#75 Barbell Training with Mark Rippetoe Part 1
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we discuss why a man should be strong, why you should lift heavy things, and why a grown man shouldn't be weak. Why a man ought to be strong.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well we're back
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from a summer break needed some time to recuperate but now we're back on track for a regular weekly
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podcast schedule and i'm excited about the guest we're coming back with his name is mark ripeto and
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if i'm sure a lot of you are listening know who this guy is i've heard of him anytime we write
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about strength training on the website his name and the book that he published back in 2005 always
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comes up he's the author of the book starting strength basic barbell training that's what it's
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about it's about lifting heavy with barbells doing squats deadlifts presses and bench presses to get
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strong mark has over 30 years experience in power lifting being an olympic weightlifting coach
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as a gym owner and in the past almost like past 10 years he's had a lot of influence in the resurgence
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of just simple back to basics barbell training and so i'm really excited to talk to him today
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we're going to discuss why a man should be strong you know why you should be able to lift heavy things
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we're going to talk about the basics of barbell training we're going to discuss crossfit we're
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going to discuss uh chesticles if you don't know what those are you're going to find out today
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um i divided this podcast into half because it went a little long um so we'll have the second half next
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week i've been having a longer podcast but lately and i've had a few people reach out to me saying hey
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it's a little long can you shorten them a little bit so that's what i'm going to do get back to our
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usual 30 minute long podcast so this uh week we'll talk sort of the basics of barbell training
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and the next week i took questions from twitter from followers to ask directly to mark and we'll
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uh answer those questions that people had from mark riptoe so there we go let's do this
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mark riptoe welcome to the show thanks for having me brad i appreciate your call
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and i appreciate the opportunity to talk to your people well yeah i appreciate i'm a i'm a big fan
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of yours um your your book starting strength has been a big influence on my strength training
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and um we're going to get to the nitty-gritty about your philosophy towards barbell training but before
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we get there i want to kind of think you know look at big picture because here's something i've noticed
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whenever we published articles about you know lifting heavy strength training we usually get some
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person that chimes in with some sort of comment like well you know if you if you're not playing
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football or some team sport or if you don't have a job that requires you to be really strong
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you know there's really no point to dead lifting 600 pounds um so i mean what's your answer to that
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i mean to someone you know why should a man be strong even if they're you know a desk jockey
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for a living well a man ought to be strong because a man ought to just be strong
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and that's what a man ought to be i mean you know what we say all the time is uh and this is kind
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of tongue in cheek but a grown man weighs 200 pounds uh i mean there are just dark standards that
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must be maintained and that's just what we do uh we're not you know i've never said that everybody
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ought to deadlift 600 pounds all i'm saying is is that probably you ought to be dead lifting more
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than you are now and that's not the same thing as recommending that everybody be a competitive
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power lifter but everybody ought to be strong enough to be useful as a human male and uh you know we still
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have to lift things and and move things around physically and we ought to be able to do that without hurting
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ourselves because it's just you know shameful and uh it's you know i've i've written on this
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extensively strength is uh it's if nothing else strength is the thing that keeps muscle mass on
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you training for strength maintains your muscle mass and maintaining your muscle mass is an extremely
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important part of maintaining your health uh for reasons of uh biology and immune system mechanics
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and this sort of thing it's uh the number one thing that happens to us as we get older that affects our
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quality of life is the loss of muscle mass and the accompanying loss of bone density that comes from
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the process by which you lose your strength so the maintenance of strength and the maintenance of bone
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density is what enables our quality of life to be maintained at old age uh running doesn't prevent that
