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Mark Rippetoe:
If everybody's squatting to a different depth in the meet, then we're just masturbating. That's what masturbation is - you're jacking off on the platform.

Mark Wulfe:
From The Aasgaard Company studios in beautiful Wichita Falls, Texas... From the finest mind in the modern fitness industry... The one true voice in the strength and conditioning profession... The most important podcast on the internet... Ladies and gentlemen! Starting Strength Radio.

Mark Rippetoe:
Welcome back to Starting Strength Radio. It's Friday. And I mean, what did you think it was going to be? Tuesday? No, no, it's Friday. Starting Strength Radio is Friday. And you can take that to the bank. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
So here we are. And what we're going to do this week is we're going to talk about a topic that may or may not be of any interest to you. It should be of interest to you if you're training. And we're going to talk about why you need to go to a meet. And we're going to talk about that after we deal with...

Mark Rippetoe:
Comments from the Haters!

Mark Rippetoe:
This week is real shitty. Real shitty comments from the haters.

Mark Rippetoe:
So some stupid ass named Wing Chun says, "OK, there's only been 8000 new cases and one hundred and sixty four dead people in Texas, so screw wearing a mask moratz, God damn it."

Mark Rippetoe:
A hundred and sixty four dead people. You know, many people died yesterday in the state of Texas? Fifty one. In one day, 51 people died out of 30 million people. 51 of them died of the virus yesterday. And city of Austin is... What are they doing there? Til December 31st, everyone must "socially distance" and wear their masks?

[off-camera]:
The best part is they're calling it the stay at home order.

Mark Rippetoe:
Stay at home. You have to stay at home til the end of the year.

[off-camera]:
December 31st.

Mark Rippetoe:
Until December 31st. Everybody's going to do that. Yeah. Yeah, that's what we'll do, because 51 people died yesterday in the state of Texas.

[off-camera]:
You're looking at the wrong thing though - it's the cases.

Mark Rippetoe:
Cases, I see. It's the cases, 8000 new cases.

[off-camera]:
After all, That's what has Governor Abbott really worried.

Mark Rippetoe:
Governor Abbott is a is apparently as innumerate as everyone else on the surface of the planet. He thinks that cases somehow represent a meaningful statistic.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, I had had hopes for the guy. But he's just a smooth, dumb ass, you know, he just didn't want to be governor anymore, I guess.

Mark Rippetoe:
So here we all are, you know, go to the store and you got to pretend like this bandanna you've got tied around your face is actually doing something besides signaling your obedience.

Mark Rippetoe:
But Win Chun here doesn't seem to understand about.. People don't understand about zeros, that's the whole thing. You see zero point zero zero zero zero eight nine seven and your brain just says, "Eight nine seven. That's a big number." Because you don't understand about the zeros in front of the damn thing.

[off-camera]:
What is it? One hundred and twenty six deaths?

Mark Rippetoe:
That's what this stupid fuck...

[off-camera]:
That's point zero zero zero zero.

Mark Rippetoe:
One sixty four. One sixty four. A hundred and sixty four people out of ...out of thirty million people is...

[off-camera]:
Five four seven with seven zeros in front of it.

Mark Rippetoe:
And so that's, that's percent...So that would be point your zero point zero zero zero zero zero five four seven. Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
But Wing Chun here doesn't seem to understand. You know I hope he doesn't work in front of a cash register.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh here's a good one: "Rusty has some awful tattoos. Congratulations."

Mark Rippetoe:
Look, I didn't write this, Rusty, just Fabián Brown here.

Mark Rippetoe:
All right. Here's another one about the deceased... "Everyone's laughing now. Does that include these hundred and sixty thousand deceased? Maybe stick to talking about what you know, because it's clearly not this."

Mark Rippetoe:
How many times do we have to read a remark from one of the stupid fucks, that type of shit on there that I don't know what I'm talking about? And that's like every other one, right? Stick to what you know, Rip. Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, here's what I know, all right. There are three hundred and thirty million people in the United States. And one hundred and sixty thousand of them is point zero four eight percent of people in the United States have died of covid-19.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now in the United States every year there are two point three million people that are dead, that are deceased. Two hundred and three... Two point three million people decease themselves every year. And we're talking here about one hundred and sixty thousand deceased, right? But I don't know what I'm talking about. OK.

[off-camera]:
Trust the science, Rip.

Mark Rippetoe:
Trust the science. Trust Fauci. Trust Fauci.

Mark Rippetoe:
Ok, so those are the what are this week going to pass for Comments from the Haters!

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, that difficult segment is over with, I'll have a drink of my weak iced tea here with no ice in it. And now we're going to talk about why you should go to a meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
All right, now a meet is an interesting it's an interesting situation. All right. A meet is where much people get together on a Saturday, possibly a Saturday and a Sunday if a whole bunch of eople sign up for the meet, and see how strong they are. OK.

