sprince

This is a telling statement. You seem to have a complete misunderstanding about "heavy lifting" and general ignorance about lifting in general. When deadlifting 700lbs there may be perfectly legitimate reasons to use the belt, wraps, compression suit, or whatever. I do consider some of these to be cheating if used during competition, but that's just me.

I also have to defend pilates (yoga, martial arts, plain old crunches, etc.) for core training, in spite of your condescending attitude about men and obvious bias towards pilates. There are a number of core muscles that respond particularly well to simple body-weight exercises. A good analogy is working the muscles of the rotator cuff, use too much weight and the larger muscles take over, negating any training effect for the smaller muscles that are absolutely critical to stabilize the joint during heavy lifts.