Plague of Strength

I realize that it is amusing that a squat specialist would spend so much time discussing guys like Steve Merjanian, Chuck Ahrens, and other bench specialists who hated squatting more than the limp-dicked manosphere crowd hates Captain Marvel, but as I’m all about focusing on the lifts you enjoy and letting the rest sort itself out, it makes perfect fucking sense to me. Pat Neve is likely going to be the most ridiculous of this bunch, because he was a world record holding powerlifter who trained with strength sports legend Jon Cole, whose squat numbers are still hyper elite today. Neve, on the other hand, was the first person to bench over 450lbs under a bodyweight of 200 lbs, but wasn’t really much of a deadlifter or squatter… which made them complimentary training partners if you think about it.

Tragically, Neve was born about 50 years too early to really capitalize on his top-heavy builder approach, because he likely would have been a fan favorite in the division everyone loves to hate, Men’s Physique. Not that it matters much to Neve- he retired early as a multi-multi-millionaire and spends his days travelling and driving badass exotic cars and hot rods, because YOLO and no one in the history of humankind ever got rich off their badass squat.

The year in which Pat Neve was born, 1948, was an important year in bodybuilding- it seems like an unnatural number of 1970s Mr Americas were born that year. The son of Italian immigrants, Neve grew up in the projects with what can only could have been a pathological hatred for turtles and a love for magic mushrooms. After moving to a better part of town, Neve took his hard boiled ghetto attitude to the new school and asked who the toughest kid in the high school was so he could get whipping the dude’s ass out of the way. It being a lilly white suburban school, no one knew, but they pointed out the best athlete instead- this in turn led to Neve becoming a beast in football, wrestling, and track, all in an effort to establish himself at the top of the food chain. That was the mindset Neve carried throughout his life, and set the stage for him to become a proverbial dual major in powerlifting and bodybuilding and later an insanely successful businessman.

Taking a page out of the Donald Trump school of YOLO, he entered his first bodybuilding comp on a dare (which seems to have been how a lot of bodybuilders got their start) and took second, then rounded out the year by buying a 1964 Stingray convertible and winning the Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Arizona (was the youngest winner of that comp at 19). From there, Neve opened his own gym, set the world record for the bench press with 468 at 181, then won the 1974 Mr. USA, 1975 and 1976 Mr. America, and was the runner up Mr World in 1977, and the runner up Mr Universe in 1978.

By that time, Neve had either smoked everyone or just about everyone in powerlifting and bodybuilding and decided to switch things up. He sold his gym, started selling cars, and became management within a year. In 1987 he bought the dealership and bought his first Ferrari. Twenty years later, he retired a multi-millionaire with the most badass fucking collection of cars anyone this side of Jay Leno has amassed, ranging from pimped as fuck hot rods to Lambos to Bentleys, plus cool older exotic shit like Panteras (he actually bought a Pantera (their GT5 gets my vote for hottest fucking car in history), DeLorean, and Porsche 911 Turbo in the same year he broke the bench record). That of course has little to do with his training acumen, but it does give good insight into how driven Neve was- when he decided to do something, he fucking did it.

“All throughout my life I always had the coolest cars. Of course, being Italian, my first [exotic] car was a Ferrari, and I just ordered what is called a 599 GTP GTB Ferrari. They’re only going to send 250 to the United States and only three in Arizona. You have to be on a list to get them. I paid my dues on this list—$400,000 and it’s completely top of the line. Those cars to me are like art. Sometimes you think of a person like Steve Wynn who has a $30 million Picasso painting, and you think to yourself, “What the heck does he do with that $30 million painting?” Well he looks at it. In my garage, I have it all fixed up. I just go in there, I look at the cars, I polish the wheels I dust them off. I just love looking at those cars. Don’t get me wrong, I like driving them but I truly have love affairs with my cars. My first two or three Ferraris I always traded in for better ones. The same goes with my Lamborghinis. I always upgraded them. So when I get the 599, it’s the highest upgraded Ferrari you can get. It’s more than driving them. It’s feeling humbled to be able to afford to own them.”

