#76： Starting Strength With Mark Rippetoe Part II
Episode Stats
Summary
In today's episode, we pick up where we left off with Mark Rippetto. In this part of the conversation with Mark, I take a bunch of questions that I got from Art of Manliness readers and take them right to him to get his thoughts on it.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well in today's
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episode we pick up where we left off last time with mark ripeto this part of the conversation
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with mark i took a bunch of questions that i got from art of manliness readers and took
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them right to him to get his input on it really great stuff a lot of cool insights so if you are
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into barbill training and want to get more into it you're going to enjoy this session so let's get
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started i solicited twitter for some questions from readers i know a lot of our listeners are
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big fans of your work and i had just some specific questions uh that people were curious when they
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found out i was going to be talking to mark ripeto so uh one question was should you stretch before
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a workout because people hear different things on that so what's your take on that i've never
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never stretched before i worked out uh now now let me preface that but let me let me back up
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i'll stretch my hamstrings out for about 10 seconds yeah and uh stretching is one of these things that's
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been investigated fairly effectively in the in the literature uh stretching is an excellent way to
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reduce power production and reduce force production if you do it prior to squats and deadlifts and
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and olympic lifts uh here's the here's the basic question if you are flexible enough to do
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the range of motion of the full range of motion barbell exercises that comprise your training
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and you're flexible enough to execute all of the movement patterns used in your sport
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you don't it's a waste of time it doesn't help soreness doesn't alleviate soreness it doesn't
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prevent soreness doesn't prevent headaches it doesn't prevent hangovers it doesn't do anything
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if you're already of sufficient flexibility if you're not obviously you need to stretch
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you know if you're a muay thai fighter and you you know you can't kick high enough well you need to get
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where you can but if you're not why stretch uh it it doesn't do anything positive it's a waste of time
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so no we don't stretch all right yeah i don't i don't stretch before workouts
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i never have never have i never have i don't really know anybody that does that hasn't been
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influenced by the fashion of it yeah you know back in the back in the 80s all those posters
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you know here are these stretches you need to do every day how do you need to do them you know we
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tried that for a while nobody got any better it didn't seem to help and it added 15 minutes to the
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process not everybody's got an extra 15 minutes and especially if it's not accomplishing anything
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why in the hell waste the time on it yeah all right here's another question we got um how essential
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is squatting to speed development well that's an interesting that's an interesting question speed
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in terms of uh a low 40 time is an expression of power it's an expression of the ability to express
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strength quickly that's what power is power is force times distance over time the it's the instantaneous
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peak expression of force production peak velocity expression of force production if you're fast
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uh the only way to get faster really is to get stronger because of the math of the situation
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f times d over t and here's the basic here's the basic contentious part of that discussion
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the t part the ability to express it quickly the ability to explode is almost exclusively controlled by
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the genetics of the athlete we have a very very reliable test for explosive capacity it's called
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standing vertical jump it's done on a the standard is the vertex device which is a little frame that
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has veins that stick out from the side of them you've probably seen one of those at a sports type gym
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uh and you reach up and you touch the the bottom of the uh of the vein array and then you squat down
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without it without a step squat down jump up as high as you can and touch the veins again and the
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distance between the bottom and the top of your hand reach during that movement is the standing
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vertical jump different distance between the flat-footed standing up reached hand and the tide the height of that
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hand at the top of the jump it's not the same thing as a jump up onto a box it's not the same thing as a
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running jump it's not the same thing as dunking a basketball it is the standing vertical jump
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and is extremely dependent on genetics that's why it's useful as a test because it reveals things
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that cannot be trained in other words person with a standing vertical jump of
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12 inches is never going to have a standing vertical jump of even 18 inches
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and i understand all the people on the internet that that advertise that they got their stand their
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vertical jump from 18 to 36 that's what we call bulls
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and doesn't occur because the standing vertical jump in the best strength and conditioning programs is
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improvable by 20 to 25 percent there are outliers but in general if a person comes into an effective
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strength program as an athlete with a 27 28 inch vertical jump if the coach could get him up to 30 that's
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really good but nobody with an 18 is ever going to have a 36 that's why we use the test because it tells us
