Rip's Advice on Squatting is Useless for Powerlifting

[Tom Campitelli]

Let's face it. No one looks down when they squat in meets. People don't drive their hips up. They lead with the chest. They don't put the bar down low. No one and I mean no one who is successful in powerlifting does anything like what Rip recommends. No one.



Also, people who want to lift maximal weights do not wear weightlifting shoes with heels, nor do they turn their toes out.

http://instagram.com/p/kKXmk7iLew#

Anyone that follows Rip's advice on these matters is doomed to be weak and never squat anything above their body weight.

[Mark Edward]

Dan Green's wrists are bent and his thumbs are around the bar. Rip is disproven. QED.

[Tom Narvaez]

His stance is also quite and his back angle is way more vertical than an SS squat.



Wait, in all seriousness, do people actually make the criticisms you just listed above? Holy shit. I've never seen it, but you can honestly take a cursory look down the raw squat record book and see multiple guys with Oly shoes, feet pointed out, hip drive (almost all of them, there's a high bar squat in there), etc. etc.

[Tom Campitelli]

His stance is also quite and his back angle is way more vertical than an SS squat.

Green's stance is wider than what Rip suggests, but it looks narrower than what he uses when squatting with wraps. His back angle looks how I would expect it to on a low bar squat, however. Here's a shot of Green squatting with wraps out of a monolift. Tough to say for sure since the angles are not the same, but it looks wider than the video of him at Raw Unity.

Wait, in all seriousness, do people actually make the criticisms you just listed above?

They do both on this site and elsewhere. I've even read a few of those sentiments expressed in this subforum, if memory serves. I was also being mildly facetious.

Holy shit. I've never seen it, but you can honestly take a cursory look down the raw squat record book and see multiple guys with Oly shoes, feet pointed out, hip drive (almost all of them, there's a high bar squat in there), etc. etc.

I agree. And to be clear, I am not suggesting that Green is reading BBT3 and making adjustments to his technique based on that. I am suggesting that you can squat very heavy weights to depth following Rip's advice, even, apparently, as a powerlifter.

[Kyle Schuant]

Does it even matter what top competitive powerlifters do? The advice could be terrible for them, and still be good for the other 9,999 out of 10,000 people who squat.

It's like talking about effective driving techniques by referring to stock car racing (or if you're into equipped: formula one). What?

Advice can be good and useful without being good and useful for everyone everywhere throughout all time.

[Tom Campitelli]

Does it even matter what top competitive powerlifters do?

Given that the argument has often been made that powerlifters do not squat like Rippetoe recommends and that it is inappropriate for them, yes. Given that a subset of people here compete in powerlifting, then also yes. What is interesting is that the paradigm of using the most muscle mass over the longest effective range of motion results in the greatest amount of force production seems to hold true both for people at the beginning of their training careers and people that are very advanced.

[Tom Campitelli]

Also, it should be noted that just because the guys at the top are doing something, does not mean it is correct. They might just be really good at doing something inefficiently. Pitching sidearm is a good example of this. However, once again, the argument that no one competing at a high level in powerlifting uses a low bar back squat that looks like what Rip would recommend is disproven by Mr. Green's incredible performance.

[mgage]

Wait, in all seriousness, do people actually make the criticisms you just listed above? Holy shit. I've never seen it, but you can honestly take a cursory look down the raw squat record book and see multiple guys with Oly shoes, feet pointed out, hip drive (almost all of them, there's a high bar squat in there), etc. etc.

I submit ridiculous Exhibit A.

[Michael Wolf]

Also, it should be noted that just because the guys at the top are doing something, does not mean it is correct. They might just be really good at doing something inefficiently. Pitching sidearm is a good example of this. However, once again, the argument that no one competing at a high level in powerlifting uses a low bar back squat that looks like what Rip would recommend is disproven by Mr. Green's incredible performance.

The topic you touched on in your podcast with Rip is, I think, important to understanding this. A seemingly great analysis that never produces any results (given a reasonable opportunity to do so) stands a decent chance of containing a flaw that has not yet been discovered. Great results, absent an analysis, is just guessing. Maybe the people doing Thing A are just predisposed to being better at the target activity than the people doing Thing B, or any other number of possibly influencing factors.

The reason SS was, and remains, so compelling, is that it was born of observation, but that observation led to analysis from first principles. The analysis, in some cases, supported what we thought we already knew, and in other cases, led to rethinking the topic. Many lifters and coaches who prefer not to re-think the topic, but to cling to what has worked for them and others in the past, dismiss or excoriate the form advocated in SS. I have yet to encounter a thoughtful analysis to defend their positions from first principles/analysis. Getting really good at doing something inefficiently isn't a concept a lot of people seem to understand.

The only attempts at meaningful analysis that I've seen to address the optimality of small deviations from the SS model, in the context of competitive powerlifting, have been here on this board from Tom Narvaez. Mind you, these are small deviations, not wholesale rejection of the model, and only in the context of competitive PL, while still accepting its efficacy for general strength training purposes. I don't think the issue has been settled yet, either, on whether those minor deviations are indeed optimal, or whether it's lifter-dependent, or judging/rules dependent.

[Jacobnorton]

I submit ridiculous Exhibit A.

I was laughing pretty hard watching that video. What is this forums consensus on Steve Shaw? I've read a couple of articles on his site, and he seems like a pretty smart guy.