Mark Rippetoe on the Good, Bad and Ugly of Sport Training

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Hello. Hello, boys and girls. This is Mike and I am back with another episode of the podcast. And this episode is the second part of a rather long interview that I did with Mark Rippetoe, who you are probably familiar with because you probably listened to the first part of this interview. But if you didn’t Mark was a competitive power lifter for a decade and [00:04:00] is the author of several bestselling books.

The two most Popular and famous ones being starting strength and practical programming for strength. And in this second part of the interview, Mark and I talk about training for sports, athletics. And while a lot of what goes on in the upper echelons of sports training is pretty nonsensical and even counterproductive.

And then we also talk about what these athletes should be focusing on in the weight room if they want to get better at their sports. And I’m glad that I had this discussion because I don’t think I’ve really written or spoken about it much, but I’ve run into it a fair amount just working with people because I’ve heard from quite a few high level college athletes and some professionals as well that were a bit perplexed by the types of things that their strength trainers were having them do.

Do as well as the things that the trainers were leaving out. And subsequently I’ve helped many of these people simplify their weight training routines and straighten things out. And one for one, they were [00:05:00] amazed at how much of a difference it made in their respective sports compared to what they were doing before.

So that’s what the interview is about. And here it is. All right, so here we are, part two, change the discussion to sports training, and I’m excited to talk about this because again, this is another thing that I don’t hear about as much as the strength versus aesthetics, because that’s more just mainstream and every, a lot of guys and girls have that on their minds.

I do hear from quite a few athletes. I’ve spoken to golfers, I’ve spoken to rugby players, I’ve spoken to tennis players that are a bit confused about some of the things that I’ve said versus some of the things about training and about exercise and some of the things that they’ll see other high level athletes doing with their trainers.

And there’s a disconnect there. So I’m not recommending medicine, ball slams and Russian twists and planks and I’m saying if you want to be a better golfer, you should probably squat and deadlift and press. And then [00:06:00] you’re going to be able to generate more force, and you’re going to be able to transfer that to the club face of the ball, and you’re going to be a better golfer, you’re going to hit longer shots, and so forth.

But there aren’t very many golfers that are doing stuff like that. I know this is a, this is an area that you probably even have more experience, and you’ve dealt with it more than I have. I’m going to give the mic to you. 

Mark Rippetoe: Mike, once again, thanks for having me on the show. We’re yeah, we deal with this kind of thing all the time.

Because we are, primarily a strength program. And one of the most aggravating things in the industry right now is the functional training model. And let me, and of course there will be comments down at the bottom of this YouTube thing, which will. YouTube comments are always interesting, aren’t they?

It’s where you, that’s where you go to find out how stupid you are, and it brings out the worst in people. Let’s just put it that 

Mike Matthews: way. 

Mark Rippetoe: And anonymity. It’s just amazing, isn’t it? In a nutshell, the whole idea [00:07:00] has gotten to be over the past probably 20, 25 years that if you make the strength training, the strength and conditioning program.

look like the sport to which the strength and conditioning is going to be applied, then that’s the correct way to do strength and conditioning for sports. And nothing could be further from the truth. It is it has made a lot of people a lot of money. In the high levels of strength and conditioning.

And is it really we need to think about this for a little while before we can before we can really understand it. All right. First off, let me preface my comments with saying that I don’t train one on one. I don’t train high level athletes. I train high level athletes moms, okay, and their dads.

I train guys that will never be high level. As a result of [00:08:00] having run a gym for coming up on 40 years now being in the gym business for coming up on 40 years and having run my own gym for 32 years, I have learned a lot of things about strength and conditioning. And I have learned them by training people that who are not ever going to be high level athletes, okay?

This is an incredibly important distinction. Who is on the football team at a D1 school? Who are the 55 guys in the locker room on the football team at a D1 school? They’re freaks, aren’t they? They’re scholarship college athletes. Who hired them? The recruiter. What criteria did the recruiter use to hire the guys?

They’re 

Mike Matthews: freaks. Yeah, they can jump. Why can’t anyone [00:09:00] jump that high? Why can’t anyone run that 

Mark Rippetoe: fast? They’re big. They have 36 inch verticals. They’re quick. They’re very good. visual learners. They see a movement pattern, they can copy it with a very high level of precision with very few exposures to it.

