The Titan Evil Twin Skin

Last week we covered the Titan Super Boss suit, and this week I wanted to cover something else from Titan, but a little bit different than just a piece of gear they offered. This time, I wanted to cover a material: The Titan Evil Twin Skin. 

Titan isn't very popular in multi-ply. Their cuts aren't for everyone, and overall canvas suits are still dominant at the time of writing (which they don't make). The Titan Evil Twin Skin was a poly material meant to change that. It was a bit thicker and a little stretchier, and was meant to be used as a multi-ply material. 

I say was because as of now this stuff no longer exists new. Titan says their supplier can no longer get it and it simply does not exist anymore. Will it come back? The jury is still out on that one. I know it did exist for a little a few years ago, and then disappeared and came back; but I don't know if this will happen again. 

Actually, the inception of the Evil Twin "brand" is able to be found on Powerlifting Watch here.

The picture above is from a PowerliftingWatch post back from 2013. I wanted to highlight this because this is really the only reference to an Evil Twin squat suit I can find. Suits from more recently were made of this material, but had either a Titan or Super Boss logo instead of the evil twin one. I'm not sure of the exact timeline, but sometime between 2013 and 2020 they shifted back to their regular poly, and then back to offering Evil Twin Skin in 2019-2020-ish unit recently when it was discontinued.

One lifter you did see wearing these for a while is the great Henry Thomason, who posted many YouTube videos wearing one of these.

In that Powerlifting Watch post, they also allude to a naming convention to the single-ply Evil Twin gear that was released in 2013 (or to be released, as I can't find much record of it) as follows: bench shirt - black widow, squat suit - silverback, deadlift suit - viper.

The big uses of the Evil Twin Skin in recent years was in regular cuts of Titan's multi-ply gear. The briefs were really popular, the Velocity slightly less so, and I feel I saw the Boss even less than that. Another thing to note is with the Evil Twin gear, it's almost always grid stitched all over. I believe this is to counteract how stretchy this material is. Briefs, Velocity, and Boss shown below.

Of this material, three colors were produced: navy blue, maroon, and silver. Navy and maroon were similar, but silver was said to stretch faster. I actually spoke with a rep from Titan once and asked about this, but he said they had no real record on their end of any color acting differently from another. When I was first shopping around for an Evil Twin bench shirt, however; I was advised from multiple lifters to avoid silver at all cost. As was said before, this material all around known to wear out/stretch fast.

The main piece of custom gear Titan made for this was the Psycho Bench shirt, aka the "Evil Twin." This was cut similar to a lot of Titan's shirts, so mostly a chestplate shirt; however it has some insane stitching on the sleeves that create a huge support system right under your triceps. It is also almost always an angled sleeve shirt when sold by retailers, you seldom see the straight sleeve cut. 

I had one that I liked when it fit. I eventually outgrew it going up a weight class and couldn't touch anything in it, but when it fit right it was a good shirt. I know many lifters who did not share as favorable of an opinion due to how hard these shirts are to touch in, but I can say after using one and going back to an SDP I was a much better bencher technically. 

It's time to stop beating around the bush. The real reason I wanted to highlight this material is the absolutely unstoppable Jimmy Kolb. There is no greater poster boy for what the Evil Twin Psycho bench shirts could do than Jimmy. He didn't ever go through with one of these to a meet, however his training lifts are feats of poly that might not ever be surpassed. Let's highlight a few: 1100x3 to a 2 board, 1000x8 to a 2 board, 1100x2 to a 1 board, and this 1210 that almost touched a 1 board. These numbers would be impressive for someone in a band shirt today. To put it into perspective, at the time of writing the next biggest unlimited bench behind Jimmy's 1320 is Rich Putnam's 1135.

What would Jimmy have put up in a meet if he used an Evil Twin? That's impossible to know, but it sure is fun to speculate! Given he benched 1120 in a single-ply Katana with a KLA Collar, and later 1320 in a F8 Krueger, it would be somewhere between the two. From all the videos of him using one on Instagram, I do not think it is out of the realm of possibility to have him near 1150 if he could get one to touch. If he did 1150 in multi-ply, it would be the ATWR in all weight classes, and he'd be second in unlimited only to himself. Just in case you forgot- he's the king of the bench press. The numbers don't lie.

Unfortunately, this material is all but gone, and what is left is scarce and/or stretched out beyond it's lifespan. Maybe it will come back again, maybe it won't. As of now it looks like it's finally dead.