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from happening in fact running may accelerate the process uh the only thing that keeps that from
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happening is is for guys when they get into their 40s at least to say i must now
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deliberately as a part of my day strive to maintain and increase my strength
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and as a result i mean you've got to do strength training yeah and uh what's expected of you yeah
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and you also i mean i think it's a great point and you also write in starting strength in the
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introduction that there's just like a confidence that comes with being able to lift heavy things like
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sure you know i know i feel great whenever i make a new personal a pr on a lift i mean it carries
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down somewhere in the that's deep in the dna i think yeah you know yeah all right so uh for our
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listeners who aren't familiar with uh your most i guess most popular most famous work it's a book
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called starting strength and it's all about barbell training yeah starting strength basic barbell
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training is now in its third edition yeah how when when did it originally when was it originally
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published it was first published in 2005 uh it's been through three editions the third edition
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uh has sold the best because it's the best book the first two were works in progress and i think we've
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got it nailed down on the on the third edition uh in fact in all three editions the books have sold
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250,000 copies wow and for an independent publisher i'm told that's good that's really good and that's
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the thing like you don't really i mean you don't do any public you know publicity on it it's just sort
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of like word of mouth i found out about it from a friend yeah we have not really ever marketed the
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book uh we probably should we're taking steps in that direction now but the book has sold itself
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uh over the web and uh people hear about it people have good luck with it people write about it we've got
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probably 95 percent of our amazon reviews or five star yeah you know it comes up in searches prominently
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people look at it and they think you know this makes sense at a certain level even before they
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hear the details yeah i mean the the basic program is that you go you do the basic barbell exercises which
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constitute the entire program the squat the press the deadlift the bench press and for most people we
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do power cleans and possibly power snatches and then we do some chins these basic exercises work all of
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the muscles in the body in the way that they work under normal anatomical use in other words your knees
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and hips bend so when you squat down and stand back up that's a normal human movement it uses all of
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that musculature well if we put a barbell on your back and we have you do uh sets of five reps with
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the barbell fives work best for reasons that would take an hour to explain fives work best and uh and then
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we we increase the weight on on that until we find out till we find a weight that first day that's
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you know not terribly difficult but is beginning to be a stress and then the next time you come in we go
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up five pounds and the next time after that five pounds and then five pounds and then five pounds
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and we do that until that doesn't work anymore and when that doesn't work anymore then we get more
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complicated but until it's necessary to be complicated simple works just fine so uh that that
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that process extends over all of these lifts chins don't work that way chins don't work that fast but
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we're using chins as assistance exercise but one of the things that barbells uh do is the big barbell
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exercises are the only lifts that you can do that will continue to increase in strength for years
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machines don't do that you can't make progress on your leg extension for years and years like you
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can your deadlift because there aren't enough muscles involved in the exercise and as a result
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the the performance of the exercise doesn't produce sufficient systemic stress to cause a
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systemic response and that's what we're we're looking for when we do barbell training we want the
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whole body to get strong because the whole body functions as a unit and if we train it as a system
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instead of isolated components then the system gets stronger while the constituent components get
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strong too so the the program is really very simple and straightforward i didn't invent it it's been
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used for decades if not centuries you know they were of course predicating this on the invention of
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the barbell the the good thing about the barbell is that it's incrementally increaseable we can go up