They’re freak athletes, okay? So if you take a weight room full of these guys and you have them dance around on one leg on a Bosu ball and the other leg up in the air on the back of a bench and Three pound dumbbells in each hand and have them swap feet in the air, landing on the Bosu ball and stuff and call this a strength and conditioning program.

How are those guys going to perform? Yeah. They are what they are. They’re freaks. Of course they’re going to, they were performing well before. Yeah. Okay. All you’re doing with that type of a program is demonstrating the [00:10:00] abilities that got them hired in the first place. You’re not improving anything because a guy with a 36 inch vertical is extremely easy to get much, much, much stronger.

But in order to do that, you have to put some weight on his back and you got to make him squat all the way down and stand back up with him. A guy like that can get a great big deadlift real quick He may only be deadlift in 315 right now, but I can have him to 550 in 

Mike Matthews: four or five months I have a there’s somebody that I actually don’t know him personally He’s a friend of friends and so this guy he comes from his brother is freak strong So this dude, I forget his name.

So he never deadlifted once. Yeah I don’t know if he even really weight lifted. He didn’t look like he lifted at all You so his first deadlift ever was 405 his his, his form was not very good, but still the fact that a dude can never deadlift in his life and walk up to a bar and pick up 400 pounds and be like, yeah, was that good?

Those guys are out 

Mark Rippetoe: there and [00:11:00] those are the guys that the recruiter finds and sets in front of the college D one coaches. So here’s my question here. It’s a two part question. All right. If you’ve got a guy that’s playing real, real good D1 football, does that necessarily mean that what he’s doing is a strength conditioning program is the reason why he’s playing that level of football?

Exactly. And the answer is no. It doesn’t have anything to do with that, right? The vast majority of the time, especially in colleges where programs like The functional training nonsense are being performed as strength and conditioning programs. Those guys are doing high level athletics in spite of the strength and conditioning.

And just so the listeners know, 

Mike Matthews: what is functional training? We’ve all heard it. What is it supposed to be? 

Mark Rippetoe: I think and I don’t want to [00:12:00] misdefine it. I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, but I think that when you say functional training, when I say functional training, I’m referring to the type of.

It’s a group of it’s a way of exposing athletes to lots and lots of different exercises. The variety of the exercises is variable, not the load. Most of it is unilateral. It involves the display of agility, balance. And the ability to display coordination instead of the development of strength, right?

As a end goal of the program, the goal in a program like that is not to get the kids deadlift up to 550. It’s to demonstrate the athletics in clever ways. with rubber balls and lightweights that are, in fact, the traits that the athlete possessed already to get him the job. Okay. That’s may or may not be fair, but, we’ll read your definition in the comments on the YouTube. So [00:13:00] functional training is Has a different thing in mind than the strength of the squat, the press overhead and the deadlift. Okay. The problem I have with it is that it leaves so much athletic potential untapped.

Athletic ability is there already in athletes. What is not there is strength. You as the strength coach should be making these kids strong and you’re figuring out ways to getting out. Yeah. I’ve had to learn how to coach the deadlift, how to learn how to coach the squat, the press, the clean, the snatch, these things you don’t have coach.

So you coach all the shit in the floor on rubber balls and you yell and scream, run around and Mr. Pep rally motivator and all that stuff, but you’re not doing your job as a strength coach because you don’t. All right, now let me follow up on that. Or 

Mike Matthews: even if there are squats, you get to these little half quarter squats, you start loading weight and setting yourself up for [00:14:00] injuries and things like 

Mark Rippetoe: Because they think 600 pounds sounds real cool.

Exactly. That’s not 600 pounds. That’s masturbation. Half squats are masturbation. That’s 275. Masturbating in the weight room with a half squat at 500 pounds. That’s masturbation. You’re jacking off in the weight room doing that shit. And you ought to know. More dangerous. I think the athletes do know that.

I think they know. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Mark Rippetoe: But you’re after all the strength coach and you’re just jacking off. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Mark Rippetoe: In the weight room. You’re not doing your job. Now, how do you get away with not doing your job? Okay. So yeah, so That’s a good follow up because really this is i’ll get asked What’s that? This is gonna piss a bunch of people off what i’m about to say.

