Strongman Robert Oberst Says You Shouldn't Do Deadlifts

[Frankie]

I got pretty pissed off after I watched that video recommended to me by Youtube. But I actually think the hack Joe Rogan clickbait social media producers are unfairly framing it in the title. He doesn't say 'You Shouldn't do Deadlifts' paraphrasing he says:

'Don't do deadlifts unless you want to get better at deadlifts because the exercise has a bad risk to reward ratio'.

I think this is a poorly stated and incomplete idea from a meathead with a microphone who has never correctly trained an average person for the sole purpose of getting strong, but giving him the benefit of the doubt that he left out a few qualifiers I don't think it's a strictly controversial statement.

Because we are all smart and experienced here we know that it would be stupid to deadlift heavy 3 times a week. We know that deadlifting heavy the night before a Soccer game or a Marathon would be counter productive and we know that deadlifting incorrectly can be catastrophic (and 90% of the deadlifts I see the general public do are incorrect). In short, an incorrectly application of the deadlift can be about the worst thing a person can do in the gym.

The instant easy way to counter argue ''Don't do deadlifts unless you want to get better at deadlifts" is "Everyone wants to get better at deadlifts". All other things being equal a person whose has a deadlift as good as it can be is better than a person who hasn't. Strength is never a weakness. The only variable is the correct prescription. You can say 'don't brush your teeth, ever' and you'd be correct if all you own is a wire brush.

I've seen this video everywhere now, Andy Bolton just posted it and they're all having a big old argue. No doubt this video will unfortunately waylay many young and impressionable future lifters. What a waste of time, I blame the producers.

[bjvinson]

E

That would indicate to me that the coaches are not competent enough to coach the deadlift.

*this

[Squat1]

You must have us confused with a powerlifting board. Why do we give a shit what anybody at Westside does for any reason?

If the lifters lifted in the raw divisions then I would care.

[jfsully]

Hey, my neighbor was a 95-year old guy who drank a pint of jack Daniels and smoked a pack of Lucky Strikes every day. I want to live to 95 too, so I guess I’ll do that.

[Andy C.]

If the lifters lifted in the raw divisions then I would care.

Are there no lifters at Westside (either current or historical) that lift/lifted in raw divisions? Is that your belief?

Do you think that raw lifters can learn nothing from geared lifters? Is that your belief?

Part of what I posted was about the Louie Simmons documentary. It's called, "Westside vs. the World". It discusses some of the greatest powerlifters of all time. Guys like Ed Coan are in it. It is narrated by Ron Perlman. I think it's fascinating, and I'm not a powerlifter.

I am also not a bodybuilder. But I like "Pumping Iron". I am not someone who does Crossfit. But I like their documentaries about the Crossfit Games and seeing/learning about them. I'm not a rock climber, but I loved Alex Honnold's documentary. I am not a strongman competitor, but I like watching strongman on tv and watching strongman documentaries.

That is because I am interested in strength athletes, and people who do amazing things with their bodies. Apparently I'm in the minority here, which is weird because there is some guy who once said "Physical strength is the most important thing in life." And I thought people on here liked that quote. Yet, no one but me apparently has any interest in hearing from guys like Ed Coan, or Donnie Thompson, or Chuck Vogelpohl, or Louie or.... You know, some of the strongest men of the modern era.

I think I'll go now and watch a video about chili or read about old movies that have nothing to do with strength. Because those things are all more important than anything related to Westside or Louie Simmons (apparently because Louie is no longer "amazing" or "ingenious").

[Mark Rippetoe]

What's the real purpose of this ranting, Andrew? Here's thread about a strongman prominently featured in the media telling everybody who will listen that deadlifts are bad because they have a poor ROI, and I'm the bastard.

"Who are you working for?"

[gadders]

I could see Oberst winning WSM sometime in the future. By his own admission, he has not trained hard or smart compared to any of the other competitors. He just has the natural ability that allows him to succeed in strongman, even if his training quality is poor.

I doubt very much if that would happen. Apart from Log Press, he barely makes it out of the group stages at WSM.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Here's another example of the sports media actively working against us. Get used to it:

'These kids are ticking time bombs' -- The threat of youth basketball

Midway through the fourth quarter, the 19-year-old had driven to the hoop, leaped ... and collapsed. Now, seconds stretch into eternity before his right leg is stabilized in an air cast and teammates load him onto a stretcher, which disappears into a tunnel. Randle's leg is broken. His rookie season is over, 14 NBA minutes after it began.

As Randle is wheeled away on that October night, Lakers head strength and conditioning coach Tim DiFrancesco sits at a high-top table inside the players' lounge adjoining the Lakers' locker room, studying the replay on a large flat-screen television. DiFrancesco notices that Randle's takeoff and landing appear normal, that he suffered no mid-air collision in between. There is no clear culprit. No explanation. Randle's leg simply snapped.