Neve had a much longer competitive career in bodybuilding than powerlifting, due mostly to the fact that Pat Neve had tiny little bird bones. Never one to concoct a bunch of stupid goddamn excuses so he could just suck at something without getting mocked, Neve had to tailor is training very specifically to accommodate his weak little bones. As god-tier strongman and powerlifter Magnus Ver Magnussen put it,

“Pat had a light bone structure for a powerlifter, this was an advantage as a bodybuilder as small joints make big muscles appear even bigger and rounder (think Serge Nubret or Flex Wheeler as good examples of that). But that lighter frame suffered from his early heavy lifting. I read an article by Pat years ago when he was preparing for a bodybuilding contest and his joints were so fragile he said he dare not play rough-and-tumble games with his [two sons] because his shoulders or elbows might be injured doing that! That’s why Pat trained with such strict form, loose style would have been risky to use. It’s ironic that on stage Pat looked like a superman and certainly was still strong yet suffered pain and was probably more fragile than most of the audience watching him” (Neve)

Though he was handicapped like a motherfucker due to the fact that he should have been battling Bruce Willis in an M Night movie, Neve still put up decent numbers in full meets. According to powerlifter Chuck Mirabile,

“Pat was truly one of my all time favorites….he had an amazing physique…razor sharp and powerful….and not only looked the part but was the real deal….he set 6 WRs in the bench press as a 181#er and had a true competition best of that WR 468.5# as a 181#er. He also totaled 1600#…all pretty much raw. He was very underrated as a bodybuilder, and as well as he did competitively, he likely deserved even better. Not being in the Weider stable likely hurt his sponsorship and notoriety. He was one of the best for sure….I think his physique was superior to Franco’s and his bench press prowess was also likely superior, as his lifts were all done in competition and official. Franco may have hit a meet or so, both in Europe and the States, but I doubt his form, nor his range of motion was comparable” (Neve).

Bear in mind that the elite guys at this time were following themselves in these meets, since the flight system wasn’t introduced until 1985- it was common for the beasts to have to do all three of their attempts on a lift in under ten minutes, a feat most modern lifters wouldn’t even attempt on their best day… unless they were going for a Crossfit total. For a guy who was afraid to roughhouse with a four year old girl because of potential injury, that had to have been scarier than finding out that R Kelly was your Big Brother and had your first play date scheduled in a public bathroom.

“That’s what life is. Life has its ups and downs. Life is not up all the time. Bad things are going to happen and you’ve got to fight through them.”

In any event, the 24 year old proto-Mr. Glass broke the world record in the bench press in only his fifth powerlifting meet, training half the year for powerlifting and the other half for bodybuilding. This meant that due his extremely slight bone structure, Pat focused entirely on building tendon and ligament strength for six months and then hypertrophy the other six- a methodology that seemed to work extremely well for him and would serve as a good template for anyone wishing to rock an amazing physique on the beach with the strength to back up their looks.It also gave Neve’s physique a density few on Earth could match, and gave him a hard look that earned him numerous most muscular trophies.

“I thought that if I trained very early then I would have a head start on everyone else, so I would train everyday at 5 a.m. I knew if I worked harder, longer, and faster then I would be successful.”

When training for powerlifting, Neve would train at the legendary Thorbecke’s Gym with a who’s who of 1970’s lifters- Jon Cole (elite thrower, Olympic weightlifter, world record holding powerlifter and first man to squat over 900 in wraps, and World’s Strongest Man competitor), Jack Barnes (181lber who was squatting over 700 in the 1970s with ace bandages for wraps), 500+lb bencher Mike Matousek, legendary wrestler and powerlifter (with a 585lb bench) Billy ‘Superstar’ Graham, “the Blond Bomber” Dave Draper, and original WSM winner Bruce Wilhelm. These workouts were insanely long and brutal affairs, often lasting up to six hours, and Neve would hit it four times a week- his “light” weeks were 10+ hours, so for those of you who think you train a lot, you don’t.

“In the [powerlifting season], 4 to 6 sets per exercise and 4 total training days per week. Repetitions are the same year around for either the off-season or gearing for that IMPORTANT contest. The rest periods between sets on all my training programs are dictated by how long it takes my training partner to finish his sets.”

“I will train my weakest body part very HARD. In my case, it is my calf area. The last year, I have been training the calf three times per day. I will immediately upon arising begin by doing some calf stretching movements (as per advice of Boyer Coe), then I will do a few sets of non-weight calf raises. Now, at the gym where I do my workouts, I will do some very heavy weight resistance exercises for this area.

I conclude my heavy workouts with some more of the type of stretching movements and non-weight calf raises performed earlier in the day. Even with the minimum of 4 training days per week in the off-season, I find that I am in condition for posing exhibitions. During the off-season, I will gain 5 to 8 lbs. over my best weight of 180 to 182 lbs” (Weis).