Okay. All right, you ready? You’re gonna get a bunch of nasty shit on the youtube comments the worst strength and conditioning coaches in the industry are found at the d1 and professional levels of athletics and How did that come? [00:15:00] How did that come to be? Because they can hide behind the genetics that the recruiter puts in front of 

Mike Matthews: them, 

Mark Rippetoe: like I said earlier.

A guy with a 36 inch vertical is already strong. He’s explosive. He’s recruiting more motor units every time he makes a contraction than everybody else does. Even shitty training shows a training effect on him because of the fact that he is so neuromuscularly efficient. That any type of explosive effort is going to make him strong, but average kids, like you and I deal with, can’t get away with that.

We have to actually know what we’re doing in terms of training. But if you set a group of 55 freaks in front of some guy in a college weight room and all they’re doing is dancing around on the floor, doing half squats and throwing medicine balls around on the floor and doing one legged dancing movements yeah, it’s going to look like these kids Are doing [00:16:00] wonderful athletic.

Yeah, then they go out on the field. Because they’re athletes. Because you hired them for that. Have you made them stronger? By taking their half squat from 500 to 600 pounds. And by the way, losing that much depth in the process. No, you haven’t. And, 

Mike Matthews: Why does proper strength training, and why I know this is something that you’re going to talk about, obviously, that how, why does, why is that?

The absolute better choice. How does that translate into better athletics? Because 

Mark Rippetoe: of the fact that force production strength, force production is the basis of athletics. Force production is the basis of power. It is the basis of agility, speed. Every athletic. Attribute that you see displayed by high level athletes on the field is a function of [00:17:00] force transmission It’s a function therefore of strength because strength is The transmission of force against the production of force against an external resistance that external resistance may be A barbell, it may be the ground between your body weight in the ground.

It may be between your hands and therefore the rest of your body and an opponent or an implement that’s thrown. All of it involves force production, right? If your strength program is not focused. On increasing force production, then it is relying on attributes that the athlete carried into the weight room with him.

The weight room is the place to get strong. It’s not the place to demonstrate that which the recruiter has already seen. Okay, and this is why. Extremely talented athletes will make any strength and conditioning coach look like they know [00:18:00] what they’re doing, whether they do or not. And lots of them hide behind high level athletic talent.

And I have to say that is, The rule and not the exception. That’s 

Mike Matthews: unfortunate. And 

Mark Rippetoe: it’s easy to make them strong. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, sure. And I’ve come across a bit of it. Like I said I’ve spoken with quite a few college, do you want athletes playing various sports and some professional and had this conversation.

And I’ve worked with a couple of golfers, maybe just cause I’m, I play golf myself. And for whatever reason, that kind of is the way it shook out. But by, they were very surprised to see that just by increasing their squat and their deadlift and their press, how much extra distance they gained. In their golf game, and when you’re playing high level golf, distance is hugely important for scores and so they gained, 10 15 yards, in some cases, on their drives without any sort of perceptible change in the mechanics of their swing, it just came effortlessly.

Forest Brooks! [00:19:00] Of course, yes, like now their muscles, because the golf swing is driven by the big muscles in the body and those big muscles now can produce more force, of course you’re going to hit the ball further, and you haven’t lost anything from a neuromuscular standpoint, your body still knows how to make the movements, so it’s so obvious, you think, why isn’t this a thing, why isn’t everyone, like every sport, I don’t care if it’s ping pong, I’m, I bet you professional ping pong players would be better ping pong players if they had a better 

Mark Rippetoe: squat.

Every athlete is better stronger. Every athlete is better stronger in every sport. If it involves anything that can be construed as force production. Every athlete’s athletic ability, athletic display ability goes up if their force production goes up. And this is what’s interesting about this.

Whether it’s golf, or tennis, or baseball, or basketball, or football, or MMA, or any number of other sports, boxing, all of these sports are [00:20:00] extremely resistant to the idea that I’m and you’ll, you’re going to read this in the YouTube Ripitone know? He doesn’t train D1 athletes. I’m talking about math.

This is an arithmetic problem, boys and girls. I don’t have to train D1 athletes. I don’t have to be in politics. To know that Richard Nixon was a bad president. I don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know that if you cut the brainstem with your scalpel, that you kill the patient. So this is just mad.