Mark Rippetoe:
There are three or four kinds of meets. All right. We're not going to deal with strongman because we're primarily concerned with the barbell sports. Strongman is a meet, though, and it's a it's a situation where different events are contested. And this is largely up to the discretion of the of the meet director. There's, you know, farmer's walk's always in there and log press and... What else do they do at a strongman? Anymore they do yoke walks...

[off-camera]:
Yoke walks, carries...

Mark Rippetoe:
All kinds of loading stones. These kinds of things that are feature odd equipment that are not barbells. All right. Sometimes the strongman has a version of a deadlift that ends up always ends up being a rack pull with a whole bunch of weight. And just pull the thing for a few inches off the floor. And it's, you know, car tires and, you know, platforms loaded with half-naked women, that sort of thing.

Mark Rippetoe:
These are the features of strongman contests. And they're they're fine, but we're primarily concerned with the barbell sports.

Mark Rippetoe:
So the three types of meets available to us, if we want to go contest barbell sports are Olympic weightlifting meets, powerlifting meets, and more recently, strengthlifting meats. All right. So let's talk about each one of these separately.

Mark Rippetoe:
Olympic weightlifting is has the reputation of being the most technical, although I'm not sure that that's true. The snatch and the clean and jerk are the two lists contested in a modern Olympic weightlifting meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now prior to the 1972 Olympics, the meet was a three lift meet. It was the snatch... It was a clean and press, then the snatch and then the clean and jerk. So it was a three lift meet. And in 1972 Olympics they removed the clean and press from the event so that there were only two lifts left.

Mark Rippetoe:
And this was the clean was removed for various reasons that are outside the scope of this discussion. We've got a good article on that written by John Fair on the website, if you'd care to look more deeply into that. Modern Olympic weightlifting features the snatch and the clean jerk.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, the meet itself, the two lift meet, is conducted in a way that is that is different... The conduct of the meet is different than powerlifting or strengthlifting. In an Olympic weightlifting meet, the weight on the bar is loaded on the floor, on the platform, goes up and you lift the weight that you want to lift as the weight on the bar increases.

Mark Rippetoe:
In other words, if you're opening with 100 kilos in your snatch. And you choose a hundred and three kilos for your second attempt, then, if somebody is in front of you with one hundred and two kilos, that person goes first and then you're up with one oh three. So as the weight on the bar goes up, people take their attempts on that weight.

Mark Rippetoe:
And as is quite often the case with the strongest guys in the meet, those guys are going to snatch - like if you're opening snatches one 180 here in the United States, and then you're going to go to 185 and then 190, you'll follow yourself in fairly close order between attempts. And this is all -- you know, what's going to happen when you go do this and you're prepared for this.

Mark Rippetoe:
And the same is true with the clean and jerk. The bar is loaded to the lightest first attempt and the bar procedes up with people lifting their turn as the load comes up to the heaviest third attempt. OK, this is the way an Olympic weightlifting meet is conducted.

Mark Rippetoe:
A powerlifting meet is the squat, the bench press and the deadlift. And all of the federations that I am aware of in the United States conduct a powerlifting meet in what is called the rounds system. It's a completely different way to run the meet itself. Everybody who weighs in on the powerlifting meet - and we weigh in on an Olympic weightlifting meet too. And when you weigh in, you get a card and you list your first attempt where you're going to start. And that allows the staff to organize the table and, you know, decide what to lower the bar for, the first lightest attempt is. And the cards or or on the table or the, you know, scoring system provides that information to the people in the audience.

Mark Rippetoe:
And in in the case of the powerlifting meet the first attempt for the sn... For the for the squat, the bench press and the deadlifts are given to the staff when you sign in and when you sign in... when you weigh in and your scale weight is recorded, you're going to give them these first attempts. And everybody in the meet in what is called a flight of, say, 12, 15, 16 people will do their first attempt.

Mark Rippetoe:
So that will go from lightest to heaviest, first attempts only. And then when you leave the platform, you go to the score table and you give the expediter your second attempt. And then everybody does the second attempt in order of lightest to heaviest.

Mark Rippetoe:
So everybody that's lifting on the platform is doing either first, second, or third attempts all together. And the bar goes from lightest to heaviest.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, this is quite a bit more organized than an Olympic weightlifting meet where the the lifter may be following himself, may not be following himself and the rest between attempts is is one of the is one of the factors in terms of the strategy.

Mark Rippetoe:
There's a lot more strategy involved in in an Olympic weightlifting meet because whereas the guy that's competing against you may think he's going to snatch 103 next. And he's getting ready to go on the platform in his mind, and you choose 103 and your lot number is before him, then he has to wait a little bit longer.

Mark Rippetoe:
Converse is also true. You may have a guy who is, because of your attempt selection, is forced to wait for an additional five, six minutes that he wasn't planning on waiting. So there's all this back and forth goes on because the Olympic weightlifting weight on the bar method of running a meet provides another variable or three for the conduct of the meet. And this is part of the interesting nature of Olympic weightlifting, is the way the meet is being run.

