https://youtu.be/WsOq4yw1F3g: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

https://youtu.be/WsOq4yw1F3g: this WsOq4yw1F3g video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Mark Rippetoe:
Girls don't care about your abs. Young women are more superficial than that.

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 podcasts on the internet... Ladies and gentlemen! Starting Strength Radio.

Mark Rippetoe:
Welcome to Starting Strength Radio. It's Friday, and the way you know it's Friday is because yesterday was Thursday. I'm sure you noticed that.

Mark Rippetoe:
So here we are on a Friday at Starting Strength Radio and we're going to talk about just whatever comes to mind today. I've got some ideas about some stuff to talk about, but first, it is necessary to review...

Mark Rippetoe:
Comments from the Haters! because this Always adds so much to the program. And these people are also ingenious and their contribution is incalculable. It really is.

Mark Rippetoe:
For example, Michael Mexico... Is that racism?

[off-camera]:
When you say it is.

Mark Rippetoe:
When I say it's racism? Well, he typed it!

[off-camera]:
Here. Watch: Michael Mexico. It's not racism.

[off-camera]:
You're dark enough.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about it like that. You know why? Because I don't see race.

[off-camera]:
Saying that as a white man is "racist."

Mark Rippetoe:
Right, I'm sure it is.

Mark Rippetoe:
It hadn't occurred to me that you're dark. I just thought you always needed a bath. Just wash all that brown shit off.

[off-camera]:
Do I still have a job?

Mark Rippetoe:
It washes off. I mean, if you'll just, you know, soap, water, that sort of shit.

[off-camera]:
Do I need to go dedicate my life to online coaching now?

Mark Rippetoe:
To online coaching [obnoxious laughter]. I'd rather see you join the priesthood.

[off-camera]:
Oh fuck.

Mark Rippetoe:
Okay, so back to Michael Mexico. Notice it doesn't say Michael Nicaragua. It says Michael Mexico, because in Michael's mind, there's a hierarchy here.

[off-camera]:
There's no internet in Nicaragua.

Mark Rippetoe:
And Nicaragua is just beneath his...

[off-camera]:
No internet.

Mark Rippetoe:
No internet in Nicaragua. It's a jungle. Naked savages.

[off-camera]:
One city and it was leveled in 1972, a big earthquake, and that was it.

Mark Rippetoe:
They hadn't ever rebuilt it?

[off-camera]:
Communism ever since.

Mark Rippetoe:
Communists...running around with little spears made out of bamboo and shit, stabbing anyone who disagrees with them.

[off-camera]:
Stabbing capitalists.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, chasing them down. Capitalist running dogs.

Mark Rippetoe:
"This man," here's Michael, "this man has been bulking his whole life for this moment and it shows." And he's looking at the 500 pound deadlift that I did five years ago when I was 60. On my birthday five years ago.

Mark Rippetoe:
Just just remarkable to Michael that someone could pull 500 with a belly.

[off-camera]:
That's right.

Mark Rippetoe:
So Michael thinks that you have to have abs to pull.

[off-camera]:
Michael deadlifts with the hex bar. I'm sure of it.

Mark Rippetoe:
Michael doesn't deadlift.

[off-camera]:
Well, yeah, he "does" hex bar.

Mark Rippetoe:
Michael, doesn't do shit except high up on the internet, that's all.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, and here's that one, this is an interesting comment: "Making a shake with Rip and Katia"

[off-camera]:
Classic video.

Mark Rippetoe:
Classic video. My little friend Katia and I are making a shake out of a diet orange soda and unflavored whey protein. And Blake Spire says, "This is disgusting."

Mark Rippetoe:
This is just... So refreshing to know that there are people this fucking stupid.

[off-camera]:
Poor Blake.

Mark Rippetoe:
David Lee says, "Rip has one of the most rounded upper backs I've ever seen" That he's ever seen. "The older I get, the less and less I enjoy his dogmatic view on weight training."

Mark Rippetoe:
What is the dogma these people are talking about? That you have to train with weights?

[off-camera]:
I don't know.

Mark Rippetoe:
He wants to use bands.

[off-camera]:
I don't know. It's having an opinion and being able to back it up. I guess it's considered dogma.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's dogma, Right? Dogma.

[off-camera]:
Logic.

Mark Rippetoe:
Because I said so. Right? The old assistant principal line from high school. Because I said so.

[off-camera]:
Things like dog... Are

Mark Rippetoe:
Now that's dogma.

[off-camera]:
Things like, yeah, things like logic, you know, principles are dogma.

Mark Rippetoe:
See what the cup says? No stupid people beyond this point. You got it right there?

[off-camera]:
I think they got the point

Mark Rippetoe:
Ah, they probably got the point. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now...someone by the name of Eddie Suarez. Is that racism?

[off-camera]:
Yes. Also racism.

Mark Rippetoe:
"This is the only negative video about this bar I could find." He's talking about the trap bar. Where I did the why the trap bar is completely useless. "Needless to say, I'm getting one."

Mark Rippetoe:
I'm glad we could I'm glad we could sell a piece of equipment for Sorinex.

[off-camera]:
No shit. You probably You've probably sold a bunch of trap bars.

Mark Rippetoe:
I, you know. Well, will Sorinex send us a fucking...

[off-camera]:
No, those are too expensive. You tubers don't buy Sorinex bars.

Mark Rippetoe:
What do they buy? Who makes cheap ones?

I don't know whoever sells shit at Academy. You know those...

Mark Rippetoe:
Academy has these pieces of shit?

[off-camera]:
Oh yeah. I don't know what brand they are. Some China, some stuff from China.