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on our bench press two pounds of workout if we need to and that enables us to continue to drive an
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adaptation for a very long time so the barbells the invention of the barbells can is responsible for
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the facilitation of this program but i didn't invent this i just wrote it now and uh in a comprehensive
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understandable way that collated everything that i've learned about it over my decades in the gym
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business and uh it's a simple program it works every time it's tried yeah and that's the interesting
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thing is that you know this book you know starting strength is just insanely popular people see it
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and they're like wow this is crazy you know i this is like it's new to them right because they probably
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grew up in a time when it was just all about the machines or just simple dumbbell lifts well i think
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that they've most people have never had this simple straightforward explanation presented to them
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before uh again this is not complicated material it is merely uh uh a utilitarian adaptation of the
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simple biological principle of stress recovery adaptation if an organism is stressed
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and the stress doesn't kill the organism organism recovers from the stress and adapts itself so that
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a repeated dose of that same stress doesn't constitute a stress anymore yeah all organisms this is just a
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function of of of life everything that's alive responds to stress in this way and all we're doing is
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capitalizing on that by making sure that a stress is applied that can be recovered from now if i took a novice
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into the gym the first day and i had him do a hundred squats a hundred bench presses a hundred deadlifts
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a hundred cleans that obviously would be both stupid and unprofessional because a person that is not
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adapted to a stress can't recover from an overwhelming stress and uh the stress overwhelms it can't be
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recovered from so the idea behind strength training is to apply a specifically tailored stress
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to the body that allows that forces an adaptation to take place because it can be recovered from
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so the processes of recovery you're obviously nutrition and sleep and these sorts of things but uh
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but the process is so simple and obvious that uh i think for a long time people just
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didn't see it laying there yeah you know because all i did is organize it for yeah it's one of those
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things it's it's so simple people they why why would it work right because it's so it's so simple
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back to the show here's the interesting thing i i you bring up in the beginning of the book talking
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about um you know barbells have been used for almost a century decades right yeah and you talked about
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like the strength and the power that weightlifters had back in the day because like one of the things
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i do is i like to collect old men's magazines and old fitness magazines and you see some health from
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back in the 60s yeah and you see what some of these guys are doing like what they're lifting just sort
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of as normal it's insane i mean it's just it's but like in today you really don't see that all
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that often unless you are a you know competitive power lifter or the like but uh there was a
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different mindset towards i guess strength training um say 40 50 years ago than compared
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to what's going on today well i like to use the example of the of the press now you mentioned the
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overhead press we just call it the press because that's what it was called in antiquity we the press
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is the standing overhead barbell press anything besides that gets a qualifier so if it's a if it's a
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seated press then it's understood that you're seated if it's a dumbbell press you're using
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dumbbells if it doesn't say bench it's assumed you're pressing overhead so back 50 years ago
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a body weight press i weigh 225 loading a barbell at 225 and pressing it was considered pretty good
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you know a good place to start yeah uh a 75 pounds over body weight press was considered a good press
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of course you know the the old york guys were big pressers bill march and vet narski and all these
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you know ernie pickett all these guys we write about on the website uh were good pressers
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you know it we had people in this country pressing
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you know in the 500 at vet narski press up close to 500 496 i think wow i i can't i don't i'm i'm not
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good with those numbers uh but we have a series of articles written by both bill starr and marty
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gallagher on our website to detail this very thing and we specifically include that stuff
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in our in our library of of things to read because i specifically want people to know