Before he joined the Lakers, DiFrancesco worked at an outpatient physical therapy clinic outside Boston. While there, he saw scores of young athletes who had suffered serious injuries -- back, knee, hip -- that one might expect to find in those who worked for decades in hard-labor jobs. Later, at NBA pre-draft combines and individual workouts, he evaluated high-level college players who consistently couldn't perform basic movements, such as squats, lunges or balancing on one leg. There were players he'd evaluated who moved so poorly that he says he "absolutely" expected them to suffer injury. In every instance, DiFrancesco thought of time: Did he have enough before that player's first NBA game to potentially repair the issues that he had noticed? He'd calculate potential weight-room hours and hope there were enough to build up a tolerance to prevent an injury.

An X-ray would later find that Randle had suffered a "stress reaction," a precursor to a stress fracture but without the break. Repetitive impacts to that bone had led its structure to break down, and a team spokesman later said that the stress reaction is "likely what contributed to the break."

Back in the players' lounge, DiFrancesco studies the replay again and again, stopping, rewinding and playing again.

These kids, he thinks to himself, are ticking time bombs.

How many things can you find in this excerpt that are just wrong? I got 5 in the first reading. And why might we be seeing a rash of injuries in these fine young athletes? The rest of this piece is such glaring absurdity that it really makes you wonder about who is more unaware, the "S&C" people or the "journalists". The whole thing SCREAMS basketball is dangerous, and functional training does not work.

[Michael Wolf]

I've thought about this, and I don't think I've seen this argument-by-analogy made before. (Not to imply that it's never been made, only that I don't remember having seen it.)

I've seen it a fair bit, and a guy argued this exact point so vociferously with me at my gym in 2015 or 2016, that he packed up his things and literally stormed out of the gym in the middle of his workout due to being to angry that I didn't immediately accept his superior logic - it was using this line of argument for why high bar squats are DEFINITELY and OBVIOUSLY superior for olympic lifters.

Of course, the stronger version of the argument is what FBW alludes to:

Some may care about powerlifting because sometimes, success leaves clues, which contradicts my earlier post, I agree.

The success leaves clues idea, or maybe even better stated: if there's been a large enough group of people, striving hard towards this goal for a long time, would you not expect that if your way was the better way, they wouldn't already be doing it? So the way they're doing it is probably better - they're the most motivated to succeed in this endeavor, after all, and would do anything to do so. Almost like the old Chesterton's Fence idea.

Of course, this has good answers too: it ignores the human ego component, wherein the athletes - or worse, the coaches!! - would have to admit they didn't know best about their own area of expertise, and that is a DAMN HARD THING to do, especially for people who make their whole name, reputation, and income on knowing that stuff. The incentives are actually not lined up as neatly towards trying everything under the sun to succeed as you may at first think. There's a lot of ego and hubris riding on the coach or athlete being right and already knowing best. It takes the one very special, brave person to try something new and make a paradigm shift by proving the new thing works better.

But - and this is a big but - how does that actually happen? Well, Brodie provided the famous Fosbury example:

Oftentimes you can’t. But I’ve gotten a little mileage out of: “At one time, the most brilliant minds in the world believed that the sun revolved around the earth. These brilliant minds stuck to that view even well after Copernicus died. Then Kepler came up with a better idea, and after trying it out for a while, the most brilliant minds realized that Kepler actually worked better. Athletic skills are like that, just on a less technical level. The best high jumpers in the world all went straight over the bar, until Dirk Fosbury decided to try something different. He was ridiculed in his college days because his jumping looked funny and no one who set world record or earned Olympic medals did it. Until Fosbury himself set the record and got the medals, and now everyone does it his way. So you see, young grasshopper, sometimes even the best in the world don’t do things correctly, just because they haven’t tried out or discovered the correct way.”

But think about this: suppose for the sake of argument that the Fosbury flop executed well added 8% to your high jump compared to the old western roll. Now suppose Fosbury's talent level was just enough to be 15% behind the best guys in the world at the time. He discovers the flop, implements it and adds 8% to his own jump...but is still 7% behind the champions, doesn't even make the olympics, and spends the rest of his life bitterly trying to convince the world that his way is better. In fact, it is. But because his own talent wasn't enough to prove this unequivocally, the world doesn't believe him - after all, if it really was better, why didn't he win?? He dies an unknown man outside of obscure high jump circles, and everyone today still uses the Western Roll.

What it takes to change the paradigm, because of this nearly universal fallacy, is someone brave and special willing to question to status quo and conventional wisdom and try something else, who also has a high enough level of natural talent to win. Or a coach who has that kind of special athlete.

And that's SUPER DUPER DOUBLE EXTRA RARE, which is one reason paradigm shifts happen infrequently.

And is also closely related to the potential for Julia Avila to be the harbinger of a paradigm shift in MMA: Julia Avila wins her debut performance at UFC 239

[Mark Rippetoe]

Read this again:

But think about this: suppose for the sake of argument that the Fosbury flop executed well added 8% to your high jump compared to the old western roll. Now suppose Fosbury's talent level was just enough to be 15% behind the best guys in the world at the time. He discovers the flop, implements it and adds 8% to his own jump...but is still 7% behind the champions, doesn't even make the olympics, and spends the rest of his life bitterly trying to convince the world that his way is better. In fact, it is. But because his own talent wasn't enough to prove this unequivocally, the world doesn't believe him - after all, if it really was better, why didn't he win?? He dies an unknown man outside of obscure high jump circles, and everyone today still uses the Western Roll.