Okay. Everybody. And I have. Believe it or not, I have dealt with high level athletes for a very long time. But that’s not my, that’s not how I make my living. I interact tangentially with high level athletes and a lot of them Same. Same. That’s, you and I do the same thing. Our market, our demographic is Most other people and my [00:21:00] point here is that people who only deal with high level athletes get away with not learning their profession because they don’t have to, because athletes at that level display athleticism without any help.

And if you help them, if you help them, if you help them get their deadlift up, then they’re better athletes. What was it? Three years ago, the number one draft pick in the NHL. Couldn’t do a chin up. Yeah. You were telling me about that. I see that you mentioned it that I don’t remember the name. I don’t remember cause I don’t know anything about hockey and I don’t care anything, but if that’s the case, then hockey has just agreed that they’re not going to be a strength.

And is it is it? As long as everybody agrees to stay weak, then everything works just fine, don’t they? If you’re in a sport that does, that, where everybody Sam Bennett. Sam Bennett. That’s the name. Yeah, I couldn’t do a chin up. [00:22:00] Couldn’t do a chin up. Couldn’t do a chin up. But was the number one draft pick.

So apparently everybody in hockey is agreed they’re not going to get strong. Yeah, he’s a talented kid. Are you telling me it’d be, it would hurt him if he could squat 405? Do you, does anybody still really believe that? Do people actually, in 2016, believe that strength slows an athlete down? If we’re dealing with people that are processing this material at that level, turn off the podcast because, you’re still making tools out of flint, okay?

You’re wearing a loincloth right now. Update, boys and girls. Forced production against the floor increases speed. Everyone knows this. Get, if you’re a strength pro, a coach and you actually believe that a strength program slows your athlete down, go sell [00:23:00] shoes, okay? But this is just not arguable and it’s bizarre to me that you somehow believe that if your recruiter sets all these talented athletes in front of you that this silly dance routine you have these kids doing is actually benefiting them.

What it’s doing is allowing them to demonstrate why they got the job. That’s not your job. We already know why they got the job. Your job is to make them stronger so they can hit somebody on the field harder, so that they can get hit harder and not get hurt, so that they can perform at a higher level than they are right now.

We know they’re free. Don’t hide behind 

Mike Matthews: their genetics because that’s what you’re doing. So then, you got to figure then this is going to change over time, just like how, even probably largely thanks to CrossFit barbell training and is becoming more and more mainstream and more and more people are taking it up.

You gotta figure that there’s gonna be a change of, [00:24:00] just an overall change of approach that’s gonna happen. I don’t know, it might take 10, 15 years, but what do you, I don’t know, what are your thoughts? Or do you I think 

Mark Rippetoe: it’s coming around. I 

Mike Matthews: think people teams like in golf, for example, guys like Rory McIlroy, he’s doing some of the Olympic stuff, and now other professional golfers are like, oh, maybe I should do some of that too.

It could be something as silly as that. And then the trainers are like, oh everyone wants to Olympic lift, so I guess we’ve got to do that now, and 

Mark Rippetoe: Yeah and they need to get busy learning how to Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: of course. Of course. 

Mark Rippetoe: I think that, yeah, I think that people’s opinions about this are slowly beginning to change because the evidence is just, it’s right in front of your face.

Teams that go from a more traditional and probably not the best, but a more traditional approach to strength training and switch over to functional training and suddenly half the teams got a ACL. And, this is just because the, if your hamstrings aren’t strong and you’re not doing anything to make your hamstrings stronger, you’re not incrementally increasing the strength of the hamstring, like you [00:25:00] do with squats and deadlifts.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Mark Rippetoe: Then, you’re exposing athletes knees to stresses that they can’t handle. Yeah. They get hurt. Especially if you’re doing a lot of soccer or squatting. Women’s college soccer. Oh, it’s a nightmare. It’s a nightmare. How I know people that are, that have to deal with head coaches and these guys are, the head coaches that don’t know anything about this are coming and unfortunately a lot of these guys have authority over the strength and conditioning staff.

And they’re saying, no, we don’t want to do squats, it slows them down, bad for the knees. Let’s do functional training. Let’s live lightweights in lots and lots of ways. TRXT, RX and band, it’s ways every week. Let’s do lightweights. Yeah. And the kids get hurt and lose a scholarship and don’t get to go to college anymore free.