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where we were at one time and where we're not now yeah and see i guess the emphasis like there was a
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switch where people started focusing more on aesthetics right like they want the the shredded
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six-pack and like yeah it's all about sex right the pecs pecs bodybuilding you know that's when we
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stopped pressing and started laying down doing our doing our pressing on the bench yeah because
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you get to lay down now it's uh i call the pecs the chesticles yeah but you know people people think
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that uh that you know well bodybuilding made pecs fashionable if you look at the old pictures of
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grimmick his pecs were not out of proportion to the rest of his physique uh he had a flawless physique
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and you'll notice that the absence of overwhelmingly large pectoral muscles
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and that happened back in the in the late 60s and 70s when the bench press became
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fashionable uh bodybuilding started rewarding big pecs
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uh best chest became a trophy that you won at the mr america that sort of thing yeah and uh
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i don't know body i've never been a big fan of bodybuilding i just think it's kind of odd but
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it's uh uh but yeah probably the emphasis on bench press comes from bodybuilding yeah
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it explains a lot of like where we got to today and sort of fitness and why a lot of guys go to the
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gym because they want to look like that but maybe not particularly be strong that's not like the primary goal
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right all right right and if you know the funny thing is if you just worry about strength all the
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yeah that's right you know i mean physique follows strength that's right and you won't have it'll look
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like a normal physique like you won't look sort of like a weird i don't know so it's not out of
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proportion right some bodybuilders tend to emphasize their some entry-level bodybuilders
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tend to emphasize the things they can see in the mirror yeah with their shirt off
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and as a result they don't squat they don't deadlift their back is kind of flat and shallow and
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sickly looking their legs are you know runner's legs you know people people are odd yes breath that's
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all i can tell you yeah some people are very some very very odd i i i i i i can hear you on that
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yeah um so let's talk about so one thing about barbell training the thing you focus on in starting
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strength is just the form um how important is form in barbell training and like is barbell training
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something you can just you know someone can get your book go off on their own and start it or should
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they you know get a qualified coach to check out what they're doing um what's your take on that
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well the book is designed to teach you how to do the lifts uh people of average intelligence
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have always been able to take instructions in that book and apply them effectively to their own training
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the uh each edition got better at helping us do that and uh there are a lot of people on my website
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that have always trained by themselves uh for one reason or another have never had any coaching
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and do just fine uh the optimum situation would be to have a a competent coach evaluate your uh your
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technique uh but then we get into questions that are extremely sticky sometimes like what is a competent
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coach yeah uh most competent uh most coaches are incompetent uh the current fad and in uh the actually
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the fitness industry uh is to minimize the importance of uh deadlifts and squats done
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correctly into full depth and maximize the importance of unstable surfaces all this functional training
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shit it's just a wonderful excuse to handle light weights uh you can't get strong handling light
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weights strength is merely the production of force against external resistance if heavy weight's not
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involved then you're not getting strong that's all there is to it yeah there's just not another
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analysis there's only one type of strength and that's the kind that your muscles produce when they
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contract by moving your bones which is a system of levers that moves the load the weight's not heavy
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the load is light force production the vans are low and you don't get strong and really
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oh shit really that's all there is to it this is not complicated stuff i'm not that bright
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okay i'm just not that bright this is not complicated and it doesn't need to be complicated
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squats allow you to lift heavy weights deadlifts allow you to lift heavy weights they allow you to
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get stronger for years that's why we use them they work the best but learning how to do these exercises
