2 small questions about spotting, and SS's philosophy

[congdat23]

1) Why are there so many spotters in powerlifting meets? What are their roles in a heavy squat attempt that has safeties and that rubber(?) band that catch the bar in should something happens? Why don't the athlete just bench in a cage?

2) I don't know whether I have misunderstood this: SS Coaches seems to believe that conditioning work is easier than strength training. Is that true? I recall reading something coach Rip said that conditioning are easy to gain and lose, so it should be left at the end of the training program.
It couldn't be easy right? I meant if it was easy then it could be made harder.

Thanks for any answers.

[Serack]

2) I don't know whether I have misunderstood this: SS Coaches seems to believe that conditioning work is easier than strength training. Is that true? I recall reading something coach Rip said that conditioning are easy to gain and lose, so it should be left at the end of the training program.
It couldn't be easy right? I meant if it was easy then it could be made harder.

Thanks for any answers.

There may be others who can answer this better but I'll take a swing.

Rip and SS prioritizes Strength training, and while Strength Training is prioritized, if conditioning is performed, it takes recovery and metabolic resources that your body could be using towards the primary goal of Strength. Thus your efforts in Strength Training are less efficient.

Since building Strength takes a lifetime of effort, but the "Novice Period" is the time in your life where an individual can see the most spectacular improvements in their ability to move heavy shit, prioritizing the body's adaptive resources towards this goal is what the Starting Strength program is about.

Once these gains in strength have been realized, conditioning is another adaptation you can work on that, in Rip's learned opinion, takes less time to adapt to, and is lost more easily. Additionally, even if you lose strength, your body went underlying physiological changes that are still dormant (nucleation of muscle fibers) that allows for you to regain your strength later.

I know from my own personal experience, that I went from being a civilian doing nothing but stocking produce shelves and playing computer games to running a 13min 2 mile (The Army's "maxed out" time) in 9 weeks, so I know conditioning can certainly be done quickly.

In the end it's about priorities, and the SS philosophy is all about prioritizing Strength during the "Novice Window" to maximize gains in strength during the most opportune time in your life, and in the most efficient way. Conditioning work can be a factor that impedes that.

[Serack]

Rereading your question (I answered from a "Strength first" mentality and thus might not have addressed it directly)

How quickly you can condition depends on your conditioning goals, your existing fitness level, and your ability to bust your ass.

1. Goals: If you want to beat Lance Armstrong at a distance bike race, well you might need years of training and the best PEDs money can buy. However, if you are training as an offensive lineman, you should never have to run a mile for conditioning purposes except maybe to sooth your coach's ego, because your sport's requirements are only a few second bursts of effort. Train for that.
   
   As an in between, if you have military requirements for being able to accomplish a timed run in order to meet promotion points, well, as I said in my first post, that's something that can and has been trained for in a relatively short period of time especially if you already aren't a fatass.
   
   If you aren't a competitive athlete, or have other fitness requirements for your job, but are concerned about general fitness, well figure out what's your personal priority. Generally though, the individuals that are at the pinnacle of strength (I.E. elite power lifters) are specialists and thus have their training priorities reflect this. If you've read the books, you are familiar with the 3 metabolic pathways Rip outlines for muscles and what conditional needs they fulfill. These guys have trained the ones that provide energy for a 1RM to their nigh maximum potential usually to the detriment of the metabolic pathways that are necessary to complete a marathon.
   
   If you want a more balanced fitness goal, it still may behoove you to focus on your strength training exclusively if you are in your novice period, and then work on conditioning later. If you've got the last 2 points below covered, it shouldn't take long.
   
   
2. Existing Fitness Level: If you are at 35% body fat but can pick up a Mack truck, well you might have trouble conditioning quickly.
   
   
3. Drive: I'd like to assume that if you make it through the Starting Strength program with significant gains, that you have learned how to muster personal drive and have figured out the bust your ass part. However, reaching down deep to put forth the effort to training conditioning in a short time might be difficult for some. I know not everyone that ran with me in Basic Training had a 13min 2 mile afterwords after all.

[Les Hahn]

1) Why are there so many spotters in powerlifting meets? What are their roles in a heavy squat attempt that has safeties and that rubber(?) band that catch the bar in should something happens? Why don't the athlete just bench in a cage?

2) I don't know whether I have misunderstood this: SS Coaches seems to believe that conditioning work is easier than strength training. Is that true? I recall reading something coach Rip said that conditioning are easy to gain and lose, so it should be left at the end of the training program.
It couldn't be easy right? I meant if it was easy then it could be made harder.

Thanks for any answers.

Spotters do more than just try to spot missed attempts at meets. They also help rack the weight after the rack command for both squat and bench. I actually like that feature the most in meets. During the rules meeting, pretty much every fed I have lifted in tells you to stay with the weight. If you bail, you are ejected from the meet and possibly banned for life. So if you can't get it, you stay with the weight and the spotters help you.

I think the safeties do add another level of security. They could bench in a cage, but then it adds another larger piece of equipment to the meet. Some people wouldn't have the safeties set right anyways, just based off their size, etc. They will hit the pins instead of hitting their chest, or they will be too low. They try to change the weights out really fast too, so you don't want to add more time to the process. Some feds are starting to use benches that have their own safeties, but again, they really don't set them for every lifter, unless it is requested. As far as I know, some of the bigger feds like USAPL don't have safeties for squat or bench. They still manage pretty well though. Most of the feds with monolifts do use the tow straps or chains on the squat. Those would be useful for catastrophic failures, but that is about it. 99%+ of the time you stay with the weight if you miss. In the event of a dump, usually it isn't caught. There are some epic vids of an 800+ squat getting caught, and I actually caught a 185# bench dump from the top. You really have to be on the ball though, and if it gets to heavy, you probably can't hold onto it.