Mark Rippetoe:
Ok, this is a good one here. "LOL can you believe this fat bellend owns an athletics club period" Now, that's a YouTube Comment.

[off-camera]:
That's a good one. Yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
That LOL can you believe this fat b e l l e n d owns an one single quote athletics club single quote period.

[off-camera]:
There we go. That's true to form.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's now that's a YouTube comment. Right?

Mark Rippetoe:
And hambone950 says, "Moving hands like lobster."

[off-camera]:
He's new. He must be new to the channel. There's still some good ones out there.

Mark Rippetoe:
I like the LOL can you believe this fat bellend.

[off-camera]:
What's a bellend?

Mark Rippetoe:
That's actually a word.

[off-camera]:
Yes. The English bellend.

Mark Rippetoe:
How do they pronounce it?

[off-camera]:
Bell end.

Mark Rippetoe:
Bell end. Like two words.

[off-camera]:
Because it looks like a bell? Oh, that's funny. Teah, that's good.

Mark Rippetoe:
Wow. Now, I'm hurt.

Mark Rippetoe:
And that's this week's Comments from the Haters!

[off-camera]:
We need to have an episode and we don't even have to record this, we just need to have an episode of non-stop comments from the haters. Just take all the old ones, put them together in the one hour and a half.

Mark Rippetoe:
An hour and a half where I read comments.

[off-camera]:
people would be dying laughing in their car.

Mark Rippetoe:
People would enjoy that one wouldn't they?

[off-camera]:
I think we should do that. Maybe episode 100 should just be comments from the haters.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, it's coming up pretty quick to get her on it. Get Bre on it. We hadn't fired her yet, have we?

[off-camera]:
No.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, then she still eligible to do that.

[off-camera]:
To do that, yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
Ok, we'll see about that. We'll think about that, see if we think it's a good idea. It does seem as though most people enjoy that segment.

[off-camera]:
Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
They listen to that. And then they turn the rest of it off.

[off-camera]:
Maybe. Everybody I've ever introduced to the podcast that first thing they tell me is, oh, my God, comments from the haters, the greatest thing ever. And then they don't give a shit about anything else.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, nothing else has even penetrated.

[off-camera]:
Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, uh, all right. So what I thought we'd talk about today is...oh, just some I'm just going to ramble here about some general thoughts that I've had over the years about Strength. All right, this... Starting Strength is not like everybody else's shit, Ok, and it's it's difficult to explain to most people why we Don't care about your abs, Right? Because the first words in the book are "Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not."

Mark Rippetoe:
That's on the introduction to the Blue book. Physical strength is the most important thing in life. And this is true whether we want it to be or not.

Now, that seems rather dogmatic, doesn't it? That's the dogma, I guess. That's the dogmatic approach to things. But it's dogma in the same sense that two plus two equals four. Two...two...count now, always true. Right? Physical strength is the entire basis for your physical existence, and by strength we mean production of force against an external resistance and that external resistance is everything but you.

Mark Rippetoe:
And when you interact with everything but you, that's you and the environment. That's you interacting with the floor, with this table, with a sack of groceries, with your passionate lover, if you're so fortunate as to have one right? You interacting with your knife and fork and the plate of food on the table. There are people who can't feed themselves, you know, because they're not strong enough. Right?.

Mark Rippetoe:
There are people who can't get up off the pot by themselves. You know, you'd had to have had the experience of walking in the bathroom and finding your father stuck sitting on the toilet because he wasn't strong enough to get himself up off of the toilet, having been there for three hours. If tou haven't had that experience then you don't understand what I'm talking about. Physical strength is the most important thing about your physical existence.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, I understand that passing, you know, differential equations is important to people. All right. And passing differential equations is not a physical expression of strength. But let's say you could pass DiffE from your wheelchair. Could be done. Do you think your life would be better off passing diffE from the wheelchair than it would be if you could walk into class, sit down in the desk, attend the class, get up and leave, walk into the final and make the same A that the guy who made a from the wheelchair made? Which is better?

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, you know, there's not any point arguing about this because physical strength ss the deal. And it's such an important deal that if you don't have it, then you need to stop doing everything else until you get it. And everything about you will be better. All right. This is why strength training is so important.

[off-camera]:
As a... You know, this is a really important point because as a twenty six year old, twenty seven year old younger man reading the first line of the book my first instinct was to say, "that's cute. It's not true." But that's that's pretty cool. You know, this insane, you know, Texan is saying this shit, that's pretty cool. Let me read the rest of this book. But it's actually it's actually true. It's 100 percent true.

Mark Rippetoe:
And it has to soak in a little while before you understand that it's actually true. It seems like a like an oversimplification of human existence, but it's not. It's absolutely not an oversimplification.

[off-camera]:
And even even when you consider... So, there's you know, you start thinking about emotional health, so to speak, you know, mental health. These are all... At at at a high level these are things that are intimately related to your physical existence, too.

Mark Rippetoe:
And what most people do not understand is that all of those things are influenced by your physical existence. Your mental health is quite often a function of your physical existence. Quite often it's impossible to divorce the physical from the mental, intellectual, spiritual. Any of these other more ephemeral aspects of human existence cannot be divorced from the physical body in which all of those things reside. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
I tried to get our friend Ronnie Hamilton to write an article about this. Ronnie is not a writer and he couldn't He couldn't sit down and articulate it well enough, but he explained it to me one day. He was hauling me down to Dallas or something, and he got to talking about how much his self perception had changed after he started training with weights.