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is sometimes contentious for people that are training by themselves we recommend that you try to find one of
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our starting strength coaches who have been evaluated specifically for their ability to show you
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how to do these exercises correctly but tens of thousands of people hundreds of thousands of people
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have learned how to do these movements by themselves in their garage using the book again these just aren't
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that complicated in an ideal world everybody'd have a coach hell i'd have a coach in an ideal world
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but uh i trained by myself in here late at night because there's anybody around so you know you've
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just got to remember the few simple principles that we hammer on in the book and most people get by
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just fine all right well speaking of form right uh the crossfit games are going on right now oh oh let
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me let me briefly touch on your question about technique okay sure uh because you'd asked that previously
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now technique is terribly important it is important that you get the last inch of the proper depth in
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the squat yeah it's important that you don't go six inches below parallel but it's important that you
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break parallel it's important that you keep your knees out it's important that your back stay in
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extension while the weight's being lifted it's especially important for novices who are learning this
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to have technique emphasized above all else technique uh for instance the first time that i i trained
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somebody in here i will show them correct technique when their technique is correct we start going up
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in weight and when i sense that with my spider sense that the next set the next increase will make
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their form come apart we stop at that weight do two more sets of five and quit so that we preserve
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perfect technique it is important for novices to develop perfect technique for two reasons perfect
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technique means that all of the components of the kinetic chain are doing their anatomically
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predetermined share of the work in the correct way
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the second reason is incorrect technique becomes a safety problem but we're not so much worried about
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safety as we are efficiency remember we're lifting light weights at first and light weights don't get
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aren't dangerous heavy weight gets dangerous therefore as we go through the process of increasing strength
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strength form must stay perfect so that all of the components of the kinetic chain of each
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exercise get brought along with the whole system as it strengthens by the through the process of
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going up five pounds per workout now once a guy gets strong you've been training three years and he
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wants to go to a dead a power lifting meet he wants to try that 600 deadlift does his form on the third
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attempt when he pulls the 600 have to be perfect no because all we're concerned about at that point is that he
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get the deadlift and get the thing passed by the judges if his back rounds a little bit that'll be fine
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for him because he's strong now he can tolerate a little deviation from correct technique especially if
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it's for the win or for the pr but during the process of the development of a certain level of base
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strength perfect technique has got to be the process by which we achieve that strength because of the
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fact that perfect technique ensures that all of the components of the system are doing their job
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this is why we don't need corrective exercises to fix the squat we need correct squat to fix the
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squat because correct squatting form utilizes all of the components in their anatomically
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predetermined proportion within the lift and this is why we hammer on correct technique hammer on it
00:26:01.460
hammer on it bad technique gets you hurt bad technique also produces holes in the strength within the
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kinetic chain of the movement pattern yeah and i'm sure you got to start out the you know getting that
00:26:14.260
good technique at the beginning or else you'll just develop these bad habits that are harder to
00:26:19.160
correct because i'm sure i probably have some i've been lifting since high school and i'd like to think
00:26:24.360
i'm doing okay but i'm sure there's room for improvement oh we all like to think we're doing okay
00:26:29.320
brett makes us feel good that's right i like to think i'm doing okay but there's things there's things i do
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wrong everyone needs a refresher on their form from time to time everybody and uh you know there's no
00:26:43.860
substitute for the eye of an experienced coach it's just that they're hard to find sometimes yeah
00:26:49.800
okay well um speaking of form um the crossfit games are going on right now you probably know that
00:26:57.600
um what's your take i'm aware of it yeah what's your take on crossfit because on the one hand you
00:27:04.120
know it's made barbell training popular in some sense but uh yeah i did yeah uh when i first got
00:27:11.820
involved with crossfit back in 2006 i had had great uh hopes for the potential of of its ability to
00:27:19.400