Mark Rippetoe:
The rounds system with power lifting takes all of that out of the out of the out of the equation. Everybody on the platform right now is either doing their first attempt, their second attempt, or their third attempt. And the only thing common in both sports is that the weight on the bar never goes down. All right. So if you call for a weight and an Olympic meet that whatever the weight on the bar is, is the lightest one you can lift. If you decide you need to back up two kilos, that's too bad you don't get the option to do that.

Mark Rippetoe:
So the weight on the bar always goes up in both of these contests. So the rounds system provides a level of organization running the meet that the weight on the bar system used by Olympic lifting does not. As a result, a powerlifting meet is much more efficient in terms of the amount of time spent under the bar by the lifters.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's it's a known... If you're running around system meet, you know, about how long each squat is going to take. At our meets, a squat - the average length of time for a squat is one minute and seven seconds. And that has been proven to be the case over all the meets we have conducted because our staff is very good. We don't misload the bar. We have a platform manager and we're good at running meets. And our presses and deadlifts are shorter than the squats because the equipment.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, a strengthlifting meet is essentially a sport that I invented back about 2006. When I was working with CrossFit, Glassman came to me and said, would you do you have any ideas for a contest of the strength lifts? And I said, I sure do, because I'd been thinking about this for quite a bit of time.

Mark Rippetoe:
So the the strengthlifting started off as the "CrossFit Total" with a set of rules that I wrote for the sport. Now, when we first started this, we had intended that the the CrossFit total be run like a weightlifting with the weight on the bar method. But nobody liked that idea but me, so it got changed over to a rounds system later on.

Mark Rippetoe:
And the thing has become known now as "strengthlifting." And the difference in the name powerlifting and strengthlifting is is kind of important is as far as I'm concerned.

Mark Rippetoe:
Powerlifting is not about power. A 10 second deadlift is not an expression of power. It's an expression of force production - strength. A six second bench press is not an expression of power. An eight second squat is not expression of power.

Mark Rippetoe:
And those of you that know what power means, understand exactly what I'm talking about and so powerlifting is misnamed. It should have been called strengthlifting, but powerlifting sounds cool, you know, and that's why that's why they called it that, because it sounds cool.

Mark Rippetoe:
Power! Power, you know, the powerlifters talk? They all talk like macho man Randy Savage. "I'm going to squat 850 as my opener today. Got to squat 850." You know, and it's eight inches high and you got white lights. You know, so powerlifting is is misnamed.

Mark Rippetoe:
So strengthlifting, when we decided to to do the sport with our own set of rules, we decided to call it strengthlifting because that's what it is. The squat, the press and the deadlift are movement patterns that employ force production. And since a deadlift can be slow, since a squat can be slow, since a press can be slow, there's no power component necessary in the execution of the movement patterns. So we call it strengthlifting because that's what it is.

Mark Rippetoe:
And it's a three lift sport that uses the same bar and plates as powerlifting does. The squat rules are a little different. The press is not a contested sport anywhere but in in our sport of strengthlifting. The press is taken out of a rack, walked back, pressed overhead and put back in the rack. And then the deadlift is essentially the same thing as occurs in powerlifting.

Mark Rippetoe:
The difference between the way the meets are run is two things. In strengthlifting. We have a weight out, not a weigh in. So when you show up Saturday morning. You're going to sign in and the only thing you're going to do is fill out your attempt card and give that to the expeditor to let the expeditor and the scorekeeper know what your first attempts are going to be ror the sn... For the squat, the press and the deadlift.

Mark Rippetoe:
And then at the end of the last deadlift on your third attempt deadlift, or if you're not going to do a third attempt, if you're going to waive your third attempt, starting at second attempt deadlift, we take you to the scales and we see what you weighed during the meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, this is important. Powerlifting has a weigh in. Most federations have... Well, I don't know about most of them, there are federations with a 24 hour weigh in, if you can wrap your head around this. I find it difficult to do this. So the meet is Saturday starting at 10:00. Weigh in would be Friday starting at 10:00.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you can to lose a bunch of weight. Get down to the 198 weight class or whatever the hell the weight classes are in powerlifting now and then leave the weigh in and eat your way back up to two hundred and thirty pounds.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you can do that, what does a weigh in mean? What is the concept of a weight class? All right. In in these types of powerlifting federations twenty four hour weigh in means that means essentially that at some point in the past, you had to have weighed 198 to compete in the one hundred and ninety eight pound weight class. And the fact that you weigh 230 during the meet is irrelevant.

Mark Rippetoe:
This is amusing to a logical person, to the concept of a weight class. I don't know how that got lost in the process, but a meet with a twenty four hour weight in is a meet essentially without weight classes.

Mark Rippetoe:
A meet with a two hour weigh in... Let's say the meet starts at 10:00 and the weigh in starts at eight o'clock. I know people who have gained 10 pounds of bodyweight between the time they weighed in at eight o'clock and the time their first attempt was called on the platform, you know, three hours later.