Mark Rippetoe:
But he also said something very interesting. He he made the point that the people around him perceived him to be different after he started training with weights. And I found that to be interesting. And I said, are you sure this is not something that you just cooked up in your little brain? And he said, no, no, no, it's not. It's... You know, he reads people real well. He's terribly successful, man. And he understands human interaction at a level that lots and lots of people have no idea that exists even.

Mark Rippetoe:
And he said that after I started lifting weights, I noticed that... And once, you know, a couple of years he's talking about he stands differently, appears to be different. Neck's bigger, traps, arms, forearms, hands, everything looks different, but he stands differently. He presents himself differently because of the process that getting strong requires of the human brain.

He is that, you know, you're you're different after, you know, a couple of years of training. You just don't you're not... You don't think about yourself the same way you did prior to that. And other people sense this and and regard you differently as well. And this is a this is a fascinating observation.

[off-camera]:
Well, why does he think that is? I think it's because you get you have control over the process. You have control. You walk in, you you have to make a decision to do the task. And that's important when you're a 12 year old, 13 year old kid.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's important with over a 55 year old man, too. It's extremely important when you're a 55 year old man if you had never gone through that process before.

Mark Rippetoe:
The process of getting strong is it's a it's a process. It's not going by the gym on the way home from work and changing clothes and coming out fucking around on a dumbbell rack and doing some leg extensions and riding the bike and going and taking a sauna and rinsing off and going home. That's that's not training. That's just fucking around at the YMCA.

Mark Rippetoe:
Training is the process that you assign to yourself that involves the identification of a task. I want to be stronger. I'm going to get stronger. The research involved in learning about what that requires and most importantly, the application of this process in a systematic, analytical fashion over time.

Mark Rippetoe:
We start here. Nine months later we're here. And all of that space in between the training is the process that you have applied to yourself. You have consciously decided you're going to do this task. You come to the gym with a task in mind every day. You don't just wander in and see what device is free for me to wiggle my hands and feet around on.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, you don't. That's not that's not the process. You come to the gym and you've got a notebook and you've got today's workout written down already. You know what you're going to do? You know what you have to do. You know, furthermore, that is a little bit heavier than last time you came in. So you got to push on something harder today. You decide to do that. And the execution of this task you've assigned yourself makes you stronger. And your control over that process is what is what Nick is talking about.

[off-camera]:
But it's also the realization that you can change your physical existence.

Mark Rippetoe:
You can change. And If you can if you can change your physical existence, you can change any aspect of your existence. And that trips a switch in your brain that most people never have tripped. Most people are the helpless servants of their surroundings. Like go in the grocery store, everybody in there, but you's got a fucking mask on.

Mark Rippetoe:
Why? Well, because they're supposed to! Why are you wearing them? Well, because I'm supposed to. I'm supposed to wear a mask. Why don't you have a mask on? Because I choose not to have a mask on.

Mark Rippetoe:
And to most people, this is just incomprehensible. But you're supposed to have a mask on. That's this is what we're supposed to do, we're supposed to act a certain way. And we have no control over this because this is what everybody else expects of us. So we so we have to do it.

Mark Rippetoe:
But those of us who are in actual control of our existence have learned that that's not true. It's not true. And I'm not talking about all the research that says mask are bullshit. You know, you all know that too, but you wear them anyway, right? Because you're supposed to.

Mark Rippetoe:
Strength training places absolute control of your physical existence in your hands. In the hands of you. Because you're the guy that goes to the gym, that gets under the bar, that warms up, that loads today's assigned work set, assigned by you - not by me, by you - loads it onto the bar, takes the first set of five out. It's heavy. It's hard. You do it anyway. You rest 10 minutes. You take the second set of five out. It's heavy and hard. You do it anyway. And then you take the third set out after another ten minutes rest and you do the first rep and it's hard and the second rep is hard. The third rep is harder. The fourth rep is heavy.

Mark Rippetoe:
And you stand under that bar and you say to yourself, you know, this last rep is going to be real, real heavy. And I don't know if I can do it. And you say to yourself, because the process has taught you to say this to yourself, Well, I'm going to try it. If it doesn't go, it doesn't go, but I'll never know if I can do it, if I don't carry it to the bottom and drive it back up. And so that's what you do.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, all of these people walking around outside the gym, you know, stumbling through the day, doing what they're supposed to do, behaving in ways that are expected of them, have taken the path of least resistance. You, on the other hand, have placed your existence under your own control.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, most people don't have the balls to do that. And in fact, you may not have had the balls for that last set, that last rep of that last set of five when you started. But what happened during the process of going from nothing to today's heavy set of 5 has taught you balls. It's taught you balls. Balls are teachable,

Mark Rippetoe:
And there's no better way to learn about having some balls about you than to do hard stuff that you don't know for sure you can complete. Assigning yourself a difficult physical task teaches you something here. Ok, it's not just for your squat, it's not just for your total, it's not just for the PR. It's here [mind].

Mark Rippetoe:
Because It takes something that most people don't have to get to the end of that last set of five heavy squats and say to yourself, Well, you may get hurt, could happen, but I've just done four, only got one left, might as well try it. That's having some balls about you. OK. And that carries over.

Mark Rippetoe:
This is so goddamn important. I don't... You know...

[off-camera]:
There's there's not there's not many ways in in modern life that are not inherently risky and that are accessible to everyone that allows you to do this, you know. Because you can get this done in other ways. You could I don't know, you could sign up for a boxing match or do some insane shit like that. Go be a Navy SEAL or something. But that's not you know, this is available to everybody, it's low risk..

Mark Rippetoe:
This is available to everybody that's not twenty one years old. This is available to your 55 year old dad, right?

