"Eight" Fundamental Exercises?

[rm_sidell]

Mark, at some point you were interviewed by Mark Barroso from Muscle & Fitness. He asked how many exercises the intermediate-level trainee should be basing their workouts from. You responded, "People trying to be strong need to use eight exercises their entire career...". Well, I think all of us that have read any edition of SS can assume that 5 of those lifts will probably consist of the Squat, Overhead Press, Bench Press, Deadlift, and Power Clean. What are the other three lifts!? Rows? Triceps Extensions? DIPS!!!!!? This mystery must be solved.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Squat, press, deadlift, bench press, power clean, power snatch, chins, haltings/rack pulls.

[Aryah]

Relevant viewing for those who have hitherto been as ignorant as myself on what haltings are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LrH7uHRGxI

[rm_sidell]

Thanks, Mark.

[Goatamon]

Squat, press, deadlift, bench press, power clean, power snatch, chins, haltings/rack pulls.

I don't see alternating unilateral slow eccentric lateral kettlebell raises on a bosu ball anywhere on that list. And you're supposed to be an expert...

[perman]

I know you're not a fan of rows Rip, but isn't horizontal pulling a fairly central function of the arms, shoulders and back? I'd wager a significant portion of the people here regularly does some row, maybe not BB row though.

[Mark Rippetoe]

How is this not covered by deadlifts, cleans, and chins?

[perman]

How is this not covered by deadlifts, cleans, and chins?

Well, both the deadlift and the clean don't do much for the arms directly and only train certain back muscles isometrically, so then you really only have chins left as a arm pulling movement. I mean you do pushing movements in 2 planes, why is it any different for pulling? For both pulling and pushing, there are both similarities and differences in which muscles gets used in the horizontal and vertical version. From a common sense perpespective, only chins leave a hole then, right? Particularly for the rear delts I'd say you don't get much work without some sort of horizontal pulling movement.

For the people here who do more assistance work than the bare minimum of SS and TM or similar cookie-cutter templates offer, I'm sure rows are one of the most common additions.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Isn't it interesting that both pushing and pulling are the result of precisely the same thing: muscle contraction?

[k_dean_curtis]

I don't see alternating unilateral slow eccentric lateral kettlebell raises on a bosu ball anywhere on that list. And you're supposed to be an expert...

Agreed. I thought Coach was going to say:
Bench, Incline bench, fly, standing curl, incline curl, preacher curl, dumbell curl, pinkie curl.

Joe Weider has been teaching this for years, all part of the mental confusion principle!