Mark Rippetoe:
Once again, the idea of a weight class is that this is what you weigh. Now, back in days of yore, when you set a world record at the Worlds for powerlifting at the IPF Worlds, you set a world record. A brand new world record. Upon you having set that record, they weighed the bar, they weighed the set, so the so the record was what was actually on the bar, what the bar weighed, including misloads and and whatever happened with the plate castings and everything else. They knew exactly what the bar weighed when you lifted it. They had to shut the thing down to do this. And then they took you from the platform to the scale to make sure you were still in the weight class for which you set the world record.

Mark Rippetoe:
And this is the only honest way to do this. It doesn't take a high degree of intelligence or perception to understand that if you weighted two twenty eight in the 220 pound weight class and you lifted the world record it is not a world record into 220 pound weight class, now, is it? So I don't know what's being done now with respect to that, there are so many federations and sports become so fragmented that it really doesn't matter. It's just go have fun at the meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you want to play like you set a world record in the Masters division weighing, you know, five pounds over your weight class at 73 years of age. Then go ahead, enjoy yourself. It's fine with me. I don't care. But that's that that's not what you did. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
So we have addressed that problem with the weight out. So whatever you weighed when you finished your last deadlift is the weight class in which you competed. And this is the only honest way to do this. And it it solves a lot of problems in that it completely eliminates all of the chaos that a weigh in in front of the meet starting creates. All of that chaos is completely unnecessary.

Mark Rippetoe:
We don't have to call the session into into the weight in in the middle of the meet and everybody stand up and get naked and go to the scale and all this other shit. We just weigh you out. Takes about two minutes.

Mark Rippetoe:
And if you want to compete in one hundred and ninety eight pound weight class, then make damn sure that you weigh one hundred and ninety eight pounds or less as you step away from the platform from your third attempt deadlift, because that's the weight class you're in.

Mark Rippetoe:
And it's an honest approach to the sport. It's an honest approach to the concept of a weight class and nothing else really is. So I'm I'm happy with how that has turned out. And our little strengthlifting weights are not really organized at the national level. We just have them in the gym. We have two or three a year at Wichita Falls Athletic Club.

Mark Rippetoe:
Some other gyms around the country are are doing these too. Eventually a national federation will step up that's capable of getting the job done. And we'll look forward to helping them when that time comes. But right now, we're just having fun with our meets.

Mark Rippetoe:
And what you'll find is that the vast majority of the people that come to meets at Wichita Falls Athletic Club are just there to have fun. They've been training and signing up for a meet is an important thing. All right. And this is really what I want to talk about today.

Mark Rippetoe:
When you sign up for a meet, it changes very, very fundamentally your approach to the very next workout. When you sign up for a meet, you send in an entry fee. You're going to be there lifting ten o'clock Saturday morning, three months from now. What you do at the meet matters to you because you signed up for the meet and now you're judged and everything's got to be prepared and ready. And as a result of that, everything that you do in training between that point and the meet also now matters more.

Mark Rippetoe:
Signing up for a meet is the best thing you can do for your training. It really is. And you know, people that sign up for our meets - and probably most people that go to power meets and Olympic weightlifting meets - they're not... They know they're not competitive at the national level. That's not the point. It's not the point.

Mark Rippetoe:
People that tell me, "Well, I want to make sure that I can win before I sign up for the meet" I still hear that every once in a while.

[off-camera]:
They're never going to do a meet, if you do that.

Mark Rippetoe:
You're a pussy. You can't get beat? What's wrong with you? You're afraid to get beat? What are you afraid of, boy? How do you think you're going to learn about how to live in to meet without going to a meet? You want to wait till you can win to go to a meet?

Mark Rippetoe:
You just don't want to go to the meet. We understand. You just don't want to go to the meet, so don't go to the meet. But con't tell me stupid shit like that, that's pointless. You go to the meet to lift in the meet and you go to the meet to do better this time than you did last time. That's why you go to the meet, because improvement is gauged at a meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's when you set a one rep max. That's the only reason to do a one rep max, because the rules of the meet require a single attempt. And the heaviest one you can do is your one rep max in the meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's become fashionable recently to use this bizarre term, an estimated one RM.

[off-camera]:
My estimated 1RM is...

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh it's a real big number. It's a real big number.

[off-camera]:
It changes daily, but...

Mark Rippetoe:
My estimated 1RM is.. On the deadlift, probably do...

[off-camera]:
815?

Mark Rippetoe:
I could probably do 815, if I had to, but I know I can do five.

[off-camera]:
You know that.

Mark Rippetoe:
But I probably can, but I probably can only really do 475.

[off-camera]:
Well you can do three sixty five for twelve, so that means you could do eight hundred.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. Right. Means you can do eight hundred. Just depends on what formula you use. Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you want to know how strong you are, you go to a meet. That's what meets are for. OK, because it could be that your squat estimate 1RM is about four inches high. Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, I know that doesn't matter in federations like the APF and the USPA and all the other recreational federations that just are social events. You know, if a squat depth is not judged - and you all know what I'm talking about - if squat depth is not judged, you're lifting in a recreational federation.