[off-camera]:
Yep.

Mark Rippetoe:
This is available to the father of the Navy SEAL, whereas Navy SEAL is not available to him. That time is long past. Anyone can train and do it our way. That's dogma. I know, but so is math. You know, arithmetic is the same level of dogma. There's no more efficient way to improve your strength and to therefore improve all of the other things that come along with increased strength than five pounds a workout. OK.

Mark Rippetoe:
You go in and you go up five pounds a workout and it doesn't matter what it feels like, doesn't matter what you think it's going to feel like, no matter what warm ups feel like, you put it on the fucking bar and you squat it and ninety nine percent of the time it'll go. But it won't go if you're a pussy. You have to have some balls about you. And there's no better way to learn about balls than to have done this workout after workout from here to here. OK.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I don't know of... I mean, if that's dogma then so? It's dogma. Right, that's fine. It sounds more to me like arithmetic than it does dogma.

[off-camera]:
So so you can hear people... The argument is and you can hear people saying this, trainers, coaches, you know. Well, as long as people are doing something. You know, you hear that shit all the time. And this is where the dogma thing comes in. You talk about doing things a specific way. We talk about doing it this way. What we're doing is optimizing this process. And, you know,

Mark Rippetoe:
And any process can be optimized.

[off-camera]:
Of course.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. Any process can be optimized. And the fact that we have done it makes us dogmatic?

[off-camera]:
It's silly. It's silly as hell.

Mark Rippetoe:
Hey! go work for a fucking engineering firm and see if what they do is dogma. All we're doing is engineering strength training. We have engineered the development of strength, and if that makes it dogmatic, go ahead. Look, you're entitled to both your own pronouns and your own adjectives, OK? Enjoy that freedom while you still have it!ously.

[off-camera]:
Obviously, it's better if somebody is not sedentary and is moving around and is going to the gym and doing something right. But look, if we're going to do something, if we're going to spend all this time thinking and doing and having people give us money for it. Let's fucking do it the best way we can.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, if it takes three days a week to go to the gym and fuck around for an hour and a half, why don't you spend that hour and a half, three days a week doing something more constructive that actually is a process of building something, acquiring something that's not there now. A designed process. A program that always works for everyone that does it. It it's the mere addition of five pounds of workout.

Mark Rippetoe:
And that won't work forever. And when it stops working, we'll figure out a way to get it started again. But that's not your problem right now. Your problem is getting into the gym and not fucking around. While you're there, do something constructive. Squats, presses, bench presses, deadlifts, power clean, power,snatch. Apply yourself to this process and make yourself stronger.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, one of the other reasons that this is regarded as dogma is because we have said many, many times that load is the variable, not exercise variety. Not all exercises are as good as other exercises. Front squats are not as good as the back squat, the squat that we teach because the front squat doesn't involve as much muscle mass and doesn't allow you to produce as much force against an external resistance. Therefore, if we're trying to get strong, we have to squat in the way that makes the best use of the time under the bar. And that way is the squat with the bar a little bit lower on the back and you more bend over in your use of the long posterior chain muscles in a longer movement arm that calls all of that stuff into contraction. It's not front squat now.

Mark Rippetoe:
If saying that front squatting doesn't work as well seems like dogma to you, you haven't analyzed the movements at the level that we have. That's not my fault, that's your fault. Right? Go do the work, learn about it, figure out what we know, read the book, let us... You know, instead of just assuming what we say, read the book, learn what we say. If you disagree with it, I'll publish your refutation on our website.

Mark Rippetoe:
Write an article as to why our squat is wrong and I'll publish the goddamn thing. Try me. You know, well, you don't get to just say, you know, "Rippetoe's fat."

[off-camera]:
The "refutation" is going to be well Rippetoe says that front squats don't make anybody strong. That's not what we're saying.

Mark Rippetoe:
Not what we're saying.

[off-camera]:
It's not what we're saying. Front squats will get you strong. To a certain point. The squat will get you stronger. Faster.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's right. More effective, more efficient use of time in the gym

[off-camera]:
And on a longer timeline. Forever.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right from now on, if you you know, you're training on your squat for four or five years and you decide you want to enter an Olympic lifting meet, well you're going to have to front squat because that's how you get up out of the bottom of a clean. You have to front squat. You've got train the front squat, but you'll front squat more with a back squat of six hundred than you will with the back squat of nothing. Right?

Mark Rippetoe:
And you will get stronger using the squat instead of the front squat for that entire period of time. And then once you're strong, go do whatever you want to do. If all you all you want to do is high bar squats from then on, go ahead. I don't care how you squat as long as you're squatting eight hundred pounds.

Mark Rippetoe:
Doesn't matter to me where the bar is, if you're squatting eight hundred, you're strong. It's more efficiently accomplished doing it our way than it is your way. Because we've trained hundreds of thousands of people and if shit doesn't work, we quit doing it. This process is a distillation. OK.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now let's talk about this. I didn't wake up one day in nineteen eighty knowing all the shit I know now. I have been training since probably nineteen seventy seven. So what's that forty four years? I've been training in a gym for forty four years. And most of that time was spent doing things incorrectly. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
I used to do all of the shit that you think you need to do because in my mind I had not distilled the idea that strength was the most important thing we could be doing. I still held bodybuilding in some esteem. Because back then you have to understand that back then, virtually all of the literature, all of the information was concentrated in about three or four monthly paper magazines.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, most people watching this cannot conceive of this paucity of information, but all we had was the Weider organization, the York Barbell organization, and Iron Man and maybe another magazine. Kennedy, guy named Kennedy had a magazine. And that was it. Those were the the sum total of all of the available information in print about barbell training and what would be called physical culture at the time. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
The idea of training for strength was as.... It was just it hadn't gelled yet. It hadn't gelled. Bill Starr published Strongest Shall Survive, his strength training book for football in the middle seventies. And prior to that, there weren't any actual books on the subject that didn't have anything more than just pictures of a man doing a high bar squat in the bottom of the hole. You know. A training course, quote unquote, back then was a series of pictures and a few words describing what to do.