To give you some idea of the structure of the bench workouts Neve used to smash the 450lb barrier while looking like what I Greek god would masturbate about looking like, check out the following. Take note of the fact that he used a standard periodized progression combined with the conjugate method, and would plot his incremental weight jumps months in advance with the help of a PhD candidate in physics from Arizona State, and the highest regarded astrologer in the Southwest. Oh wait, no he didn’t- rather than misapplying a methodology invented by Russians specifically for athletes who lived in near famine conditions with no access to weights for half the year, he simply applied his massive will, grabbing his fucking balls, and beat the fuck out of the weights until he a world record and a personal best in the gym of 490 at 185lbs.

Tuesday and Saturday

Paused Bench Press– 10-15 sets that would looks something like this: 135lbs x 10; 185 x 8; 225 x 8; 275 x 8; 335 x 6; 365 x 4; 405 x 4; 430 x 2 x 2
DB Bench Press– 180s x 4 x 6
Incline Bench Press– 225lbs x 10; 275 x 8; 315 x 6; 335 x 4; 335 x 2 x 2
Bench Press Lockouts– 540lbs x 4 x 6 (Neve’s sticking point/fail point was 3/4 from lockout, rather than off his chest, so he used these to blast through that point)

Neve would only go for a max in the gym once a month. He thought maxing more often than that would just get you discouraged, so he would try new max monthly. He gauged a lot of his progress from his rep work as opposed to his maxes, because he knew if his old max was set with a four rep max with 440 and he was now doing 445, his max had to have increased accordingly.

If he wasn’t progressing on a given exercise, he did exactly what those bitches on Reddit would tell you not to do- he’d program hop like a motherfucker. If he couldn’t get his head into a given exercise on a given day, week, month, or whatever, he’d mix it up with shit like super sets or giant sets, or ask to train with some other badass and follow their workout just to light a fire under his ass (Weis). His only thought was to moving forward, and the impression his methods made on his peers, friends, or family never entered into the equation. Rather than focus on the rotten produce of the minds of strangers who almost certainly wanted to see him fail, Neve dug deep within himself and did whatever it fucking took to stoke the flames of his own passion.

“In my life, I only entered seven powerlifting meets, and I set six world’s records.

In a twist of fate that warms the cockles of my cold dead heart, the man who many believed to be the greatest physique of any lightweight professional bodybuilder, the way he trained didn’t change all that much from powerlifting to bodybuilding- he just trained a fuckload more. Whereas most would drastically change their rep ranges, Neve kept those identical to his powerlifting prep- instead, he just increased the number of workouts a week to five, and increased the exercises and their work sets. In short, his workouts went from ridiculously long to “holy fuck, it’s a good thing I own a gym, because I can never fucking leave it.” He literally trained calves around the clock, making them the first thing he did up one getting out of bed (unweighted calf raises on a step), and he did daily posing routines to bring out his ridiculous, Grand Canyon-esque separation.

To achieve that kind of conditioning, Neve ended up being a complete cock in the couple of months prior to any competition, since he was living on zero cabs, low fats, and a shitload of meat. He’d flip the fuck out at the slightest provocation, was constantly exhausted, and yet still dragged his ass through 20 hours or more of training every week and a ten fucking mile daily bike ride, one of which landed him in the hospital with a broken knee and elbow. It was what it took to win, though, so he fucking did it, week in and week out, for three straight months even though he already looked harder than a diamond in a fucking ice storm six months out. Fuck all that “he is the nicest guy and a total family man” bullshit the dead people always trot out when they’re talking about some dickhead who won a fun run at their local church mixer- if you want to be the best you’re gonna have to crack some fucking eggs, nevermind the obvious fucking skulls.

“You can’t give up on your goals. There was a time when I was down to my last 500 bucks. This was in 1979, and I told my wife, “I don’t know what we’re going to do.” Two weeks later I go to this contest and win $7,000 and I keep going from there. In one month I went from $500 to like $25,000. But I didn’t know where I was going, I just kept plugging away. People would tell me, “Get out of the bodybuilding stuff. Get a real job.” But I turned it all around. Now they ask me how I did it. Whatever your goal is don’t think you can’t reach it because you can” (Sanchez).

CONSISTENCY IS THE KEY TO PROGRESS

Don’t get it fucking twisted- that is the golden goddamned rule according to Pat Neve.

Random Tidbits of Wisdom from the Richest Bodybuilding World Record Holding Powerlifter

On the secondary exercises that most heavily contributed to a massive bench and a half dozen “Best Arms” trophies:

• The two hand dumbbell overhead extension (french press) for triceps was his bread and butter move.
• The incline dumbbell curl for biceps were the man’s biceps mainstay.  They gave him full biceps at the insertion and contributed to his peaks, plus helped build ligament strength in his elbow that aided in moving massive weights on the bench.
• Aside from the aforementioned bench assistance moves, Neve was a massive fan of the now-forgotten Nautilus pullover for thickness, in addition to flyes and dips.  As I’d recently realized that this was a mainstay movement for every big bencher of yesteryear, it seems like an exercise I need to revisit.