Mark Rippetoe:
Here's another way to know that you're in a recreational federation: Does the federation pay the athlete's way to the Worlds? If they don't, tt's a recreational federation. That's all it is. If you're not representing the federation to the extent that they're paying for your trip, is a recreational federation.

Mark Rippetoe:
And recreational federations are fine, I don't care. You know, what I'm talking about is if you want to go to a meet and test yourself and see if you're actually making progress, then sign up and go to the meet. But in powerlifting, the IPFs Worlds is the world championships and nothing else is.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, I got problems with the IPF. I got problems with USApowerlifting, which is in reality the American Drug Free Powerlifting Association - still. I got a lot of problems with them, but at least they judge depth in the squat.

Mark Rippetoe:
And if your federation does not judge depth and the squat, then you're in a you're in a recreational federation. So in the United States, the organization that feeds to the IPF worlds is USAPL. Like it or not, that's where you have to go if you want to be in a real meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
And you know that, you know, I have no love for USAPL for various reasons. The last thing I heard is they disqualified some guy's total last month because he had his mask on wrong on his third attempt deadlift or something like that.

[off-camera]:
That's the story.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, that's that's what we call chicken shit. There is no more clear example of chicken shit than that. Right. And you know that they do that kind of shit and they've always done that kind of shit. And I just got no use for it. But they got the monopoly on the IPF, so if you're going to be a powerlifter, you got to deal with USAPL, God help you.

Mark Rippetoe:
But going to the meet this this is this is something that needs to be explored. We want you to go to a meet because we want your training to improve by virtue of having signed up for the meet. I don't care if you go to the meet and and don't total worth a damn. I don't care if you go to the meet and win the meet. It doesn't make any difference to me.

Mark Rippetoe:
From a training standpoint, we are concerned with you being serious about your workouts and having established goals to meet training with a purpose in mind. That's what training is. Training is coming and doing your workouts with a purpose in mind. That's not today, that's down the road.

Mark Rippetoe:
And if you've got to a meet in three months, if you're if you're intelligent, you have planned out every single workout down to the pound, the sets, the reps and the weight on the bar that you're going to do between now and the meet. You started there in the future and planned it back. And now we're training. Now we've got a purpose in mind for this workout today. And if this workout today has a purpose, you're going to execute that workout more efficiently and more effectively than if you're just hanging around in the gym. Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
We tell novices to enter a meet. Now, in our system, novices are putting more weight on the bar every time they come in the gym anyway. If a novice enters meet, he learns early on that what you do in today's workout matters not just today, but down there. And this is the whole point of training versus exercising.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you just come in the gym and just throw the dumbbells around, walk on the treadmill and watch CNN and listen to the propaganda and then go take a sweat and take a shower and leave, you're just exercising. You're just burning some calories, enjoying yourself on the way home from work.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you have a meet you're going to in three months that you know, that Saturday morning you've got to stand up in front of a whole bunch of people and do these three lifts for three attempts, things are different. Things are immediately different. You will not perceive the next workout the same after you send in the entry fee for the meet. Terribly important that you understand this.

Mark Rippetoe:
It it provides a context for your training that is outside the scope of this, today's workout. And that's the important thing about going to meet. I think you really do yourself a major favor when you sign up.

Mark Rippetoe:
For me, it doesn't matter which one of the barbell sports you want to compete in. People love to do Olympic weightlifting meets. They're fabulous. Sign up for an Olympic weightlifting meet. It will make you pay better attention to your snatch and your clean & jerk. And if you're intelligent, it will also make you pay better attention to your deadlift and your squat and your bench press and your press. Although a lot of weightlifters don't seem to understand this, but every aspect of your training becomes more effectively emphasized when you sign up for a meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
My advice is to stay away from equipped lifting. It's an excellent way to get very badly hurt if that the artificial skin you put on allows you to bench one hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds more than you actually can handle. If the shirt tears, you're hurt, you're injured. Don't use equipment. Go to a raw meet, what's called raw.

Mark Rippetoe:
And go to a federation at judges depth. I mean, if everybody's squatting to a different depth in the meet, then we're just masturbating. That's what masturbation is, you're jacking off on the platform, aren't you?

Mark Rippetoe:
An eight inch above parallel squat is masturbation. You understand what I mean by that? You guys understand what I mean by that, right? Do I need to go into detail about what masturbation is? Eight inch above squat parallel and eight inch above parallel squat is nothing but masturbation.

Mark Rippetoe:
And it's not just you that masturbates, your coach over here is masturbating. "Beautiful depth!" When you're eight inches above parallel. That's the way they talk. "Beautiful depth!"

