sports, but I think the really a lot.
- 13:22Philip Pape: I think the majority of the good guys who are at the top of their sport tend to be humble because it almost requires it to get where they are.
- 13:30Philip Pape: I know that sounds ironic.
- 13:32Philip Pape: Now, not always I mean, arnold is is not very humble, but we all love the guy too.
- 13:37Philip Pape: He I guess he has a different form of humility, if you will.
- 13:40Philip Pape: You know he kind of jokes about it while he's being a cocky SOB, right, but anyway, I Ed was on I think it was the Michael Hearn show and he said rely less on fleeting motivation and more on passion, which is a deeper, more sustainable driver.
- 13:55Philip Pape: That's huge, because oftentimes we contrast motivation with process and taking action and building momentum, blah, blah, blah.
- 14:02Philip Pape: I like the fact that he's saying, no, you should rely on passion.
- 14:06Philip Pape: Right, rely on passion like rely on being so into something that it just drives you to do it, no matter what, for its own sake, and that is very sustainable, isn't it?
- 14:15Philip Pape: Now that passion may come from the meaningful reason that you do something.
- 14:18Philip Pape: It could be because you want to show up for your family, for your kids, you want to avoid, you know, health issues in old age, and that could all be tied into the passion, for sure.
- 14:27Philip Pape: So that's kind of a philosophy of life in general and it appeals to me because there's a positivity to it, right, by definition, it is positive, positive meaning, not negative meaning.
- 14:38Philip Pape: It drives you forward in adding the things in that allow you to pursue that passion right, and to get through setbacks.
- 14:46Philip Pape: And that's important because things don't go perfectly ever.
- 14:49Philip Pape: And Ed had some setbacks.
- 14:50Philip Pape: He also had some doping violations.
- 14:53Philip Pape: I just have to acknowledge that.
- 14:54Philip Pape: Right, good with the bad, okay, in the 80s, I think, 85, 89.
- 14:57Philip Pape: And then he was suspended in 1996.
- 15:00Philip Pape: It led to a lifetime ban, right, and I mean these controversies were part of that era of powerlifting and I think now we're a lot more transparent, we're just like, yeah, okay, these people take drugs, but back then we're talking.
- 15:10Philip Pape: You know, even before, say, the baseball scandals, that became a huge issue.
- 15:14Philip Pape: Obviously, enhanced versus not enhanced and whether it's disclosed and whether it's tested is has been a huge controversial part of the sport.
- 15:22Philip Pape: And what I want to focus on is just Ed himself, how he handled the adversity.
- 15:26Philip Pape: You know he didn't make excuses.
- 15:28Philip Pape: I don't think he had any bitter rants, I think he just kept focusing and lifting and helping people.
- 15:33Philip Pape: And so I you know nuances, right, everybody's character is a bit complex.
- 15:37Philip Pape: I'm not making any excuses for anyone, and it was a different time.
- 15:40Philip Pape: It was a bit complex.
- 15:41Philip Pape: I'm not making any excuses for anyone, and it was a different time.
- 15:43Philip Pape: It was a different time.
- 15:44Philip Pape: So back to the motivation, passion thing.
- 15:45Philip Pape: You know, motivation is one of those things, like willpower, that is fleeting, but passion is pretty endurable, right, it's pretty endurable.
- 15:51Philip Pape: It can take you through decades, which is what's going to be required when it comes to your fitness lifestyle, with your training.
- 15:55Philip Pape: It's going to you're going to have lots of setbacks oh my, I mean, I know setbacks surgeries and injuries and lots of things that have happened.
- 16:03Philip Pape: He had two hip replacements, apparently right.
- 16:05Philip Pape: So any of you dealing with shoulder issues, hip issues, back issues, it happens.
- 16:09Philip Pape: We got to find a way around it.
- 16:10Philip Pape: Understand our constraints, keep moving forward and passion is going to take you through it, because you're going to say how the heck do I get back to the gym?
- 16:16Philip Pape: How do I do it?
- 16:17Philip Pape: I need to, I need to, I need to do it.
- 16:23Philip Pape: I want to do it.
- 16:23Philip Pape: How do I do it?
- 16:24Philip Pape: In 2023, this is only a couple of years ago he was 53 and he had two artificial hips.
- 16:27Philip Pape: As we mentioned, he squatted 585.
- 16:29Philip Pape: So he's still active, hitting crazy weights, right.
- 16:33Philip Pape: Most people his age are worried about their knees creaking going up the stairs.
- 16:36Philip Pape: He's still moving serious weight because his passion never dimmed his understanding that you can always progress or at least maintain your strength, right.
- 16:43Philip Pape: Of course, with age, you're going to have lower and lower capacity to hit those max, max weights, but you can still perform pretty incredibly as a human being, and this speaks to something missing, I think, in today's instant gratification culture.
- 16:59Philip Pape: Real strength and I'm going to talk about strength here is physical and mental is built over time, over decades.
