Quotes
From Starting Strength Wiki
[edit] The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Rippetoe
Your muscles cannot get “longer” without some rather radical orthopedic surgery.
Muscles don’t get leaner—you do.
There is no such thing as “firming and toning.” There is only stronger and weaker.
The vast majority of women cannot get large, masculine muscles from barbell training. If it were that easy, I would have them.
Women who do look like men have taken some rather drastic steps in that direction that have little to do with their exercise program.
Women who claim to be afraid to train hard because they “always bulk up too much” are often already pretty bulky, or “skinny fat” (thin but weak and deconditioned) and have found another excuse to continue life sitting on their butts.
Only people willing to work to the point of discomfort on a regular basis using effective means to produce that discomfort will actually look like they have been other-than-comfortable most of the time. You can thank the muscle magazines for these persistent misconceptions, along with the natural tendency of all normal humans to seek reasons to avoid hard physical exertion.
I don't read around the web much, because I'm old and busy, and just haven't got time. If I'm on the Internet, I'd rather be looking at porn.
On the ethics of meat eating:
Okay, have you ever been around chickens? They are stupid, uncooperative, inconvenient, ill-tempered creatures. They get what they deserve. Fuck chickens.
Testosterone levels peak in our mid-twenties, hold relatively steady for another decade, and then begin to fall like women’s clothes at the kinds of parties we don’t get invited to any more.
We don't wear singlets because A...one...they're gay.
Baby mammals drink milk, and you sir, are a baby mammal.
Rip: "You would look better if you gained about 10 lbs of muscle" Woman responds with look of utter horror. Rip: "Trust me, I've been looking at women a long time, and I'm really good at it."
your DNA is smarter then the people at IDEA
Here in Texas, the Highway Patrol has a slogan "Click it or Ticket" to help motorist remember to wear their seat belt.
As Rip is driving off on his new motorcycle he says, "this is my response to 'click it or ticket'. Typical Rip reasoning.
Girls don't like big pecs! they like money and "this"!(as he indicates with his hand mid thigh on the leg)
You must wear socks or workout pants on the Dead Lifts. We don't want your DNA on the barbell.
Rip whispered this into a woman's ear (who had severe kyphosis and had a very difficult time pulling her shoulders back/pushing her chest out) while coaching her bench press:
"Now, push your tits toward me."
She immediately corrected her kyphosis and had AMAZING bench press form -- despite the fact that she and Rip were laughing so hard, the rest of us couldn't WAIT to know what the coaching cue was that worked so well.
What we're trying to do is get things fixed, not allow them to stay broke.
Does a bigger motor slow the car down? No. But a bunch of junk in the trunk does.
I'm not interested in what's been done in the past. I'm interested in what should be done.
The interesting thing is that everybody really already knows this, because there are few examples in life that don’t follow the basic rules of the universe, the ones that dictate the behavior of everything. One of the most basic of those rules is that, with the exception of the occasional lottery winner, you pretty much get out of an effort what you put into it. We’re all quite familiar with this reality, although we are often willing to believe people who tell us otherwise, about exercise and about life. The sooner everybody—both halves of the population—accepts the fact that effective exercise is more like training for athletics and less like lying around on the floor, more about performance and less about appearance, the sooner it will be understood that women really don’t need their own figure salon.
Here are some more unfortunate truths: • Your muscles cannot get “longer” without some rather radical orthopedic surgery. • Muscles don’t get leaner—you do. • There is no such thing as “firming and toning.” There is only stronger and weaker. • The vast majority of women cannot get large, masculine muscles from barbell training. If it were that easy, I would have them. • Women who do look like men have taken some rather drastic steps in that direction that have little to do with their exercise program. • Women who claim to be afraid to train hard because they “always bulk up too much” are often already pretty bulky, or “skinny fat” (thin but weak and deconditioned) and have found another excuse to continue life sitting on their butts. • Only people willing to work to the point of discomfort on a regular basis using effective means to produce that discomfort will actually look like they have been other-than-comfortable most of the time. • You can thank the muscle magazines for these persistent misconceptions, along with the natural tendency of all normal humans to seek reasons to avoid hard physical exertion.
Any idiot can get on a treadmill and watch TV and then take great pride in the fact they've 'exercized.