Mark Rippetoe:
There's no such thing as beautiful depth. There's either depth or there's not depth. You're either deep or you're high. "Beautiful" is a degree of depth, right? Oh shit.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you guys. Yeah, go to a power meet. They're fun. Go to a power meet, but go to the squat below parallel whether they want you to or not, just for your own pride. And don't use a bunch of suits and wraps and all the other shit. Just go to a power meet and have fun and then sign up for another one six months and beat your total. Compete against yourself. OK.

Mark Rippetoe:
And if you are in a in a position where you're around a gym that's offering a strengthlifting meet, then sign up for strengthlifting meet. I promise you you will have a good time at one of our meets here at Wichita Falls Athletic Clubs. It's why they sell out in about two days. We announce a meet, the damn thing's sold out.

[off-camera]:
The other reason is because you - especially if you're training by yourself in a garage gym or in a commercial gym, you... The same people are coming to the meets all the time. And you have... I mean, you're joining a group of people.And you're going to see the same people every time everybody gets together every six months.

[off-camera]:
And, you know, I've seen it over the last four years. People people make friendships.

Mark Rippetoe:
People make good friendships. We all go eat together after the meet.

[off-camera]:
And nobody remembers what you lifted in them unless you're Clint Case or Cordova.

Mark Rippetoe:
Nobody knows what the total was. They all know that you did the best you could and that you had the balls to do it in front of judges. And we've got some good lifters that come to our meets. Clint Case, big, strong man. Michael Cordova, excellent lifter, excellent. Chase Lindley shows up, always presses way up in the mid three hundreds. You don't get to see that very often. Twenty two year old guy pressing in the mid 300s, that doesn't happen just everywhere, you know. That happens at a strengthlifting meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
And but I promise you, you'll have a good time at the meet. I announce these things. I'm funny. Kind of. You know, we just have a good time at the meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
But it doesn't matter if you don't have access to to us. You know, you're not in proximity to come come lift one of our meets, go to a power meet. Just go have a good time.

Mark Rippetoe:
That the thing to keep in mind is that when you enter the meet, it changes your training. And that's the point of our recommendation that that's what you do because it positively affects your training, gives meaning to every workout that wasn't there. If you're just doing this for, you know, your own aggrandizement and your training, that's important. But I tell you, you'll find that everybody that goes to a meet will tell you the same thing when they signed up for the meet train and got better. It always works this way. Those are my recommendations. Anybody have anything to add here?

[off-camera]:
If you're... Just real quick, if you're a novice

Mark Rippetoe:
This is Nick, by the way.

[off-camera]:
If you're a novice and you're going to meet, how should you change your training if you're an intermediate?

Mark Rippetoe:
All right. Those are those are fair questions. If you are a novice going to a meet, you don't change your training at all. You just instead of Friday's workout, you're going to lift in the meet on Saturday. That's all there is to it.

Mark Rippetoe:
You're going up every workout anyway, so you don't taper. A novice doesn't taper because a novice doesn't need to taper. Novices doing three sets of five, three sets of five, one set of five on deadlifts. Every time he's doing more weight.

Mark Rippetoe:
He just goes to the meet. A novice goes to the meet just for the experience of going to the meet. Some particularly gifted novices might place well, but a novice is not going to win the meet usually and obviously is going to learn at the meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
An intermediate on the other hand...

[off-camera]:
Before we talk about intermediates. If you're a novice, how do you find the weight that you're supposed to be doing?

Mark Rippetoe:
It's a new PR. It's the next PR that you would have done under the bar on Friday's workout with a little more added to it because you're doing a single and not a set of 5.

Mark Rippetoe:
But really, it doesn't matter. It doesn't make any difference. You just get through the nine attempts if you're a novice. That's why you're at the meet - to learn about how the meet runs and to get through the nine attempts and not embarrass yourself or your coach. That's why you're there as a novice. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you start crying or something when you miss a deadlift, we, you know, don't do that. All right. If you pick the number wrong and you know, that happens sometimes to novices, but you shouldn't be lifting enough weight to where there's any question about whether you can do the third attempt or not. You ought to pick the attempt you know, you can do because it's your first meet. They're all PRs, you know, don't be stupid. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Intermediate lifters, on the other hand, are making progress on a weekly basis. Some adjustment to the week before the meet is going to be necessary because... Novices are are not handling anything but sets of five. Intermediate lifters, on the other hand, are handling singles, doubles, triples. And the the meet ought to coincide with the day you would be doing singles on those lifts. So it requires a little shuffling around.

Mark Rippetoe:
An advanced lifter, on the other hand, has almost by definition already been to several meets. They're actually lifters and we don't need to tell them how to set up the meet because they already know. An advanced lifter is by definition, someone to whom that particular sport is important enough to where it's the main thing they do and they know how to set up a meet schedule.

Mark Rippetoe:
When I was competing, I would decide what the meet date was going to be. I'd send in the entry form and then I'd plan my training backwards from that day. And in doing so, you always fuck that up, OK. You always fuck that. It's there's... You won't ever hit all of the numbers you think you're going to hit.