Mark Rippetoe:
There was absolutely no such thing as an authoritative text on what to do. The exercise science literature wasn't any better then than it is now, and nobody had any opinions on this. And I was just one of these guys working in a gym, working out in a gym, working in a gym. And I had to figure most of this shit out by myself.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I did everything wrong. I did everything you can do wrong. I got hurt doing everything wrong. I'm beat up because I spent so many years doing things wrong. All right? I got hurt many other ways, having fun, but there was...You know, you you can... I temember very clearly going to powerlifting meets and walking up to the the squat bar with absolutely no thing in my head that would dictate the execution of a correct squat.

Mark Rippetoe:
Taking 540 out of the bar, out of the rack and not knowing anything more about it than while I'm going to squat down and stand back up and I hope I'm deep enough. That's it. That was the...That's the literal God's honest truth. There was no analysis of any of these lifts.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, walk up to a PR deadlift. I pulled six thirty three off the floor at a body weight of 220 in two separate meets, having absolutely no idea what to do other than to go over there and pick the damn thing up off the floor. No idea about any of the cues and any of it any of the instruction about how to correctly execute the movement pattern that generates the most efficient one of these lifts.

Mark Rippetoe:
All of that was much later. All that was much, much later. And the whole period of time that I was training for powerlifting, I was doing it wrong. You know, so yeah, you can get real strong wrong. But what we have developed here with Starting Strength is essentially a shortcut building in ways around doing things wrong. All the shit that I did wrong has been removed. All the things that I've learned that make it right have been included.

Mark Rippetoe:
And our method works better than anybody else's method for getting strong over the shortest possible period of time, which is obviously the best way to do it, because, you know, time is money, that sort of thing. Right now you can fuck around and and improve your deadlift for 30 years, but you're not going to get any stronger in 30 years than you can get in six or seven if you do it correctly. And you're a hell of a lot less likely to get hurt in the process if you do it correctly.

[off-camera]:
Now, when you started turning clients or when you were training clients, you were using barbells because that was what you did. Right? Or was there another reason?

Mark Rippetoe:
No. When I bought the gym, I had been competing in powerlifting for probably six years. And my idea was that, you know, without even being able to you know, articulate it in this way is that who's stronger than powerlifters? These guys come in and they want to get they want to get strong. So I'd show them squat bench press and deadlift. I didn't even use the press back then. I was a terrible mistake, not using press. But again, I had to learn. I had to learn. I didn't always know all this shit.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I set everybody that joined my gym up. Everybody until, you know, probably seven or eight years ago when I quit handling the new members. Everybody that came in the gym learned how to squat, bench press, deadlift and I taught them. Every one of them I taught.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I've taught thousands of people how to squat. Thousands of people out of squat. I very seriously doubt there's anybody on the planet with more experience at teaching the squat, the deadlift, the bench press to more people than I have.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, I'm not Louie Simmons. You know, I don't teach competitive lifters how to do all this stuff, but Louie requires you to have like a nineteen hundred total before you go to the gym. So how much is Louie teaching? You know you know, Louie's a programmer. Fine. I don't deal with those kind of people.

Mark Rippetoe:
I'm not interested in dealing with a bunch of juiced up competitive power lifters. They're difficult to reason with. They're broke. They can't pay their fucking bills. And I would rather make a living making people who can pay me stronger. Right. And that means I'm much more interested in dealing with those guys' Dad, than I am with dealing with them. And I've taught more of them than Louie's taught.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't know how many people Louie has taught to squat bench press and deadlift that weren't already lifters. I suspect not many since he's publicly says he doesn't let them in his building. That's not...that's two different subjects.

Mark Rippetoe:
See this is another thing. All right. A lot of people want to say that we're teaching powerlifting. We're not teaching powerlifting, there's not hardly any overlap between what barbell strength training does and what powerlifting does. Because we don't use the sumo stance on the on the deadlift. We squat below parallel and nobody else does that. We devote as much attention, especially at first, to the press as we do the bench press. We don't use assistance exercises because assistance exercises can't be trained to be improved for a long period of time.

Mark Rippetoe:
The only thing we use are big major compound joint exercises that can be can be improved upon for years because nothing else is a productive use of time. We're completely different from powerlifting in that respect and we are completely and utterly different from bodybuilding type programs that emphasize aesthetics.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't care if you have abs. There is no part of the process of acquiring abs that makes you stronger. Abs are dietary. And I don't care about that. I don't care about you showing abs. I know you think it's important, but it's not. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
Young men particularly fascinated with abs because they think that young women are fascinated with abs.

Mark Rippetoe:
All right. Larry Flynt just died. Larry Flynt was a physical pile of shit. He always has been a physical pile of shit. Larry Flynt had a bunch of money and he had much power and he was constantly surrounded by pussy. Right? Girls don't care about your abs. Young women are more superficial than that. Ok.

[off-camera]:
That's interesting. More superficial.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yes, they're even more superficial than that.

Mark Rippetoe:
So. We we've been, you know, this, you know, all these goddamn comments from the haters, these fucking idiots.

[off-camera]:
That's just ignorance.