“The one exercise that worked for me, to supplement the bench power and triceps, was heavy French Presses with the dumbbell. You could either do it standing or sitting on the edge of a bench. I would work up as high as 165 pound and do 10 repetitions.

I thought this worked triceps the hardest. I’d go on to Lying Triceps Extensions with the barbell, One-arm Triceps Curls, and Pushdowns on the lat machine. They’d all be done very heavy ” (Lurie).

On stupid fucking RPEs and why they’re a useless metric unless it’s to easily identify pussies by their use:

“As a matter of fact, when I was powerlifting, I did every movement heavy. A good example of this is , when I pressed behind the neck I did 285 at 185 pounds bodyweight. On that dumbbell French Press I’d start with 75 pounds to warm up my elbows and go up to jumps to 95, 110, and finally hit 165.

I just did everything heavy, because when you powerlift you’ve got do everything heavy. It keeps you used to the feel of heavy weights, and that’s in a slow strict form” (Lurie).

On cheating:

“I feel that anytime you keep putting constant pressure on a joint and cartilage, it’s going to wear itself down. The cartilage between the joint is a pliable substance, and it can be worn down through excessive pressure. Then it’s bone rubbing against bone … and this leads to tendonitis” (Lurie).

On longevity in strength sports:

“That’s what I feel. I feel anytime you exert yourself beyond your normal limitations, that’s when you’re going to cause, and it’s just a matter of time, going to cause some infringement of the joint area.

If you approach it from more of a bodybuilding standpoint, you stand a better chance of being conditioned, than just using wild force and psyche” (Lurie).

And in that, you have the tale of Pat Neve- bench pressin’, hot rod racin’, Lambo and Rari ownin’ powerlifter and bodybuilder of yore about whom you’ve likely never heard. Neve and Weider apparently hated each other, so Neve was relegated to Dan Lurie’s magazines and therefore received none of the attention the Weider guys got in a time when Neve could have been a full-fledged fucking pop culture sensation. Not that it hurt Neve one fucking bit- there was no obstacle over, around or through. In any event, this is yet one more lesson we can all learn about the fact that someone or something is popular in no way indicates that it’s the best, and that while a badass squat likely won’t net you shit for money, a world record in the bench press certainly won’t hurt your bank account.

“That’s one of the things that bugs me about the sport. Everyone claims it, but officially where are they? Franco Columbu claims he’s the world’s strongest bodybuilder, Kalman Szkalak says he is; David Johns thinks he is. Now these men may have lifted a lot of weight, but who knows what kind of form, their particular bodyweight … I’m the only one who’s actually done it.

I’m the only bodybuilder to be a national champion in bodybuilding, plus holding a world record in powerlifting at the same time.”

Sources:

Fernando, Ron. Jon Cole: A Forgotten Legend? Reprinted from a 1982 issue of Powerlifting USA. 30 Jan 2011.
Web. 3 Mar 2019. http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2011/01/jon-cole-forgotten-legend-ron-fernando.html

Hahn, Jim. Pat Neve’s love of sports and cars. Arizona Auto Scene. 16 Feb 2014. Web. 28 Mar 2019. http://arizonaautoscene.com/2014/02/16/pat-neves-lifetime-of-love-for-sports-and-cars/

Lurie, Dan.  Bodybuilder Pat Neve – Sacrifice to a Pain God & the Bench Press.  Muscle Training Illustrated, 1980.  Strength Oldschool.  9 Apr 2017.  Web.  9 Apr 2019.  https://www.strength-oldschool.com/blogs/news/interview-with-bodybuilding-legend-pat-neve

Neve, Pat. Dreams do come true. Pat Neve. Web. 22 Dec 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20141222120204/http://www.therealpatneve.com/

Sanchez, Noelia, Jeff Cabacungan and Chad Freeman.  Pat Neve- with age comes perspective.  Lowrider.  16 Oct 2009.  Web.  9 Apr 2019.  https://www.lowrider.com/features/0810-lrb-pat-neve-perspective/

Weis, Dennis B. Pat Neve- Powerlifter and bodybuilder. Reprinted from Iron Man Magazine 1977. Web. 3 Mar 2019. https://www.dennisbweis.com/Articles/PatNevePower-Bodybuilder.pdf

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