Mark Rippetoe:
And that's how you learn about adaptation. That's how you learn the hard lessons about training is what you think you can do versus what happened. What happened teaches you, right. There's another reason to go to the meet, learn things beyond the novice level.

Mark Rippetoe:
Anything else?

[off-camera]:
What do you bring? What do you bring to the meet?

Mark Rippetoe:
With gear in terms of gear?

[off-camera]:
I mean I mean, you're going bring your shoes and your belt.

Mark Rippetoe:
You're going to bring my shoes, my belt, my singlet and stuff.

[off-camera]:
Food?

Mark Rippetoe:
I always used to bring something to eat, you know, but you don't want a stomach full of anything, particularly when you're going to go out and lift heavy, unless that's the way you train. All right. Whatever your training looks like, the meet ought to look like too.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you train on an empty stomach, you ought to plan on lifting on an empty stomach. If you if you train having taken a nap right before you right before you you lift, well, you probably want to, you know, sit in a chair for twenty minutes before the meet starts and kinda close your eyes. You want to get as close to familiar as you can.

[off-camera]:
What you don't want to do is get on the internet and read what people do and then try to do what they do. Because, you know, I've had people do that and they're miserable.

Mark Rippetoe:
Because that's stupid.

[off-camera]:
It's dumb. You know, they do whatever...

Mark Rippetoe:
You're doing the meet, not this person you're reading about. What did you do in training? Your your meet day needs to look as close to a training day as you can

Mark Rippetoe:
Don't get on the internet and read about what Ed Coan ate before the worlds in nineteen ninety three. It doesn't matter what Ed ate. OK, It doesn't make any difference. What did you eat before your best workout? Eat that and don't eat anything else.

Mark Rippetoe:
Don't do a whole bunch of new shit. All right. Don't use a new belt on the date of the meet. Don't use a brand new pair of shoes on the day of the meat. Don't do anything new on the date of the medt. Do the thing that... Dance with the one that brung you. You heard that expression. There's no better time to apply that than at the meet. Everything needs to be as close as you can get it to your training.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, it's not going to be the same thing because you don't train, probably, on squat stands by yourself on a platform with three judges around you and audience. That's not how you train. So things are automatically going to be quite a bit different. But in terms of the things that you can control, those need to be is similar to what you are used to as you can make them. OK.

Mark Rippetoe:
And yeah, part of part of learning how to lift in a meet is learning how to control your circumstances on the platform. One of the good things, one of the very best things about the way we teach the squat, which is looking down at the floor when you squat, in addition to the mechanical advantages this provides, the the better ability to drive your hips up and use your posterior chain. It also controls your field of vision to the point where some little kid out there waving at you during the during the execution squat does not draw your attention.

Mark Rippetoe:
The floor is a fairly predictable thing, right? If you learn to look at the floor when you squat, you remove variables that otherwise interact with your attention span. Right. So this is these are things you have to learn the hard way usually. Right. If you're looking at into the crowd when you squat, you're fucking up. OK, the best thing to do is look down. And for reasons that we have explained hundreds of thousands of times and other places.

Mark Rippetoe:
So there are going to be things that are not that are not familiar. The bar's not going to be the same, probably, the same ones you train with. The way the plates are loaded on the bar may or may not be familiar feeling. A certain amount of slack in the plates you get used to. The way you load the bar and the loaders at the meet may load it differently.

Mark Rippetoe:
Some things you just have to ignore and you have to focus on your technique. This is another aspect of the way we teach people how to lift that is extremely important. If I send you out onto the platform for your third attempt deadlift and it is a PR - a weight you've never handled before, the tendency is to walk out onto the platform going, oh, shit. This is heavy. Man, I hope I can hold on to this. Hope this comes off the floor.

Mark Rippetoe:
All this, you know - and you know, some people respond to fear in a positive way, but most people don't. So what I want you to do on every one of your nine attempts at the meet is I want you to focus on the technical cue that you need to perform to correctly execute the correct technique we have taught you for that particular lift instead of thinking, oh, shit, this is heavy.

Mark Rippetoe:
What you need to think about is stance. Grip - it's in the right place in my fingers. Now, set the chest up, push the floor. You're thinking about the technical details that you're going to execute with the barbell, not how much it weighs. And this is one of the big advantages to the way we teach these lifts. There is a checklist of technical things that you have to do.

Mark Rippetoe:
And it doesn't matter what weight's on the bar. You're going to do these things with your first attempt and your third attempt. Every one of these attempts. You have to learn to focus on those technical details.

Mark Rippetoe:
And believe me, I have learned this the hard way. OK, this is one of these lessons that you would be better to learn from me than have to figure this out yourself. OK, there's a thing that you have to do to squat a heavy weight. What is that thing and how do I execute it the same way every single time? That's what you need to be thinking about on the platform.