Mark Rippetoe:
They're just they're so completely ignorant. They don't understand what we're doing. We're not... We don't care what your abs look like. We don't care if you've got a kyphosis. Hell, I'd rather train a 60 year old man with a kyphosis than a 20 year old kid with abs. I'd a million times rather train a 60 year old man than a 20 year old man, you know, because the 60 year old man has decided he's going to listen to me because he's come and paid me a bunch of money and he'll do what I tell him to do.

Mark Rippetoe:
And as a result, he'll get better, faster, because he'll do what I'm telling him to do instead of arguing with me about a bunch of ephemeral bullshit that has absolutely nothing to do with getting strong. Once again, getting strong is our primary concern.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, if you're at thirty five percent body fat, I would simultaneously encourage you to stop eating like a moron, stop indulging every donut whim you have, stop feeding yourself unnecessarily because you're just doing... You're not doing that because you're hungry. You're just doing that because, you know, you've learned that that makes you feel better. Well, you've got some problems to overcome.

Mark Rippetoe:
But once again, I would rather have a kid at thirty five percent body fat that did exactly what I told him to do on his strength training, grow his muscles, let him burn more calories because he's got bigger muscles and eventually impress upon him the idea that he doesn't need to be eating four hundred grams of sugar a day because that's how people get that fat, you know, gradually work on his diet. But I'm not going to yell at him about his abs. He may never show me any abs. I don't care. What do I care?

Mark Rippetoe:
I care how much he squats, bench presses, presses, and deadlifts. I want him to clean. I want him to clean sixty percent of his deadlift. I want him to power snatch forty percent of his deadlift. I want him to do these things. I don't care how he looks.

Mark Rippetoe:
Have you ever noticed how some people are just ugly?

[off-camera]:
Oh, yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
Some people are ugly motherfuckers, right? Like John Bolton the human toothbrush. John Bolton. That's an ugly man. He'll bomb your ass, right?

[off-camera]:
Drone the fuck out of you.

Mark Rippetoe:
He'll drone the fuck out of you. But that's an ugly man. And there's nothing you can do about that. But I could get John Bolton strong. Right?

[off-camera]:
Yeah, it might help.

Mark Rippetoe:
I could get John Bolton strong, but he's never going to be pretty. Right?

Mark Rippetoe:
Some things you don't have any control over. Some people are fat. Some people just carry a bunch of body fat. That doesn't mean they can't be strong. And it certainly doesn't mean that they're ineligible to train, you know.

Mark Rippetoe:
Those of you who think that a person's physical appearance has to be a certain way, like these idiots on the floor over here,all right, have not... Truth eludes you. All right. Things like this are sometimes elusive to stupid people. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
If I can take a guy that's ugly and fat and make him stronger, even if he remains ugly and fat, he's going to be better as a human being. He's going to be better because he's stronger and because of the things he learns from the process of getting stronger. He's going to learn things in this process while he executes the tasks that he has assigned himself three days a week, coming in the gym, adding a little weight every time to the same exercises he's done before.

Mark Rippetoe:
He's going to learn things during that process, learn how to do harder things that he thinks he can already do that will benefit him in his intellectual, his mental, spiritual existence. And these will improve him, even though he's still ugly and he's still fat, he's better.

Mark Rippetoe:
He won't be as ugly because muscle mass tends to make people look better. And he won't be as fat because muscle mass tends to make people's body fat go down. But even if the guy never breaks below 28 percent body fat, I'd much rather have this guy around me after two years of training that some ---------------- with goddamn ab fetishes, you know.

[off-camera]:
No shit, someone who's done something hard for two years is a much more pleasant person to be around than somebody...

Mark Rippetoe:
Who's just been on a diet.

[off-camera]:
...who is all up in their own ass. You know, mentally fucked up from bulking and cutting and has never done a hard thing in his life because that, you know. Yeah, sure, dieting and shit is hard, but going to the gym and doing sets of whatever in front of a mirror is not hard.

Mark Rippetoe:
Dieting is merely not doing something. Getting under the squat, getting to the last set of five squats and finishing the fifth rep is doing something. It's different than not having some more potatoes. It is a whole different thing.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I really - I hate to say this, but I've never met oh, I've met one or two - actually met one or two mentally healthy bodybuilders. You know, Jim Steel goes to bodybuilding contests and he's normal.

[off-camera]:
Yeah, but he was he's also strong as shit.

Mark Rippetoe:
Those guys, every good bodybuilder I've ever met, every good contest bodybuilder's, a little wacky, but they're all you know, those guys are all 405 benchers. You know, you can't have a prize winning physique at that level without a big bench press.

Mark Rippetoe:
[Mumbling about Arnold, Coleman starting as lifters]

Mark Rippetoe:
All those guys were lifters. All the guys from the 80s were lifters. Yeah. There's no doubt. You know, I had a guy that used to train in the gym over here that I - hell I rented a room out at my house for six or eight months one time - and that that guy was, he was he he was doing sets of eight on the incline at 315. You know, he was he was a big, strong guy. And worked out at the base and and was was a was a good lifter, but competed in bodybuilding as well.

Mark Rippetoe:
But I'm talking about little, skinny fuckers at 190 that think they're bodybuilders.

[off-camera]:
And they're not actually bodybuilders.

Mark Rippetoe:
Not actually bodybuilders, they're body wasters. They're body wasters, they're body wasters. Yeah, that's what they are. They're so eaten up with the idea that they've got to take all this fat off that everything else in their training existence suffers as a result of that of that obsession. And it's obsessive compulsive behavior and it's not healthy.

