A "scientific" response to Rip's T-Nation article

[wes]

I do agree. What do you think that threshold is though? If you had to put it into something like Wilks for the big 3, would it be a 400 or so?

I'd say that if you are a man you need to at least be competitive on the national level against women of similar weight before you can be taken seriously as an internet training guru.

[atb5161]

I actually suffered through the whole 2 hours of this at work...parts of it are pulling-out-your-hair painful. To be perfectly fair, Bret is actually pretty much in line with most of what Rip was saying. However, the other guy, Jon Fass(?), was absolutely butthurt to the nth degree. He is a PT though, so it was kind of expected.

I think if Bret wants to call himself the "glute guy", he has every right to do so, since he's produced some model-quality glutes. But if he is going to call himself a strength and condition coach, he had better break the double body weight squat barrier soon, or at least coach someone who does.

I appreciate his effort to rely on science and research, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how many papers show a high EMG reading for the BSS, it matters what gets results. In this case I feel that practice and empirical evidence trump whatever research papers they hold near and dear.

[Michael Wolf]

There's just a certain threshold of strength you need to reach with respect to bw and years of training before your opinion on training modality, programming, etc carries merit. Doesn't mean you can't read science, coach the lifts properly, or offer an opinion to be intelligently discussed though. Not sure how you can be very informed on the merits of training the squat, however, if you can't squat 400 at 220 as this clearly shows you've either neglected training it, don't do it right, or your ideas about programming it are incorrect.

The bolded part (emphasis mine) is the nugget of it, isn't it? I actually give Bret credit for posting that video, as many who are considered fitness gurus or experts probably would not have posted their first go at a new venture. But Bret has been writing for T-Nation for at least four years. We'd assume it took some time for him to build enough reputation for T-Nation to bring him on, so that he's probably been training and coaching for at least a couple years more than that. But we don't need to assume: in his first t-nation article, he writes about training back in 1995 and opening a gym in 2006. Having a sub-400 squat and sub-300 bench, at 220, with that amount of training time/experience indicates a profound lack of something. As Jordan said, you've either not trained the lifts, do them wrong, or utilize horrendous programming.

Around here, we advocate the correctness of the idea, the analysis, the argument, over who it came from. And it's true that even someone out of left field can be surprisingly correct while a well known expert is not. So the arguments can still be evaluated on their own merits.

But it is also illogical to give the same weight to someone who has been training for years and has not achieved the numbers regularly reached by people on their LP or very early intermediate stages here. Some of whom are regular folks who don't do this for a living and aren't experts in it.

The lack of ability to do so indicates a poor level of understanding the lift on either a form/biomechanical level, a programming level, or both. And isn't that what this is essentially all about? [Form] Whether properly performed and [programming] programmed basic barbell lifts provide all the work/activation/stimulus one needs? So someone whose very training (not to mention comments on the subject) strongly indicate a lack of understanding of those concepts is unlikely to be correct in a discussion about those very topics.

All that said, the arguments should still be evaluated on their merits. But it's a strong indication in which direction things will go, IMO.

[Thomas Jones]

I don't know anything about Contreras except for the video that's been posted. I wouldn't be so quick to bash the weights he's moved, however. He's 220, but he's obviously tall, so leverages are not in his favor. If he beefed up to 250, he'd be moving he weights that some of you seem to indicate would immaculately lead to credibility.

Edited to add that I just googled it and he's 6'4".

[Squeakyguy]

Was that video recent? Is it the case that his first powerlifting meet indicate his most recent lifts? Perhaps in the last 2 years he's gone 4/5/6.

[Michael Wolf]

The video is from April, ~3 months ago.

He's not weak. For a general population person who is into exercising, his strength would be considered pretty good. But for a well known and regarded S&C coach who is not old and has been training and coaching people for at least seven years, at 6'4" 220, his squat doesn't even qualify as mediocre. His bench probably does. His deadlift is not bad, but even that isn't great for the amount of training time he's put in.

If he's spent a lot of time focusing on all those other modalities he's championing:
1. Did he neglect to train the basic barbell lifts?
2. And if so, how much credence does his opinion on them hold?
3. And according to him, shouldn't they carry over to the big lifts anyway?

And if he did train the basic barbell lifts, then how do we explain his performance other than a lack of understanding of the mechanics, programming, or both?

[Squeakyguy]

Contreras needs to read Starting Strength, Practical Programming, and really understand them. We train the squat and deadlift specifically because they target all the small "weak link" muscles in the manner they're designed to be used. Thinking otherwise is a misunderstanding of how and why weight training works.

[Michael Wolf]

Contreras needs to read Starting Strength, Practical Programming, and really understand them.

This is true as well. There was a short section of respect and praise for SS at the beginning of the segment, but the remainder revealed a lack of familiarity with some of the most basic of content (such as which lifts actually constitute the SS Program), much less the meat and potatoes of it (the biomechanical analyses of why the lifts are performed in exactly a certain manner (the "model," which is correct for all lifters; anthropometry may dictate changes in the way the model is expressed, but this is why we coach the model, not joint angles or subjective positions), how being done that way facilitates the use of the various muscle groups/body parts, and that this is what we mean when we say "Squat" or "Press" - not just anyone doing any kind of squat).

We train the squat and deadlift specifically because they target all the small "weak link" muscles in the manner they're designed to be used. Thinking otherwise is a misunderstanding of how and why weight training works.

Yes.

[Kyle Schuant]

All that said, the arguments should still be evaluated on their merits. But it's a strong indication in which direction things will go, IMO.

I don't really care what Contreras has lifted. His claims are all about the glutes. He bases his entire online career on the idea that you can do a deep squat without using your glutes much - therefore you need the hip thrust, therefore he is "the glute guy", etc.

How the hip can go into deep flexion and return to full extension without using the hip extensors is a biomechanical question which he has been unable to answer. Squatting without using your glutes much is like doing curls without using your biceps much - you can do it, but it'll be a really shitty squat or curl. Thus I conclude that most likely Bret Contreras just doesn't know how to coach the squat.

Contreras's lifts may or may not be relevant to his coaching ability. But we don't have to know his lifts to know the idea that glutes often aren't engaged in a properly performed squat is nonsense. He's built his career on a nonsense idea. These can lead to great financial success, just ask Charles Poliquin. But it's still nonsense. I suppose his lifts are only relevant in that were he to get them to better levels, he might have different ideas...

[dmworking]

...He bases his entire online career on the idea that you can do a deep squat without using your glutes much - therefore you need the hip thrust, therefore he is "the glute guy", etc.

How the hip can go into deep flexion and return to full extension without using the hip extensors is a biomechanical question which he has been unable to answer.

Contreras is a great example of a coach with his heart in the right place, an astounding work ethic, and an unfortunate lack of ability to apply critical analysis to existing research. He reads research articles like crazy to be able to stay at the forefront of research, but he can't sift through them like Sully has done (excellently, I might add) to be able to extract valuable insight. He's a content aggregator, and as his own results show, that's just not that valuable.

He's locked himself into a model of strength development (hip thrusts have the best carry over to athletic endeavors!) based on research (hip thrusts result in the greatest activation of glute fibers!) using the current gold standard tool of exfizz research (using EMG to measure mean activation!) that is faulty on its own (EMG is a shitty proxy for force development!) and when placed within broader theory (your glutes don't touch the ground! your feet do! force must be transferred from the glutes to the feet somehow through a chain that must be strong enough to transfer that force!) just doesn't make any sense.

Lucky for us, we don't have to rely on the model, because it turns out that people doing his program don't get stronger than people doing SS.