And, there’s, there are, there are ramifications for this outside the coach’s reputation, you’re. You’re exposing your kids to an injury [00:26:00] potential that they shouldn’t have to deal with if you’re, if the strength coach is allowed to do his job. Then he has the ability to keep your kids safe on the field and to increase their level of performance.

But if you insist on making the calls, you head coaches. You’re getting in the way. That’s not 

Mike Matthews: your job. Yeah, I’m funny. I ran into this recently high school football coach and he had his kids working at some local gym doing a bunch of nonsensical functional type stuff, new workout every day, a lot of amrap stuff and all different kinds of squat variations, blah, blah, blah.

And I was telling him just stop. And I actually was telling him just to do your program. So just put your, put the kids on starting strength. Just get them strong. This is, just do it. Look this is, this has been around for 30 years because he was skeptical about me and I’m saying, who cares what I say?

Look at here, come to, I’m not saying do my program. I’m doing, I’m just trying to tell you, stop doing what you’re doing. And he didn’t listen to me. And eventually then one of his [00:27:00] kids came to me with with knee problems and because the kid is I know the guy’s dad and then so I put him on your program and then he started doing a lot better.

Also the gym that they had these kids going to was all about low carb dieting. That makes any sense for football players, low carb functional training for high school football players. It’s 

Mark Rippetoe: Oh I, if this is a frustrating industry, Mike, in order to work in this industry is. It’s a challenge because here is a logical approach to the problem.

We want everybody to be stronger because forced production is the basis of your interaction with the environment. Whether you’re an athlete, whether you’re a 55 year old real estate salesman, whether you’re a Whether you’re a 65 year old lady whether you are anybody, your relationship with the external environment is forced.

Stronger is always better. How do you get stronger? We pick a few exercises that allow us to use a whole bunch of muscle mass [00:28:00] over a very long effective range of motion and allow us to increase the weight a little bit every time we train it and accumulate the adaptation of strength. We start where we are now and then we go this way.

We go up. This process is training. Okay. And what this means is the workouts are all the same. We don’t have a bunch of variety because we don’t want it. We don’t want our muscles confused. We want our muscles to know exactly what is expected of them, and that is to produce more force. over a period of time.

So every time we train, we go up in weight on the exercises we handle. We pick the exercises and we design their performance to do the job of more muscle mass, long effective range of motion, and lifting a lot of weight so that we can get strong. Okay? That’s all there is to it. And this is just, it’s simple.

It’s not [00:29:00] complicated. It’s hard. It’s hard. It’s brutally ass hard, but it is not complicated and complexity is more romantic. Yep, it sells better. It sells better and that’s just all there is to it. Yep. It’s the romance involved with doing a brand new workout every time. 

Mike Matthews: If you can use the word new, if you can attach new to something, it’s going to sell better.

New research, new this, new that. 

Mark Rippetoe: Breakthrough, all this marketing bullshit. So what I tell people is that you squat, you press, you deadlift, you bench press, you do power cleans and power snatches, and you do chin ups, and that’s all you do. All right for a very long time. That’s all you do. And the variable is the load And if you’ll think about it like any other adaptation strength accumulates over time So if you start here and you go up a little bit every time then you end up here See 

Mike Matthews: that’s good.

And even if along the way you have two steps back somewhere You have a step back two steps [00:30:00] for I mean it doesn’t yeah, that’s gonna 

Mark Rippetoe: happen, but it doesn’t happen for a long time Right a long time you could do You Just add five pounds to your squat for months and months. And before you get stuck, you’ll be two and a half times stronger than you are right now.

And that’s beneficial, but it’s not romantic. And as a result, these high school, college strength coaches, professional strength coaches, professional coaches have an interesting problem. Their primary function is to not get anybody hurt, right? Like D2 college. Programs really do waste a lot of potential because those kids need to be stronger Much because they don’t have the freak genetics They don’t walk in with the same freak genetics that end up in the college in the pros Yeah, and it is a gigantic mistake.

Yeah to think that if you want athletes To perform at a higher level than you have to [00:31:00] copy what high level athletes are doing 

Mike Matthews: exactly 

Mark Rippetoe: because it may not be 

Mike Matthews: right now you see that in the bodybuilding we were talking about in the first part of this where same type of people look to these freak bodybuilders and just go.