[off-camera]:
Never squatted 315.

Mark Rippetoe:
Never squatted 315

[off-camera]:
Never pressed 200.

Mark Rippetoe:
Don't see the point. Why would I want to squat three fifteen when I got this leg extension machine, you know? starvation,

[off-camera]:
Put on some board shorts. It's like, oh, they made up a new one for all the skinny guys that don't want to put muscle on, so they allow them to wear board shorts so you don't see their legs.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, I saw that at the Arnold that year. I went I didn't know what the hell was going on. All these guys walking, wandering around with all this tan shit on them and, you know, weighing about one hundred and sixty five pounds with board shorts on. And all had jaunty little haircuts, you know, where it turns up and shit and gel and, you know, all them smelled funny. And it was just I didn't see the point of that. They call that...

[off-camera]:
Is it figure?

Mark Rippetoe:
That's only for women. That's giral. Yeah. It's the girls that's girls.

[off-camera]:
I don't know. I don't know.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't know what they call it either but...

[off-camera]:
But they just get up there and pose in board shorts?

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah. And they do some little, you know, it's not classic bodybuilding posing. It's a different... men's physique. You I don't care what they call it. I'm glad I don't know what they call it. That's a point of pride to me. I don't know what that fucking shit is called and I don't intend to learn. Don't look that up!

[off-camera]:
I'm not looking it up!

Mark Rippetoe:
Don't look it up.

[off-camera]:
I'm not looking it up. I have a question to ask you and I'm looking at... Why are you showing me this, Rusty?

Mark Rippetoe:
What is that?

[off-camera]:
He pulls up a picture of these guys on his phone to show me.

Mark Rippetoe:
Rusty! Let it go. Let it go. You're not eligible to do that anyway.

[off-camera]:
He's too big.

Mark Rippetoe:
He's too big. Rusty's too big.

[off-camera]:
Too strong. He squatted over 315 before. Can't.

[off-camera]:
Not eligible

Mark Rippetoe:
They won't...they won't even let you in.

[off-camera]:
What's your max squat?

[off-camera]:
Three sixty five.

Mark Rippetoe:
Ah get out of here. Your priorities are all fucked up right.

[off-camera]:
Too big.

[off-camera]:
Now you look you you've said a couple of times that this is a distillation. Now that's yeah it's a distillation but that's no different from what, you know you brought up Louise Simmons, it's no different from what Louie Simmons does.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, it's not. He's distilled a different thing than I have.

[off-camera]:
Not it's not just the distillation though. So, yeah, the distillation is important, but because of who you are and the people you've you've surrounded yourself with, the distillation is also supported by the reality, the concepts, the first principles...

Mark Rippetoe:
A lot of data in terms of the results, but I have had a lot of people help me understand the engineering, the mechanics, the physiology, all of the stuff that is involved in building the basis for this method.

[off-camera]:
In other words, why why the experience that you've got, the experience you as a lifter and with your clients is the way it is and then your ability to explain it too, in writing and verbally.

Mark Rippetoe:
My ability to explain it is to some extent, you know, my my talent. I'm one of these fucked up people that explains things...

[off-camera]:
Excessively.

Mark Rippetoe:
That thinks better when they're speaking and explaining than other people do. I can stand up and give a two hour lecture and at the end of that two hour lecture, we'll have learned something about the material that I haven't known before. And I have...I know other people like that, but they're, that's uncommon. I'm not particularly intelligent. I'm above average intelligence, but I'm not a genius. But the thing I do is explain things well. I'm a very, very, very good teacher. I'm a much better teacher than any teacher I've ever had.

[off-camera]:
Yeah and there's not a lot of guys in fitness or barbell training, especially, who who are who are that. And I have other theories, too. You know, you're constantly arguing with somebody, you know, in your head or whatever. And then you also you like to talk and discuss things. And the way you you write is very...fuck, I've watched you type shit and it's like you write a sentence and then you read it. That's not how most people do stuff. Most people just shit it all out and then go back and edit it, so it's all those things. And so so Starting Strength is not... The contribution to this thing from Starting Strength is not squats and three sets of five and add five pounds.

Mark Rippetoe:
Everybody's done that.

[off-camera]:
That's the application. That's the application. So when somebody says, oh, this is just repackaged whatever Bill Starr stuff or whatever, that's not the contribution. The contribution that Starting Strength brings is the systemization of this, of these principles and concepts. It's it's the application. How do you get strong? First of all, strength is important. We all agree on that. And if you don't, we don't even need to talk anymore. Right, it doesn't matter.

Mark Rippetoe:
You're interested in something else.

[off-camera]:
You're interested in something else.

Mark Rippetoe:
You are more concerned about your abs than getting strong, that's fine, I'm not your resource.

[off-camera]:
Right.

Mark Rippetoe:
And what... You know, but what really is interesting is this is not repackaged anything.

[off-camera]:
It's not.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's not anything about this, is repackaged.

[off-camera]:
But that's what people say.

Mark Rippetoe:
Bill Starr, his program in Strongest Shall Survive - and there wasn't a program in Defying Gravity -- his program in Strongest Shall Survive was sets of five all the way up with...it was heavy, light, medium. It was an intermediate, what we call an intermediate program. It was not go up every time you train. He never said anything about that to me. He never put it in an article. He was not in the book. I stumbled upon that myself. Far as I know, I'm the first one to come up with this.

Mark Rippetoe:
And we don't do ascending sets of five. We pyramid warm ups and we do sets across five because that works better than getting tired before the work set. So this is not repackaged anything. Yeah, I didn't invent sets of five, right. just recognize their utility.