spread barbell training to a whole lot of people who've never been exposed to it and in fact it has
00:27:23.940
uh on the whole crossfit is a net positive but crossfit has a lot of problems uh crossfit training
00:27:31.820
if you pay attention to the main site programming is not really it's not really training it's just
00:27:36.940
random exercise training is the process by which uh a person systematically improves their physical
00:27:44.280
capacity to do a specific physical task training is specific and programming can't be random
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crossfit uh crossfit t90x muscle confusion type stuff doesn't produce strength as a as a long-term
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uh adaptation because strength requires the proper application of strength type programming things that
00:28:09.820
make you stronger five pounds at a time uh crossfit may have you deadlift once every six weeks
00:28:16.800
by itself as a strength exercise once every six weeks is not a frequent enough exposure to get
00:28:22.440
you strong yeah uh i think we're all aware of the random nature of crossfit uh the random nature is
00:28:29.300
what keeps people interested in it because it's not boring but at the same time it's the thing that
00:28:35.900
makes it not training uh i just recorded a a thing with espn on thursday that aired this past sunday
00:28:46.680
morning this is the you and i are speaking on the 28th of july this thing aired on july 27th so if
00:28:53.880
you're listening to an archive of this conversation you'll need to look it up on espn according to that
00:29:00.140
date july 27th and we talked about uh the pros and cons of crossfit maybe people enjoy watching that
00:29:08.800
the uh my objections to it or or are talked about in that interview and uh i think that crossfit is a
00:29:19.540
still has the potential to revolutionize the the uh fitness industry because it's the uh it's the
00:29:26.920
most broad exposure lots and lots of people have besides p98 to the concept that hard produces results
00:29:35.700
yeah i mean previously we'd been taught that the best thing about a fitness program that you could
00:29:42.080
you could do for instance at home was that the device folded up and stored under your bed
00:29:48.060
it only took five minutes it was easy it didn't even make you sweat and it folds up stores under your
00:29:53.640
bed and then p90x comes along back in the early 2000s and starts telling everybody hey this thing
00:29:59.640
makes you sweaty and guess what that's why it works and i think that p90x in effect laid the foundation
00:30:07.140
for crossfit because so many people had seen that infomercial yeah and had already had the obvious
00:30:15.540
presented to them yes it's obvious that hard work works better than software and and p90x kind of
00:30:24.140
broke the ground on that and crossfit capitalized on it crossfit is in a sin in essence p90x with
00:30:29.880
barbells it's random it's done for the effect that it produces on your body today
00:30:36.340
there's no long-term planning in terms of the of the uh structure of the of the workouts themselves
00:30:45.840
uh a gradual accumulation of fitness occurs but it's not according to the to a specific plan and it's
00:30:53.780
not specific to a different a specific type of physical adaptation in other words a marathon
00:31:00.440
demands a different set of physical adaptations than a 600 deadlift so these things must be
00:31:09.020
carefully planned i'm sorry about that that's not my fault that's just biology and uh you know the
00:31:17.520
the random nature of crossfit prevents it from being uh considered strength training uh but it's been
00:31:26.160
very very good for a whole lot of people uh the the primary drawback to crossfit in my mind is the fact
00:31:36.800
that there are so many coaches trying to run the program you know we we deal with crossfit people all
00:31:45.980
over the country lots and lots of these affiliates are very good gyms very very talented experienced
00:31:52.400
coaches where you can obtain quality advice but lots of them aren't and to a person off the street
00:32:00.500
walking into a crossfit affiliate it is impossible for them to tell the difference of course that's
00:32:06.820
also true of any physical coach any trainer i don't you know somebody off the street doesn't know the
00:32:12.940
difference between me and the 19 year old kid at the powerhouse gym up the street that has a shirt
00:32:19.440
that says trainer on it yeah that's just that's one of the drawbacks of being in this industry
00:32:23.820
it with the um with crossfit i mean what they a lot of that's focused on crossfit with barbell
00:32:30.040
trains this whole like lift for time thing yes is that like not good or is it good i mean
00:32:36.020
or should we go slow is better slow and heavy it's the source of a lot of injuries because
00:32:41.420
if you do a lift that should be executed with technical perfection under conditions of fatigue
00:32:48.400
first thing that's going to happen is technical perfection goes out the window and then you're just
00:32:53.640
pulling on the bar and uh sometimes that gets you hurt yeah you know sometimes the weight is light
00:33:02.840
enough and you're in good enough shape that you don't get hurt but there's always the potential
00:33:07.580
whereas properly executed strength training has such an astronomically low percentage of injury
00:33:19.280
potential that it's just really not even on the chart it's it's you don't get hurt doing correctly
00:33:25.600
executed squats deadlifts presence bench presence power cleaners you get hurt sometimes at a power
00:33:34.080
meet but that's competitive athletics not fitness training competitive athletics are dangerous once you
00:33:40.680
decide you want to be a competitor that you want to win at something safety is no longer a concern
00:33:47.840
winning is a concern that's why people in the nfl get hurt it's a competitive sport safety is not
00:33:55.480
the point safety is neat but it's not the point and when you make uh anything competitive
00:34:03.560
then you up the injury potential i think that's not a that's not a terribly complicated concept to wrap
00:34:10.780
your brain around uh one of the problems with crossfit is it's presented as competitive
00:34:17.220
and you have a lot of people that want to immediately join in the competition but they haven't prepared
00:34:24.240
and as a result it wouldn't be crazy to see an increased injury rate in that kind of situation
00:34:33.320
yeah okay well here's the question i have i know we have a lot of uh older listeners um who are
00:34:40.800
probably like what in their 40s and they're like i said it's not old middle age like 40s 50s 60s
00:34:45.200
um should your program change as you get older or can you keep trying to add more and more weight to