I guess i’ll try to train like them and then they wonder why you know, they’re not really seeing much difference in their body or they can’t even do the workouts They can’t even show essentially. 

Mark Rippetoe: Yeah, it’s you know, it’s it’s the oldest You Problem we’ve got is matching a novice athlete with an advanced program.

It doesn’t work. I wrote a whole book about it. Practical Programming for Strength Training in his third edition explains this phenomenon. But why does it appear to work? Why does it appear to work for untrained individuals to do all this crazy shit? Because in an untrained, unadapted individual, Anything will cause an adaptation, anything.

If you have not trained at all, you can ride a bicycle and your bench press will go up. Because any type of stress [00:32:00] causes a beneficial strength adaptation. Now, is it optimal? No. Our job as strength coaches is to figure out what is optimal. And apply that in the optimal programming method. What are the optimal exercises, but you can get away with doing everything wrong.

That’s why p90x works Right to a 

Mike Matthews: to until it doesn’t 

Mark Rippetoe: for six weeks. Yeah, each thing works for six weeks, right? Things may work for three months because at to an athlete at a low level of adaptation anything will cause a performance increase anything right as professional strength and conditioning We are supposed to know what is optimum, what works best, and how to apply it over time.

And more importantly, how to change it over time, as it becomes necessary. And, a different workout, bouncing around in the floor on one leg, every time you come in the weight room, [00:33:00] is not the way to do it. And it may look like it’s working because you’ve got 55 freak athletes in your weight room, but I assure you they’d be better off Getting their deadlift up, getting their press overhead up.

Mike Matthews: And you’ve surely come across examples, good and positive examples in your work of this, right? 

Mark Rippetoe: Oh, certainly. 

Mike Matthews: Of course. I’ve been teaching 

Mark Rippetoe: people to get strong for even with high level athletes. For 40 years I’ve been doing this. High level athletes, we hear them on the board, baseball players have written in, said they’ve adopted programs and they’re doing it.

They’re all doing a lot better, but their strength coaches are not interested in adopting another strength coach’s methods, especially if that other strength coach is not using exercise selection as variation. Because that’s the big one. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. If the philosophy is fundamentally at odds with what they are trying, how they, why they have their jobs.

[00:34:00] There’s a quote, I forget who says it, but it says it’s hard to make somebody believe something when their job depends on them not believing it. 

Mark Rippetoe: That’s absolutely true. I don’t have any I don’t have any illusions about penetrating that particular market, but by the same token, We have sold half a million books half a million starting strength, and we’ve sold another probably 250, 000 practical programs.

We have penetrated this market, and it’s perfectly logical, and people are using this program, and whether or not the boys at the D1 level are going to use this program or not, it doesn’t make any difference to me. That’s not my target demographic anyway. I want to make their moms strong. Yeah. I want to make their dad strong.

I want to make their little brother strong. Yeah. So that he can get a good shot at a college scholarship too. Yeah. I’m not concerned with talking to high school, [00:35:00] college, or professional coaches. They’re not, I’ve said ugly things about them here and they’re probably not going to be receptive to what I have to say.

And I really don’t. I really don’t care. I wish they’d listen to reason. I think we have people at the college level And that are doing very well. I’m not going to say that we don’t have you know Exposure at that level because we do yeah But same I mean my program if we don’t have any more i’d really know Care.

Yeah. These guys have built themselves a little business model. All the functional training boys who are actually physical therapist, 

Mike Matthews: but also they’re actually don’t have to work as hard. And, we’re just gonna do lighter weights and it’s not necessary. It’s dangerous to do the heavy weights and, yeah.

Mark Rippetoe: And Mike and this is my point. These guys are physical therapists pretending to be strength coaches. That’s all there is to it. They’re doing physical therapy. And trying to pretend as though that improves performance. And if [00:36:00] everybody agrees, like I said earlier, everybody agrees, we’re not going to be strong.

It’ll work just fine. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I and this also all applies to just people that sports for fun. If it’s a hobby of yours to play really any sport, you’re going to be better if you get strong. Sure. Period. And I think for sure everybody’s put that together, this is just. 

Mark Rippetoe: And that’s just yes, day follows night.