[chrisd]

For your second question. Conditioning can't be easy or it could be made harder.

If we're talking cardio vascular endurance training then it doesn't have to be trained to the max all the time. Runners train about 80 to 85% of the time at an easy pace. Speed increases anyway. You can add in tempo and intervals, but going at race pace all the time is just unproductive, especially for beginners or those restarting.

Taking the alternative view. Conditioning is easier if you are stronger. So get strong first. If you squat bodyweight and try hill sprints you might find it harder than if you can squat twice body weight.

[Bill Been]

Just to plus-up one previously touched-on point - strength adaptations are structural; architectural. After completing a well-run Novice LP, you're quite literally a different physical being than you were say, 9 months ago. Conditioning adaptations revolve around the efficient generation and use of energy and are enzymatic, or at best, intercellular. The body optimizes the creation of the chemical milieu that improves endurance. This is fairly straightforward for a functional human, hence our ability to obtain decent levels of "fitness" very quickly, and why such fitness fades very quickly.

So this happy little band of misfits tends to view conditioning through the lens of "how can this help my strength performance or weight class adherence?" because once you've gotten strong, you'll remain stronger than you otherwise would've been, for the rest of your life. The same cannot be said for conditioning, which requires constant maintenance or it regresses to the mean.

[Serack]

Just to plus-up one previously touched-on point - strength adaptations are structural; architectural. After completing a well-run Novice LP, you're quite literally a different physical being than you were say, 9 months ago. Conditioning adaptations revolve around the efficient generation and use of energy and are enzymatic, or at best, intercellular. The body optimizes the creation of the chemical milieu that improves endurance. This is fairly straightforward for a functional human, hence our ability to obtain decent levels of "fitness" very quickly, and why such fitness fades very quickly.

So this happy little band of misfits tends to view conditioning through the lens of "how can this help my strength performance or weight class adherence?" because once you've gotten strong, you'll remain stronger than you otherwise would've been, for the rest of your life. The same cannot be said for conditioning, which requires constant maintenance or it regresses to the mean.

Well said. I was in Cross Country as an underclassman in High school (them were the days) and I remember our coach discussing how much endurance was lost just from 5 days without training.

[CJ Gotcher]

1) Why are there so many spotters in powerlifting meets? What are their roles in a heavy squat attempt that has safeties and that rubber(?) band that catch the bar in should something happens? Why don't the athlete just bench in a cage?

2) I don't know whether I have misunderstood this: SS Coaches seems to believe that conditioning work is easier than strength training. Is that true? I recall reading something coach Rip said that conditioning are easy to gain and lose, so it should be left at the end of the training program.
It couldn't be easy right? I meant if it was easy then it could be made harder.

Thanks for any answers.

1) Callador is absolutely right. To add onto that, the safety is set several inches below parallel, and often, a lifter is unable to make that kind of depth without some degree of spinal flexion. The last thing I want is to bend underneath a heavy load at the end of a failed lift. Also consider the bench: it is possible to salvage a lift where the lifter loses the tightness in their arch... but that lift would be lost in a power rack, where the bar would hit the safeties (especially if the bar doesn't go down perfectly level...)

2) To be precise, conditioning work is not 'easier' than strength training in the sense of effort. Adaptations to conditioning just come faster. Sprints on the Prowler are not easy. They can rip the soul from you and dance a jig on your grave. They can leave you feel like a vacuum is actively sucking the air from your lungs. That being said, a reasonable base of conditioning can be achieved in a few weeks and can be maintained with less total volume than strength.

[Philbert]

Just to plus-up one previously touched-on point - strength adaptations are structural; architectural. After completing a well-run Novice LP, you're quite literally a different physical being than you were say, 9 months ago. Conditioning adaptations revolve around the efficient generation and use of energy and are enzymatic, or at best, intercellular. The body optimizes the creation of the chemical milieu that improves endurance. This is fairly straightforward for a functional human, hence our ability to obtain decent levels of "fitness" very quickly, and why such fitness fades very quickly.

So this happy little band of misfits tends to view conditioning through the lens of "how can this help my strength performance or weight class adherence?" because once you've gotten strong, you'll remain stronger than you otherwise would've been, for the rest of your life. The same cannot be said for conditioning, which requires constant maintenance or it regresses to the mean.

To be more precise, there are systemic structural changes gained from conditioning which are acquired over a long period of time and persist for life. These changes account for the difference between a graduate of Army basic training and a world class 5k racer. However, if the world class racer takes a year off he will feel like shit trying to run a 13 minute 2 mile, despite having far greater structural adaptations to endurance than the Army trainee. So in terms of being able to enjoy endurance related activities, the biochemical and mitochondrial adaptations are far more important than the structural adaptations. In strength training the opposite is true, while there are transient adaptations to strength training which make the reps feel easier, and make you less sore the next day, the all important adaptations that make lifting heavy weights possible are structural.

[Bill Been]

To be more precise, there are systemic structural changes gained from conditioning which are acquired over a long period of time and persist for life. These changes account for the difference between a graduate of Army basic training and a world class 5k racer. However, if the world class racer takes a year off he will feel like shit trying to run a 13 minute 2 mile, despite having far greater structural adaptations to endurance than the Army trainee. So in terms of being able to enjoy endurance related activities, the biochemical and mitochondrial adaptations are far more important than the structural adaptations. In strength training the opposite is true, while there are transient adaptations to strength training which make the reps feel easier, and make you less sore the next day, the all important adaptations that make lifting heavy weights possible are structural.

Very well clarified.