Mark Rippetoe:
Everybody knows about sets of five. If you ever train anybody for strength, you use sets of five because they work better. And you know that. That's all we're doing here.

[off-camera]:
The ACSM agrees with you.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, good, right?

[off-camera]:
Yeah. For four to six reps, you know, I mean, there's science, right? So they've got to give a...

Mark Rippetoe:
I thought they were still saying eight to 12 reps.

[off-camera]:
No, for strength it's four to six reps, but that's only for advanced for advanced trainees,

Mark Rippetoe:
Advanced trainees who need to be strong. Because people who are just starting out, have no need to be strong. Or stronger.

[off-camera]:
Yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's brilliant.

[off-camera]:
Brilliant.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's awfully clear thinking. These are scientists. Follow the science. Oh, God almighty people don't even know what the word means do they? Have any idea what science even is. It just interesting?

Mark Rippetoe:
So. I guess that pretty much wraps it up. This is just a little rant, so to speak. We don't do powerlifting, we don't do bodybuilding. Olympic Weightlifting, it's completely separate thing entirely. We are doing barbell strength training. We use barbells.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, it also happens that powerlifters use barbells as well. They don't use them like we do. A tool can be used several different ways, right? Bodybuilders sometimes use barbells. We don't use them like they do. Olympic weightlifters use barbells. We don't use them like they do. We use barbells in a particular way and the way we use them has been doctored. It has been it has been adjusted. It has been the subject of a great deal of thought, a great deal of throwing out and adding to.

Mark Rippetoe:
And the process that we have arrived at works better than anybody else's approach to the problem of getting stronger. Lifting heavier weights, that's what we want you to do. There is no other way to measure strength than the amount of force you can generate against an external resistance. That's what strength is. There's no other definition of strength.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's another bold statement, but think about it. Think about it for a minute. Think about it for a minute. Think about the fact that supertraining was written by Mel Siff and Verkoshansky some decades ago. And in that book I think Siff outlined what he thought were nine different types of strength. This is preposterous.

[off-camera]:
This is just talked about to this day.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's absurd and preposterous. I don't know anybody that ever finished that book all the way through, and I don't know anyone who ever applied any of the principles in that book to a strength training program and effectively made somebody stronger as a result of it. And as a result, the book is basically out of print and nobody's read it.

Mark Rippetoe:
On the other hand, our book has sold three quarters of a million copies. A lot of people have read it and lots and lots and lots of people have gotten stronger as a result of doing this little simple program that we have put together that we have distilled into not only the way to do these exercises the most efficiently that they can be done, but programming them in a way that every single time it is used that makes the trainee stronger.

Mark Rippetoe:
Stronger is all we're concerned about. We don't care about your abs. We don't care about your tan. Ok. I don't care about your eight inches above parallel partial squat. And your, tou know, 60 percent of that deadlift that always seems to accompany it. I don't care about any of that shit. I don't care about your suit, your wraps. None of that shit is of any concern to me.

Mark Rippetoe:
I'm concerned about getting you stronger and I'm especially concerned about getting you stronger, if you'll listen to what I'm saying. I'm not concerned about proving that I'm right because I already know that I am. I'm just concerned with you understanding that if you do it our way, you always get stronger. And that strength is the only thing I'm concerned about.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't care about your abs. I don't care if you have a belly. All I concern with all I'm concerned with is that you start down the process of applying the simple principles of stress, recovery, adaptation which is the basis of this whole thing and applying those in a way that makes you stronger, five pounds of workout. And going through the process of strengthening both your posterior chain and your heart.

Mark Rippetoe:
And by heart, I mean, you know, the thing that makes you who you are. Because it really does that. You know, it strengthens your constitution. This process is terribly important.

Mark Rippetoe:
And if that's dogma. Fine, it's dogma. So is arithmetic. OK.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I'm sure there'll be comments from the haters, because these stupid motherfuckers just can't help themselves. We'll eagerly await the comments.

[off-camera]:
That's right. Yeah. People who embark on this kind of thing, you read that first sentence and you should spend some time thinking about it, because it's... You know, I mean, maybe maybe when you're first starting out, it's just a thing you're doing. But but it it is true. You know, the...

[off-camera]:
I don't know how you came up with that. You know, was it in the first edition that's been in there the whole time? You know, I don't know how you sit down and start writing a barbell training book, but I mean, it's a hell of a way to start a book and everything, you know. If you just look at that as a as you know, essentially, here's what the next 300 something pages are going to be about.

Mark Rippetoe:
Mm hmm. That's exactly right.

Mark Rippetoe:
It just, you know, the process of... The first chapter I actually wrote in the first book was the squat chapter. That's the first thing I started writing down. And it took the... And this was an interesting process because it kind of went the same way that training does. I had to start thinking in detail about things that I hadn't previously articulated this way. But they had to be articulated because that was the purpose of writing the book.

Mark Rippetoe:
I started with the squat chapter and then I probably wrote the deadlift chapter next. And by the time I wrote the introduction, where that sentence appears, I had I had spent several months reflecting upon what I had what I had known and the experiences I had had with my clients over the years, members of the gym, old people I knew.

Mark Rippetoe:
And, you know, by the time I wrote that book, my dad had already died and I'd seen the profound consequences of the loss of physical strength over a person's life. And it's just devastating to watch. But it's even more devastating to understand that it doesn't have to happen if you will just get up off your ass and do something hard, challenge yourself to do something you don't know you can do and learn from the experience.

Mark Rippetoe:
Dogma. Fine with me.

Mark Rippetoe:
See you next week, on Starting Strength Radio.

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