That’s absolutely true. It’s obvious, stronger is better. What’s hilarious is the standards to which these people are being held. Steph Curry, basketball guy, watch basketball either, but I’m told that Steph Curry is brutally strong because the the geniuses at Sports Illustrated go on and on about him being able to do.

A 405 deadlift on a trap bar and he’s brutally strong because he can deadlift 405 on a trap bar. Brutally strong. Brutally strong. Do you people at Sports Illustrated not understand that any [00:37:00] intact male can deadlift 405? In about nine months of training, do you not understand that 40545 should not be even baseline strength for a professional athlete?

Do you not understand that? Apparently you don’t because you keep lauding and writing these bizarre glowing articles about a guy who is not as strong as two thirds of the guys in my gym and he’s a professional athlete with freak genetics. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Mark Rippetoe: If all he’s doing is 40545. should be fired. That’s, that would be cause for termination as far as I’m concerned.

Is that all you can get out of him? He’s a freak. Why isn’t he doing 505 for five once a week? Let’s not, see, they have this bizarre dumbed down functional training idea about what, Strength actually is [00:38:00] because after years and years of nobody being strong They don’t understand what it actually means.

This is not good. This is not 

Mike Matthews: good, right? I guess it’s gonna require a new generation of strength coaches To make it in, make it, and it probably comes, it probably starts in the high schools. And those high school guys turn into the college guys. And those college guys turn into the professional guys.

So it’s just one of those things that, it probably just, it’s just going to take time. Because the guys at the top, like you said, they don’t want to hear any of this. They have, they’re going to be set in their ways for the most part. And, if they were to dramatically change their protocols and their programming, then there might raise some questions as to what they were, what have they been doing?

Why have they waited 

Mark Rippetoe: so long? 

Mike Matthews: What is Oh, I think the, I think. And it boosts the mystique, it loses the I’m on the cutting edge of all this Oh yeah. I’ve got new shit every day. Exactly. 

Mark Rippetoe: As opposed to heavier 

Mike Matthews: shit, we’re going to squat again.

Like we’ve been doing for three years. Doesn’t it’s just [00:39:00] to, to, to the layman when he’s got to sell himself to the owner of the team, he goes, yeah, I just I have him like pick some heavy stuff up and put it down and squat it up and squat it down. We just do that a lot. That doesn’t sound as good as I, I have myself invented seven different exercises that are just revolutionary and 

Mark Rippetoe: revolutionary ways to display the ability the athlete already has, but that absolutely lacks the ability to improve any aspect of that capacity in the athlete.

And I, it’s an Interesting industry, it certainly is. 

Mike Matthews: I think I don’t know if there’s anything else really to say on it. I think that pretty much covers all the points and the key take away is 

Mark Rippetoe: We’ve pissed everybody off, so let’s just quit. 

Mike Matthews: It’s also good though, because people that are receptive and that just want to be better athletes that’s this is encouraging because they don’t have to have any special insider knowledge on this Type of twist or slam or if they don’t work with the basic exercises and get stronger They’re all [00:40:00] you have to 

Mark Rippetoe: do is get your squat get your deadlift up. It’s not complicated It’s just hard and you have to apply yourself to it You have to grind through do the work lift more weight every time and you will get stronger and stronger is better You And you already know that.

Well said. 

Mike Matthews: All right, Mark. So if you want to check out, obviously there’s Google, but where can they come to find you and more starting strength. com obviously. 

Mark Rippetoe: Starting strength. com is our big website. We’ve got a YouTube channel, starting strength at starting here and channel at YouTube, we’ve got Our famous internet forum collection of places for you to discuss all this stuff.

We have new articles up five days a week at the homepage, starting strength. com new content five days a week. And if you haven’t checked this out, we’d invite you to look there. Our books are for sale at amazon. com and on our [00:41:00] website. And we welcome your participation. 

Mike Matthews: Awesome. Yeah, definitely.

Everybody head on over. Again, I’ve been promoting Mark and his stuff since the beginning of me being in this industry at all. And it, it works. There’s no questioning my own. Absolutely. Thanks for coming on the show and I look forward to next time. When we come up with something interesting to talk about it.

And I always like talking to you. Thanks for having me, Mike. Talk to you soon. Definitely. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two. Where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness.

Also, head over to my website at www. muscleforlife. com, where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscleforlife.

com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.