00:34:53.620
your deadlift even in your 50s or 60s well it depends on when you started lifting i'm 58 and i've been
00:35:00.400
lifting for 38 years and i'm not really uh silly enough to think that i can do the pr as i did when i was 35
00:35:10.700
right you know as you get old and beat up in uh you know get bucked off of horses or whatever else
00:35:19.440
you're doing you you know have motorcycle wrecks and things like that things get injured and those
00:35:24.760
injuries must be taken into account when you train now if i'm starting person off as a novice when
00:35:31.180
they're 60 i expect them to make progress for several years before it slows down now we wouldn't
00:35:39.840
approach the training of a 60 year old novice the same way we would approach the training of an 18
00:35:45.960
year old novice because the hormonal milieu is different and everything else is different too
00:35:51.580
but in terms of your ability to make progress far more important than person's age is how long has
00:36:01.660
the person been training how much adaptation has already taken place in the direction of that
00:36:07.440
person's potential adaptation if no steps along that road have been taken then there are a lot of
00:36:14.080
steps left to take it's obvious that a strong guy uh increases his strength at a higher cost
00:36:23.580
than a weak guy it's easier for a weak guy to get stronger than it is for a guy who's already very
00:36:28.580
strong duh right that's the principle of diminishing return showing up one more time uh if i've got a 60
00:36:36.920
year old novice uh we still do the same thing we'll show them the basic barbell exercises same ones the
00:36:43.460
only one we might omit probably would omit for a 60 year old guy would be the clean because old people's
00:36:49.400
tissues don't respond favorably to ballistic training to explosive stuff uh as younger guys
00:36:55.680
tissues do because old tissues don't aren't as dynamically responsive uh rapid dynamic loading is hard on
00:37:06.160
an old guy's tendons so we realize that and we won't have him clean but everything else he can do
00:37:11.380
squatting dead lifting pressing bench you know unless arthritis or injuries prevent that from
00:37:17.080
happening well we do basically the same program but what i would do for a 60 year old guy is
00:37:22.560
is i would only have him train probably twice a week the thing that i have found to be true as we get
00:37:29.760
older is that the problem in older guys is recovery and that training volume is the problem not training
00:37:40.720
intensity old guys can still lift heavy guys have been training a long time just to lift heavy they
00:37:48.260
just can't do as many reps and sets because they can't recover from the volume what is your uh program
00:37:54.320
look like you said you're your 50 year 58 year old man is it still kind of the basic starting strength
00:38:00.240
oh yeah i do the basic lifts i i still pull i deadlift or or do low rack pulls uh every other week
00:38:09.860
and then i'll squat every other week so i'm only doing those once uh once every two weeks i press every
00:38:16.220
week uh and i'll do chins and do some conditioning every week my program is very simple but i travel a lot
00:38:24.260
and i'm not always in the place i need to be to get a workout in so it's it's kind of a mess but i
00:38:29.640
still maintain a oh i probably maintain a 500 deadlift i can probably still squat 365 if i had to i
00:38:36.980
press 185 i can do 16 dead hang chins wow you know i can hang on to that i'm fine i'm not competitive
00:38:46.980
anymore but i'm you know i'm just staving off death at this point yeah trying to maintain that muscle
00:38:52.020
mass right trying to maintain trying to maintain hanging on for dear life all right so you um you
00:38:59.100
know you advocate like the big lifts but uh and you mentioned chins are there any other supplemental
00:39:03.560
lifts that you know would be kosher in your program oh i don't think anything else much is necessary
00:39:10.480
i mean the the strongest guys uh throughout the history of the sport have have done fairly simple
00:39:20.200
programming uh i remember back in the in the 70s and 80s larry pacifico was a little bit different he
00:39:28.340
used to use a lot of bodybuilding assistance type exercises in his programming but but most very
00:39:36.800
strong guys will tell you that squats some type of deadlift maybe maybe some variations in the deadlift
00:39:44.080
uh bench presses some type of of overhead press uh and chins or lat pulls are basically the the tools we
00:39:57.380
have we don't vary uh the exercises we vary the volume and intensity the other program in other words
00:40:07.640
exercise variety is not the programming variable in strength training loading is is the variable in
00:40:16.700
strength training we always squat we just we use different sets and reds uh it's not necessary to
00:40:23.600
use leg presses because they don't do anything yeah except make your knees sore yeah i can i can attest to
00:40:30.160
that yeah it's just that the the the simplest things can be kept the better it's uh you know and this is
00:40:37.520
this is one of my pet peeves with uh uh modern approaches well i wouldn't say modern but current
00:40:45.420
approaches to to uh strength ebifting in 2014 this emphasis on exercise variety and 90 different ways to
00:40:53.160
do a one-legged squat on an unstable surface that's that's not how you get strong if strength is
00:40:59.580
if strength is the the adaptation you want heavy weight is going to have to be involved in that
00:41:06.280
equation and if the exercises you choose to do preclude the use of heavy weight then you can't get
00:41:13.060
strong and that's just all there is to it so uh you know as is usually the case the latest thing
00:41:21.640
is not necessarily the best the latest you know all the variety it sells books or magazines or
00:41:28.760
oh it's proprietary certainly it's interesting certainly it sells better than what i've got to
00:41:33.760
sell hard work's what i got to sell it's not much of a it's not in demand does it uh but it does work
00:41:41.660
our guest today was mark ripeto mark is the author of starting strength basic barbell training
00:41:47.400
and and also several other books but basic barbell training is the one you got to check out
00:41:52.200
uh you can find that on amazon.com you can also go to his website starting strength.com they have
00:41:58.960
forms they have articles by mark and you can also buy the books there and also tune in next week for
00:42:05.200
the second half of this interview where mark answers questions taken from art of manliness twitter
00:42:11.660
followers until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly