The Art of Manliness - #76： Starting Strength With Mark Rippetoe Part II

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well in today's

00:00:20.100 episode we pick up where we left off last time with mark ripeto this part of the conversation

00:00:25.700 with mark i took a bunch of questions that i got from art of manliness readers and took

00:00:29.420 them right to him to get his input on it really great stuff a lot of cool insights so if you are

00:00:35.040 into barbill training and want to get more into it you're going to enjoy this session so let's get

00:00:39.800 started i solicited twitter for some questions from readers i know a lot of our listeners are

00:00:47.540 big fans of your work and i had just some specific questions uh that people were curious when they

00:00:53.160 found out i was going to be talking to mark ripeto so uh one question was should you stretch before

00:00:59.160 a workout because people hear different things on that so what's your take on that i've never

00:01:04.680 never stretched before i worked out uh now now let me preface that but let me let me back up

00:01:13.520 i'll stretch my hamstrings out for about 10 seconds yeah and uh stretching is one of these things that's

00:01:21.040 been investigated fairly effectively in the in the literature uh stretching is an excellent way to

00:01:28.420 reduce power production and reduce force production if you do it prior to squats and deadlifts and

00:01:36.800 and olympic lifts uh here's the here's the basic question if you are flexible enough to do

00:01:44.160 the range of motion of the full range of motion barbell exercises that comprise your training

00:01:51.560 and you're flexible enough to execute all of the movement patterns used in your sport

00:01:57.480 why do you need to stretch

00:01:59.540 you don't it's a waste of time it doesn't help soreness doesn't alleviate soreness it doesn't

00:02:09.420 prevent soreness doesn't prevent headaches it doesn't prevent hangovers it doesn't do anything

00:02:15.020 if you're already of sufficient flexibility if you're not obviously you need to stretch

00:02:21.940 you know if you're a muay thai fighter and you you know you can't kick high enough well you need to get

00:02:28.460 where you can but if you're not why stretch uh it it doesn't do anything positive it's a waste of time

00:02:37.600 so no we don't stretch all right yeah i don't i don't stretch before workouts

00:02:40.820 i never have never have i never have i don't really know anybody that does that hasn't been

00:02:47.020 influenced by the fashion of it yeah you know back in the back in the 80s all those posters

00:02:51.760 you know here are these stretches you need to do every day how do you need to do them you know we

00:02:56.800 tried that for a while nobody got any better it didn't seem to help and it added 15 minutes to the

00:03:02.220 process not everybody's got an extra 15 minutes and especially if it's not accomplishing anything

00:03:08.680 why in the hell waste the time on it yeah all right here's another question we got um how essential

00:03:16.260 is squatting to speed development well that's an interesting that's an interesting question speed

00:03:26.560 in terms of uh a low 40 time is an expression of power it's an expression of the ability to express

00:03:39.700 strength quickly that's what power is power is force times distance over time the it's the instantaneous

00:03:47.200 peak expression of force production peak velocity expression of force production if you're fast

00:03:54.040 uh the only way to get faster really is to get stronger because of the math of the situation

00:04:01.640 f times d over t and here's the basic here's the basic contentious part of that discussion

00:04:11.500 the t part the ability to express it quickly the ability to explode is almost exclusively controlled by

00:04:22.260 the genetics of the athlete we have a very very reliable test for explosive capacity it's called

00:04:30.040 standing vertical jump it's done on a the standard is the vertex device which is a little frame that

00:04:38.880 has veins that stick out from the side of them you've probably seen one of those at a sports type gym

00:04:44.640 uh and you reach up and you touch the the bottom of the uh of the vein array and then you squat down

00:04:53.160 without it without a step squat down jump up as high as you can and touch the veins again and the

00:04:59.200 distance between the bottom and the top of your hand reach during that movement is the standing

00:05:06.700 vertical jump different distance between the flat-footed standing up reached hand and the tide the height of that

00:05:13.080 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

00:05:19.020 running jump it's not the same thing as dunking a basketball it is the standing vertical jump

00:05:25.520 and is extremely dependent on genetics that's why it's useful as a test because it reveals things

00:05:33.640 that cannot be trained in other words person with a standing vertical jump of

00:05:40.040 12 inches is never going to have a standing vertical jump of even 18 inches

00:05:46.540 and i understand all the people on the internet that that advertise that they got their stand their

00:05:52.860 vertical jump from 18 to 36 that's what we call bulls

00:05:59.100 and doesn't occur because the standing vertical jump in the best strength and conditioning programs is

00:06:09.520 improvable by 20 to 25 percent there are outliers but in general if a person comes into an effective

00:06:18.660 strength program as an athlete with a 27 28 inch vertical jump if the coach could get him up to 30 that's

00:06:25.520 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

00:06:36.880 the genetics of the person we're dealing with and their athletic potential that's why it's used in the combine

00:06:43.640 training for the standing vertical jump test misses the point we're trying to identify genetics here and

00:06:52.140 the genetics of explosion are you know i'm not very explosive i didn't need to be explosive to be strong

00:07:00.400 but in order that the equation f times d over t have a more positive value the only

00:07:12.300 thing you can manipulate is the force production variable in other words strength to the extent

00:07:20.720 possible improves a vertical it also improves a 40 yard dash time

00:07:24.880 but a person with a six to 40 you know probably not ever going to see a five

00:07:32.860 because of the genetic nature of explosion and i i hate to tell everybody that that's just that's one

00:07:42.680 of those uh it's just one of them deals it's kind of not what we want it to be but is nonetheless

00:07:49.700 so it can help to an extent to your genetics to the extent you can help you get stronger yeah

00:07:59.840 i hate to be repetitive but sure just to clarify that it's stronger is better okay all right so

00:08:07.680 here's um another question we had related to squatting uh what if you have bad knees should you

00:08:14.240 still squat oh what do you mean by bad knee that's that's a good that's the million he didn't really

00:08:19.960 a bad knee can come in three or four different forms i got crepitus into my right knee can i still

00:08:25.320 squat heavy well you have been yeah you know crepitus doesn't mean anything except your knees are noisy

00:08:32.780 a lot of people have noisy knees okay i've trained people that i couldn't stand to be there on the

00:08:37.800 platform because the noise made me sick it's got that pendant sound but they're fine you know they

00:08:43.180 didn't hurt it's just the way their knees sounded uh now if that that sound is accompanied by pain

00:08:49.720 that's probably indicative of a problem we need to investigate but uh it's been my experience that

00:08:56.680 the only people that really honestly don't need to be squatting are people whose knees are bone on

00:09:02.600 bone if your meniscus is gone you might as well just go ahead and make up your mind that you're

00:09:08.000 going to get the knee replacement so that you can get back to your training uh that uh a bone on bone

00:09:16.000 a minute absence of a meniscus i wouldn't i don't think a person needs to be squatting if they're but i

00:09:21.440 know people that do it but i i don't recommend that uh if you've got some tendonitis in your knees

00:09:27.980 ninety nine percent of the time you're you produced it with your training you're doing something

00:09:33.560 wrong correct technique once again is critical remember the squat is a hips movement not a knees

00:09:42.640 movement most people have an idea in their mind a picture in their mind of a front squat

00:09:48.460 which is in fact knees movement but our squat the one we use is a hips movement most of the stress is

00:09:56.280 on the hips not on the knees so if you're allowing your knees to creep into the squat when they

00:10:04.160 shouldn't be that has the potential to cause some knee pain some tendonitis it won't destroy your

00:10:10.640 meniscus it won't destroy your knee it just makes things unpleasant but again that is a it's usually a

00:10:17.300 technique issue okay all right here's another question we have from someone does the one rep max

00:10:22.760 really mean anything and if so how do you say unless you're at a power lifting meet yeah we never

00:10:30.140 test for a one rep max okay unless we're to meet we just don't do it because it doesn't tell us

00:10:36.180 anything we need to know uh this is another argument i have with the conventional approach to strength

00:10:43.200 and conditioning what the what everybody wants to do is bring a novice into the gym test them on a one

00:10:49.840 rep max the first day and then base a whole month's worth of programming on that one rep max

00:10:55.360 well here's the problem with that a one rep max for a novice doesn't tell you anything about the

00:11:05.080 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

00:11:12.100 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

00:11:19.000 correct squat because he just learned how to do the damn thing okay and if you run him up to as 0.74

00:11:23.520 heavy a weight as he can do what's going to happen to his technique all that instruction goes down the 0.85

00:11:28.780 toilet doesn't it because you just allowed him to do something with incorrect technique second

00:11:34.120 he has a person that is that has learned the movement today going to be able to accurately

00:11:42.500 display his one rep max strength on that movement what with neurological inefficiency and all the other

00:11:50.420 constraints to the display of one rep max of maximum absolute strength no he can't once again bad data

00:11:58.940 but but here's probably the most important consideration if i have a person that has never trained before

00:12:07.200 go up to a one rep max squat even if i manage to have him do it correctly what is the one rep max

00:12:14.360 effort going to do to the guy it's going to make him stronger isn't it it's going to function as an

00:12:23.300 adaptive stress in other words 48 hours later the guy is stronger than he was

00:12:32.060 when you tested him two days ago and now your data is wrong

00:12:37.320 so there's three or four lines of reasoning that mitigate against the use of the one rep max it doesn't

00:12:44.800 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

00:12:49.280 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

00:12:54.100 five pounds we don't care what his one rep max is that's not the way we train we're not training

00:13:00.220 one rep max so we don't need the data

The Art of Manliness - August 08, 2014

#76： Starting Strength With Mark Rippetoe Part II

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