Mark Rippetoe:
See that? That's another one of the variables that you have control over. You know, you can't control the way the bar is loaded. You can't control the bar. You can't control the knurl on the bar. You can't control the plates. You can't control the judges. You can't control the platform material. There's all kinds of things that you don't have any control over.

Mark Rippetoe:
But the things that you do have control over, you must exercise that control to the best of your ability. You don't allow random variables to be introduced into the execution of these nine attempts. That's your job. You have to learn how to do it and there's no better place to learn that than to meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
Ok, anything else, I'm leaving out one.

[off-camera]:
One quick one, so I've had a couple of people do powerlifting meets and you got to deal with rules, right? So the way I've done it is on their - these are novices - on their first rep of their work weight leading up to it, have them practice the rules and then just have them do the rest of the rep normally. How would you do it?

Mark Rippetoe:
That sounds like a reasonable, reasonable deal. If somebody's going to a powerlifting meet and they've got to pause a bench press.

[off-camera]:
Yeah. Wait for a down command. All that shit.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. All that shit. One of the things I forgot to mention about the differences between strengthlifting and in powerlifting - and this is very, very important. In in powerlifting, the judges actually participate in the lift. I've always thought this was stupid. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Why should the judge have to tell you to rack the bar when you're through with the squat? Why should the judge have to tell you when the pause was long enough in the bench press and to rack it? Why should the judge have to tell you to set the barbell down after you've locked out a deadlift? These are all completely unnecessary.

Mark Rippetoe:
And the way that you know that is the judge doesn't call you up from squat depth. Now, does he? So why should the judge tell you how long you've paused is enough in the bench press? There's... That makes no sense, it's illogical and inconsistent.

Mark Rippetoe:
In strengthlifting the judge sits there in the chair and judges the lift, which is his job. All right now. Here's a here's an interesting example of how this is very important. Right. If you've got a judge, the head judge in a powerlifting meet. So here's an example of why this is very important. The judge in a power lifting me actually gives you a signal when he decides that you have paused the bar on the chest long enough.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, this up signal or press signal, it's been done with the verbal command press or a clap at various times in the history of the sport. One of the problems is inconsistency. It is impossible for a judge to be perfectly consistent with 60 bench press attempts that he is judging over the course of a flight of 20 lifters.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's impossible for that judge to say to to leave the bar on the chest of the lift for the exact same amount of time for each one of these lifters. Even if his intentions are to do that, he can't do it. It's physically impossible. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
The rule says the lifter must pass the bar on the chest so that there's no rebound. The idea is to is to eliminate the rebound in the bench press. I don't know why we're eliminating the rebound. It's just one of the quirks of the rules. Why not do an honest touch and go? If I were running powerlifting, I would have a touch and go bench press instead of a paused bench press. It's safer and it's more consistent and you can judge a heave off the chest just like you can a pause. Right?

Mark Rippetoe:
In a power meet, the rule says that the lifter must hold the bar on the chest and until the bar is motionless, at which time the judge, the head judge will give the press signal. Now, I have seen several times this very thing happen. I have seen the head judge - who is either friends with or afraid of the lifter - give the press signal before the bar touched the chest.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, in that situation, what do the side judges do? What do the judges judge? Do they judge the signal? Or do they judge the bench press? If the judge gave the signal to press before the bar reached the chest, no pause effectively is being required of that particular lifter.

Mark Rippetoe:
But that lifter got the press signal, so what are the side judges that are not involved in this fuckup do in that situation?

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, what they ought to do is there be no signal from one of the judges. In other words, the judge doesn't need to participate in the execution of the lift. If you've got a set of rules that the lifter is supposed to be familiar with the judges, just judge the performance of the lift according to the rules.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's the logical, sensible, normal thing to do. But if you inject a judge's command into this thing, then you've got another fallible human involved in the process and you've got you've got nothing good coming out of that.

Mark Rippetoe:
So what we have done with strengthlifting is we've omitted the involvement of the judge in the participation lifts. So I think that's an important aspect of this.

Mark Rippetoe:
But back to our basic premise. You go to a meet to make your training better and I want to encourage all of you guys to give some thought to entering a meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
It doesn't matter what kind of meet it is, you'll have fun at the meet. You're probably going to get beat. Who cares? Everybody gets beat. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
And. You know, if... You'll find an amazing thing happens after you mail your entry fee. People don't do that anymore, but we used to write a check. Hell, I've put fifty dollars in cash in an envelope, sent it in for an entry fee before. But now it's it's all handled on the Internet.

Mark Rippetoe:
Once you do that, once you push the button and now you're entered in meet, shit's different. Things just got real. And I think you'll find that your training benefits from having done so.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you got any questions about this, let us know. Might be some good questions to ask for a next Q&A. be thinking about that. And just like to wish everybody good luck on your next meet.

Mark Rippetoe:
You guys will find that you've had a lot more fun than you thought you were going to have. You're going to be all worried and anxious and all this other shit. And at the end of the day, you're going to have a ball. Give that some thought.

We'll talk to you next week on Starting Strength Rado.

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