Well, Rip knows that a 135-pound, 5’ 9”, 18-year-old kid doesn’t look like either Ronnie or Rip, even if he has a twelve-pack, and that if he seriously wants to head in that direction the first thing to do is to gain about 60 pounds. Ole Rip also knows that women don’t really care about abs. They care about Other Things. And after all, you asked Rip; he didn’t ask you. So put down your Muscle and Fiction, do your squats, drink your milk, and pay better attention to the answers when you ask the questions.
When a guy (Alex) asked what to do about his balls hurting after squats...
Alex, buddy, you're on your own here. Unless we get some other input. My balls haven't hurt since 1973, when I learned how to finish what I started.
If you want to look like a bodybuilder, that's fine with me. That is a matter for you to discuss with your God and your psychologist. But even a bodybuilder is a novice strength trainee until he's an intermediate. The fastest way to gain muscular bodyweight -- the supposed goal of a bodybuilder -- is with a linear progression on the basic barbell exercises. And 5s are the way this progression works best.
And no, you don't excrete excess calories, because evolution didn't see fit to exterminate the species in this way. If that happened, fat people would be in zoos where they belong since they'd be quite rare.
There are few things graven in stone, except that you have to squat or you're a pussy.
I was driving home the other night, listening to the radio, and the guy filling in for Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM was talking to some other guy about Nazis, UFOs, the Kennedy Assassination, time travel, and George Bush, and how it all relates to OneWorldGovernment. This, of course, made me think about barbell training...
(in reference to a bicyclist who seemed to be saying that riding was similar to squats since they both made your legs hurt):
Yes they both hurt, but so do burning your hand and burying your bulldog. The differences are actually quite significant.
The trouble with cyclists is that their training establishment keeps reinforcing the silly bullshit that all recreational athletes want to believe: at some point, all serious athletes go outside their sport-specific work to improve, and recreational athletes just want to play their sport and wear the clothes.
Milk is quite literally better than steroids for a novice lifter to grow on, and no supplement produces the same effect.
It is because over thirty years of direct observation has demonstrated to me that when trainees drink one gallon of milk added to their regular diet and train in a progressive linear fashion, they gain significant muscular bodyweight, and those that do not drink their milk, even in the presence of progressive linear training, fail to do this. They also fail to continue progressive linear training for the same length of time, because this is facilitated by the steady weight gain. I understand that you're asking me if I have controlled for other factors such as failure to do the program correctly, and the answer is yes, of course I have, because I am not a complete idiot. Those that will not do the program are not being considered when I make these remarks, because that would be too fucking obvious a hole in my analysis. The difference in the milk drinkers is that THEY GET BIGGER THAN THE ONES WHO WON'T DRINK THE FUCKING MILK. Please tell me that you understand this now.
Soy milk is essentially Coffee-Mate laced with estrogen, and is best left to vegans and other socialist vegetarian types that can't bring themselves to eat the completely natural-for-humans flesh of our friends the Animals but who have no trouble with slaughtering trillions of our other friends the Plants and processing -- in gigantic factories run by multinational corporations with shareholders that eat meat themselves -- very selectively chosen components of their poor little bodies into gooey shit that humans have never had an opportunity to adapt to digesting. Why, eating such material, with its high levels of isoflavones, touted by gynecologists as tantamount to Estrogen Replacement Therapy (ERT), will make you grow boobs, and this will screw up the clean lines of this fine young man's Under Armor. I recommend against it.
There is no substitute for milk. Sorry.
CrossFit has the potential to change the popular cultural perception of what exercise actually means over the next decade, and I will watch with delight as selectorized leg machines are melted down into more useful items like re-bar and manhole covers.
My own opinion of Greg [Glassman] is that he has done more to legitimize actual training in the minds of the public than any other person since Arthur Jones destroyed it in the mid-70s.
But nobody lives in Canada. It's a frozen wasteland with an inefficient postal system, probably suffering from a shortage of sled dogs.
Pierre, if you are eating 5500 calories a day, then I am a female kangaroo with a Sonic Drive-In franchise and a heroin habit.
The only legitimate use for a glove is to cover an injury... A desire to prevent callus formation (possibly so as to not snag one's pantyhose) does not constitute a legitimate use.
Rip: "Leg Pressing is masturbation."
Tuesday: "Oh, come on. Masturbation isn't that bad."
Rip: "Oh, I didn't say it was bad. But at least when I masturbate, I am not under the impression that I'm making anybody else cum but me."
On steroids:
There are no shortcuts. The fact that a shortcut is important to you means that you are a pussy.