- 17:05Philip Pape: It's a form of wisdom, in my opinion.
- 17:08Philip Pape: It's a form of resilience, and a guy like Ed is a good guy to look at because he had this self-deprecating humor, he had a genuine interest in helping people, he had the passion.
- 17:18Philip Pape: And what that does, I think, is it spreads like a good virus.
- 17:23Philip Pape: I don't think a virus is a great analogy, but it spreads to others where you elevate them.
- 17:29Philip Pape: You lift them, especially if you're lifting with them, and then it pushes them because you're stronger than them or you have more experience than them.
- 17:35Philip Pape: You lift them, especially if you're lifting with them, and then it pushes them because you're stronger than them or you have more experience than them, and, rather than lording it over someone, it's a source of curiosity on the other person's part and helping them on your part.
- 17:45Philip Pape: And I'm talking from the perspective as a mentor, but I also am a student, and so when I can put myself around people who are better than me, especially by a long shot, but who also have a combination of passion, wisdom and positivity, that's an amazing recipe.
- 18:01Philip Pape: Right there, marty Gallagher called Ed the Mozart of strength.
- 18:05Philip Pape: I alluded to that nickname earlier, and why is that?
- 18:09Philip Pape: Because he's a prodigy and has a legacy that's gonna echo for a long time to come.
- 18:13Philip Pape: He made a huge impact on people and his principles are timeless, like Mozart's music I assume that is where this nickname came from.
- 18:22Philip Pape: And when we think of today, we're living in what I'll call an attention economy.
- 18:26Philip Pape: It kind of drives me crazy when I feel like eyeballs are on the screen all day.
- 18:31Philip Pape: It's all about stories and posts and new content.
- 18:35Philip Pape: You got to grab eyeballs, you got to go viral.
- 18:37Philip Pape: And when it comes to like strength training, it's almost starkly contrast when you just go in and you move a piece of metal, a foot, you know, and just against gravity to try to build your muscles.
- 18:48Philip Pape: There's something so visceral and primal about that that is the opposite of all of this.
- 18:53Philip Pape: In the cloud, virtual living that we have, there's almost like two different realities in existence today.
- 18:59Philip Pape: Right, there's the social media online world, and then there's the real, physical world that we're almost forgetting exists.
- 19:04Philip Pape: And the barbell doesn't care, right?
- 19:06Philip Pape: It doesn't care about your IG following or your feed.
- 19:08Philip Pape: Your muscles don't care about hashtags, right?
- 19:11Philip Pape: I know I'm getting kind of silly here, but at the end of the day, the principles are timeless.
- 19:15Philip Pape: So Ed's career is like a bridge between the old school and modern training, proving that you don't have to reinvent the wheel, that we know a lot of what we already know that works.
- 19:23Philip Pape: Just dig into it, turn to it consistently, but also be passionate and I know you can't force that.
- 19:31Philip Pape: So find a way to make it passionate and if it's not passionate for you, there's probably a different method, while still sticking to the principles.
- 19:40Philip Pape: So what is Ed doing today?
- 19:42Philip Pape: I think he continues coaching people.
- 19:44Philip Pape: He's coaching like young lifters.
- 19:45Philip Pape: He's passing on his techniques but, as well as the mindset, a lot of these guys are really good at sharing the thinking behind this and again, invaluable earned wisdom is what we're getting at right, and this is why I think studying the lifting legends like this matters.
- 20:00Philip Pape: I don't know how many I'm going to do here of these.
- 20:02Philip Pape: Hit me up on IG.
- 20:03Philip Pape: Speaking of social media, send me a message on Instagram at Whitson Weights If you have an idea for someone else to cover.
- 20:09Philip Pape: I'm definitely gonna cover some women in the sport as well, and some of the greats maybe in some other more overlooked areas, not just for the inspiration of it, but the actual preservation of principles at work.
- 20:19Philip Pape: I will be curious when these the series is done at some point when we're at 10 people or 20 or whatever down the road, to kind of put it all together in a compendium of you know what helps us accomplish the most with our focus on the fundamentals and our passion.
- 20:36Philip Pape: So if this exploration of Ed Cohn's principles resonated with you, go check out the last Lifting Legends episode.
- 20:43Philip Pape: I did.
- 20:43Philip Pape: It was the first one, it was Lifting Legends number one.
- 20:45Philip Pape: It was about Ronnie Coleman, and you'll see some of the differences, some of the similarities, right, Because Ronnie was a bodybuilder, ed's a power lifter.
- 20:52Philip Pape: But I think both of their successes hinge on the fundamental principles we discussed today.
- 20:59Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember that your strongest, healthiest, fittest physique and body it's not built overnight, it's not built on fads.
- 21:09Philip Pape: It's engineered one rep, one set, one training session at a time, just like Ed showed us.
- 21:14Philip Pape: This is Philip Pape and you've been listening Wits and Weights.
- 21:17Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time.