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the genetics of the person we're dealing with and their athletic potential that's why it's used in the combine
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training for the standing vertical jump test misses the point we're trying to identify genetics here and
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the genetics of explosion are you know i'm not very explosive i didn't need to be explosive to be strong
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but in order that the equation f times d over t have a more positive value the only
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thing you can manipulate is the force production variable in other words strength to the extent
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possible improves a vertical it also improves a 40 yard dash time
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but a person with a six to 40 you know probably not ever going to see a five
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because of the genetic nature of explosion and i i hate to tell everybody that that's just that's one
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of those uh it's just one of them deals it's kind of not what we want it to be but is nonetheless
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so it can help to an extent to your genetics to the extent you can help you get stronger yeah
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i hate to be repetitive but sure just to clarify that it's stronger is better okay all right so
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here's um another question we had related to squatting uh what if you have bad knees should you
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still squat oh what do you mean by bad knee that's that's a good that's the million he didn't really
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a bad knee can come in three or four different forms i got crepitus into my right knee can i still
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squat heavy well you have been yeah you know crepitus doesn't mean anything except your knees are noisy
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a lot of people have noisy knees okay i've trained people that i couldn't stand to be there on the
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platform because the noise made me sick it's got that pendant sound but they're fine you know they
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didn't hurt it's just the way their knees sounded uh now if that that sound is accompanied by pain
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that's probably indicative of a problem we need to investigate but uh it's been my experience that
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the only people that really honestly don't need to be squatting are people whose knees are bone on
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bone if your meniscus is gone you might as well just go ahead and make up your mind that you're
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going to get the knee replacement so that you can get back to your training uh that uh a bone on bone
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a minute absence of a meniscus i wouldn't i don't think a person needs to be squatting if they're but i
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know people that do it but i i don't recommend that uh if you've got some tendonitis in your knees
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ninety nine percent of the time you're you produced it with your training you're doing something
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wrong correct technique once again is critical remember the squat is a hips movement not a knees
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movement most people have an idea in their mind a picture in their mind of a front squat
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which is in fact knees movement but our squat the one we use is a hips movement most of the stress is
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on the hips not on the knees so if you're allowing your knees to creep into the squat when they
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shouldn't be that has the potential to cause some knee pain some tendonitis it won't destroy your
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meniscus it won't destroy your knee it just makes things unpleasant but again that is a it's usually a
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technique issue okay all right here's another question we have from someone does the one rep max
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really mean anything and if so how do you say unless you're at a power lifting meet yeah we never
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test for a one rep max okay unless we're to meet we just don't do it because it doesn't tell us
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anything we need to know uh this is another argument i have with the conventional approach to strength
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and conditioning what the what everybody wants to do is bring a novice into the gym test them on a one
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rep max the first day and then base a whole month's worth of programming on that one rep max
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well here's the problem with that a one rep max for a novice doesn't tell you anything about the
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novice i show some kid how to do a squat first day he's done a squat and i work him up to a one rep max
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a what's it going to look like is it going to be a correct squat well no it's not going to be a
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correct squat because he just learned how to do the damn thing okay and if you run him up to as
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heavy a weight as he can do what's going to happen to his technique all that instruction goes down the
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toilet doesn't it because you just allowed him to do something with incorrect technique second
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he has a person that is that has learned the movement today going to be able to accurately
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display his one rep max strength on that movement what with neurological inefficiency and all the other
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constraints to the display of one rep max of maximum absolute strength no he can't once again bad data
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but but here's probably the most important consideration if i have a person that has never trained before
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go up to a one rep max squat even if i manage to have him do it correctly what is the one rep max
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effort going to do to the guy it's going to make him stronger isn't it it's going to function as an
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adaptive stress in other words 48 hours later the guy is stronger than he was
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when you tested him two days ago and now your data is wrong
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so there's three or four lines of reasoning that mitigate against the use of the one rep max it doesn't
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tell you anything and what we're going to do anyway is we're going to go up to sets of five we're going
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to find out what he can do for sets of five and then the next workout we're going to come in and go up
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five pounds we don't care what his one rep max is that's not the way we train we're not training