...and since we all want big chesticles, we have to put some pec in it, ok? Chesticles are why we bench press, afterall
In response to a guy complaining that his leg curl weight hasn't increased since he started dead lifting:
"That's like bitching about masturbation not being fun anymore since you started dating a porn star"
On the possibility of a failure to deadlift resulting in stroke:
Deadlifts that are too heavy to pull generally don't take very long; the bar just kinda lays there. So if trying to move immovable objects was dangerous from the standpoint of stroke, the history of the human race would be littered with stupid people's corpses.
Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general.
On not calling "The Press", "The Shoulder Press:"
We just call it the press, because how could you press without the shoulders? You can leg press... but that's gay.
On adding bike riding and leg extensions to the program:
The program in [Starting Strength] is not designed to be supplemented with anything. Neither of you -- old guy or young kid -- are in a position to recover optimally, as would be a 21 year-old genetic freak. Just stick with the program and let it work for you unsullied by the trappings of muscle magazine silliness or a desire to gild the lily. If you want to ride your bikes, don't be gone too long. In fact, be back before supper.
On drinking not 1, but 2 gallons of milk/day:
But you would be shitting primarily cheese. Are you ready for this?
A Rip Anecdote:
My favorite happens to be the tale on supplementary equipment. A man insisted on wearing straps for exercises he probably could have gotten away without having worn them. Rip, in classic Rip fashion, decided to start wearing straps to do all sorts of things, including opening doors and going to the bathroom (he would wear one on his "holding" hand, gotta have wrist support for that) until the guy stopped wearing straps completely.
But then again, those who argue against squatting and deadlifting on the same day may just be pussies.
Now I also know that you're supposed to 'listen to your body', but my brain says 'don't be a pussy, and just lift the fucking weights', and that's just what I do.
On a respectable number of pull-ups:
Well, I can do 16, and I'm 51 and I weigh 210. So you have to beat me or you're a pussy. And if you do beat me, you're probably using drugs.
On bending the arms in the deadlift:
Bent elbows just absolutely suck.
I didn't lock that last [bench press] out in a safe position over my fairly sturdy sternum, here. I came up off the bench and put that thing right over the most valuable structures that I possess; teeth, eyeballs... all precious voice... [Rip then looks off camera at someone and shakes his head.] I'm 51, they aren't as valuable anymore as they used to be.
Newb: Got any good ab exercises?
Rip: Got any better questions?
Cindy [Crossfit WOD] is a vicious wretched bitch.
It would depend on your recovery ability, i.e. how old you are, how much you eat, how well you sleep, and how big your balls are. Some guys can recover from lots more work than other guys, so this just depends on you.
The only time LSD (long slow distance) is necessary is if your going to compete in a sport that requires it. It is far inferior to CrossFit-type metcon for producing an increase in VO2 max, it interferes with power and strength production, it can be quite catabolic and immune-suppressive in high doses, it destroys muscle mass, and the people that do it usually wear silly clothes. Read the stuff on the CrossFit website regarding this, and you will learn many good, important things.
Never ask a question that you may not be prepared to have answered.
If you want to look like some Abercrombie model, then find another program and enjoy your nice, easy training style. If you are serious about adding muscle to your frame, then get under the damn bar and make it happen.
Go home and tell Mom that you're a man now.
The deadlift is more functional in that it’s very hard to imagine a more useful application of strength than picking heavy shit up off the ground.
…we have not spent the last 65 million or so years finely honing our physiology to watch Oprah. Like it or not, we are the product of a very long process of adaptation to a harsh physical existence, and the past couple centuries of comparative ease and plenty are not enough time to change our genome. We humans are at our best when our existence mirrors, or at least simulates, the one we are still genetically adapted to live. And that is the purpose of exercise.
Accumulating injuries are the price we pay for the thrill of not having sat around on our asses.
[Bill] Starr was damned strong, primarily because he worked as hard as any human being ever has. He was not a genetic freak, but his balls were huge, and he applied himself to his training like few people have ever done.
There are no shortcuts. The fact that a shortcut is important to you means that you are a pussy. Let me be clear here: if you'd rather take steroids than do your squats heavy and drink enough milk, then you are a fucking Pussy. I have no time or patience for fucking Pussies. Please tell everyone you know that I said this.
The Olympic Snatch is gymnastics with a bar.
On a missed squat:
Yes, 350 was pretty good. Now, why do you think you missed 360, besides the fact that it was so fucking heavy?
on U2:
I don't like Bono. He needs to train more.
A common problem in analysis is the confusion of correlation with causation. Baker illustrates this nicely for us. Lots of people, all of whom are crazy as hell, train early in the morning without problems. Coffee becomes more important than testosterone in this situation.
I recommend against a wooden squat rack, for much the same reason that I recommend against a wooden car.
As for the definitions of butt wink and butt-wink Nazi, the first is obscene and scatological, and the second is not discussable due to European Union restrictions.
We never consciously squeeze our asscheeks in the weight room. It's not a valuable biomechanical cue, and it might get misinterpreted by the guys on the next platform.
...the rather inescapable conclusion that the older men get, the more like older women we become, hormonally speaking.
If you insist on wearing gloves, make sure they match your purse.
Critiqueing a power clean:
...it shows a problem known as a Donkey Kick. As the jump occurs, the heels come up in the back and then stomp back down into place. This is a terrible waste of time and energy, and contributes nothing to making the bar go up. Stop doing this immediately or I will have you killed.
...bodybuilding is men on a stage in their underwear wearing brown paint showing other men their muscles. It is training for appearance only, and at the contest level requires a degree of vanity, narcissism, and self-absorption that I find distasteful and odd.
I like musicianship, and it's quite lacking in most modern popular music. You're always safe with old Chicago, the Allman Brothers, Gov't Mule, or Tower of Power.
You can't make people smarter. You can expose them to information, but your responsibility stops there.
The full squat is a perfectly natural position for the leg to occupy. That's why there's a joint in the middle of it, and why humans have been occupying this position, both unloaded and loaded, for millions of years. Much longer, in fact, than quasi-intellectual morons have been telling us that it's "bad" for the knees.
Guy 1: I was just wondering, are all the copies of [Starting Strength] missing pages 206-207, or is it just my copy?
Rip: Page numbers 206-207 were offensive to us, for numerological reasons we'd not care to discuss, so we omitted them and indexed around them. No material is missing, just the 2 most horrible, sickening, disgusting, revolting, baby-killing, maggot-infested, sorry, rotten, substandard numbers in all of mathematics. And good riddance, I say. Fuck 206 and 207, both of them.
Guy 2: Thank God someone has taken a stand on this.
Rip: Courage will always be the watchword of The Aasgaard Company.
If lifting heavy weights for partial [squats] were of any benefit for sports, Gold's Gym would be fielding the majority of the 2008 Olympic team.
Shitting yourself when you deadlift was omitted from [Starting Strength]. The best way to avoid this is to not deadlift when you need to shit, and vice versa. Planning is the key here.
When asked if masturbation or sex hinders strength:
Yes, it does. Never do either. Ever. Not if you want to be strong like bull.
An anecdote:
I was shooting photos for CrossFit Central's Fittest Games Challenge #2, which was a CrossFit Total event. (both links wfs) Rip was judging the event, of course. The squat and press were done in a rack facing towards the back of the venue, and I'd set up a remote camera in front of the platform so that I could shoot pictures from that position without danger of moving or disturbing someone (really wasn't an issue in the end, but... anyway...).
So, they decide to remove the rack and turn the lifter around for the deadlift. I quickly move to start relocating my remote camera, so that I can get it ready before the event starts - I try to be as unobtrusive as possible at these sorts of things, so I was just trying to hurry, etc... Well, one of the folks with CrossFit Central (who was trying to be helpful) says to Coach "Hang on a minute, Dave has to move his camera...". Oh, how I cringed at those words
Coach looks over and says "Has to move a camera? You GOD DAMNED paparazzi, you killed Princess Diana! You're the reason she's dead!"
Rip: You need to drink one gallon of full fat milk everyday. It's almost mandatory.
Somebody from audience: I'm lactose intolerant, could I substitute milk for yogurt?
Rip: Gallon of yogurt.
It is not necessary to bump the shins with the bar, or dig a ditch in the shins on the way up. Good control of the weight is necessary to avoid this, and it should be avoided or sores get established on the shins that will be a problem for a long time - every time the trainee deadlifts he will break the sore open and make a big mess on his socks or worse, the bar.
I strongly advise against intentionally farting whilst moving heavy weights. Sometimes -- especially under those circumstances -- farts have a solid center.
Most of the problems with the bodies and minds of the folks occupying the current culture involve an unwillingness to do anything hard, or anything that they'd rather not do. I applaud your resolve, and I welcome you to the community of people who have decided that EASY will no longer suffice.
If you are so inflamed that you can't train, and ibuprofen and fish oil help with inflammation, maybe you'd better take the fucking ibuprofen and fish oil.
