Rip is a hack. He's competent at teaching the big four lifts, but not really any more competent than any other good coach. He's done the lifting world a favour by popularizing the "add 5lbs each session" for novices, and the Starting Strength book is a great resource. He didn't invent this concept though, and the book was co-written by several other authors. The Texas Method is a great program, but it was not invented by Rippetoe, just organized in a book, and large parts of the book were, just like the other book, not written by him. There are more effective versions of the Texas Method that are not even in the book.
He has also failed to succeed in anything other than getting novices through their linear progression, yet he still acts as if he is some sort of authority on strength in general. All added together, Mark Rippetoe is just a coach who's pretty good at getting novices past the novice stage, and that's it.
I'm an anonymous IST poster and I could get fricking novices past the novice stage. It's like being famous in the culinary world for putting bread in the toaster. It's a testament to how full of hippie bullshit the fitness industry was involved with in 2010 for a fat guy saying add weight as often as you can, eat lots of food, progressively overload etc to be seen as the Messiah. Rippe would get nowhere in 2024 now that the industry has plenty of guys saying that getting strong in a moderate rep range on a variety of lifts is the gist of it
I think the greatest contribution Rip has made to lifting has been causing a lot of other people to speak up against his dogmatic view on strength training, something which has generated some good information
>I'm an anonymous IST poster and I could get fricking novices past the novice stage.
And yet 95% of IST (yourself included, I'm sure) and 99% of gym goers in general spend fricking years in the novice stage or fail to ever leave it, in the sense that their strength is nowhere near where it could be after 6-9 months of sticking to SS properly.
Nobody claims Rip's method is some kind of original, revolutionary discovery. In fact, he's first to admit it's simple as frick, which is probably why people fail to stick to it. It gets boring so they tend to modify it, or they think complexity is good so they tend to modify, or they think it's a bodybuilding program and don't want to eat properly because of muh abs and they eventually fail to progress in a linear way while still being novices. Then there are homosexuals who treat it as a justification for eating like pigs and entering eternal bloated c**t mode.
SS just works, and all of its critique is based on either people not doing the program correctly, or Rip being an unlikable c**t, which is understandable but irrelevant.
The point is that he does this well, but he does nothing else well, yet he still acts like people should listen to him for general strength information and not just for novice linear progression training.
Picrel has a pretty solid info on strength training past the NLP phase, but then again neither I nor you have enough experience in training other people to be able to judge who's right: the pink Texan c**t or "muh exercise science PhD, professional S&C coach" c**ts that he likes to criticize.
I tend to agree with Rip's opinion that just because some S&C coach's methods work for a bunch of roided up professional athlete genetic freaks, doesn't mean they're optimal or even good at all.
this. if you all spent less time criticizing him and instead doing your squats and drinking your milk you'd get a lot farther. I actually 'did' SS this winter and the results were fantastic but it was extremely hard. no wonder no one actually does it
>I actually 'did' SS this winter and the results were fantastic but it was extremely hard.
OP here, I did SS years ago, had great success with it, done Texas Method and had great success with that as well, still doesn't change the fact that Rip is a hack
Because they don't do whatever it is they're doing consistently
It's not the program, it's the person
It's incredibly easy yeah, the only real challenge in escaping novice is just showing up and doing the work. It doesn't matter what program you do as long as you do something and do it consistently
Rip is an unremarkable old school coach. Basically at the same level of a typical high school football coach. He succeeded because he also has a narcissistic personality and his book came out at the right time for it to be popularised on the internet when the general fitness discourse of the era was useless fads.
One thing that annoys me about Mark Rippetoe is that in both Starting Strength and Practical Programming, he cites studies and scientific studies and claims the statements of the book are irrefutable because of this proof, and then on his podcasts and on the forums he frequently ridicules studies and scientific research that reaches conclusions he is not comfortable with. moron double standard.
He also claims to be an alpha male but is renowned for writing cuck erotica in the early 00's.
>claims to be an alpha male
citation needed
I don't think he cites studies anywhere in SS
most people don't want to go to the gym six days a week to do one lift
but personally I changed it by doing the upper body lift first, and alternating squat and deadlift
so it was like
day A day B
press bench
squat clean
chin deadlift
Is Mark right about squat form? Should I point my nipples at the floor, and drive my fat GOMAD ass towards the ceiling on each rep?
It's a good way of squatting if you want to lift heavy. If you're lifting for bodybuilding there are better ways.
>competent at teaching the big four
doesn't he teach some bullshit form that's neither good for hypertrophy nor powerlifting?
He teaches form that's optimal for driving strength adaptations, which is not the same thing as trying to max your result in a powerlifting meet (with things like big ass bridge on the bench, sumo deadlift etc.)
Now, strength obviously drives hypertrophy, but it's not a bodybuilding program in the sense of caring about individual muscle bellies' "aesthetics".
BTW, I remember one of Rip's videos where he called powerlifting the most redneck sports discipline of all and made fun of motherfrickers you would see on a powerlifting meet's parking lot.
he's an obese fitness coach what more is there to say
People who actually run his program all the way through end up stronger than >99.9% of people on earth
At that point you can transition into whatever type of training you want
All the moron novices that don't understand this and then follow other morons into progressless "aesthetics programs for beginners" deserve their perpetual mediocrity
You want to be a huge natty bodybuilder?
Then you have to be really fricking strong AT VOLUME
Being able to consistently create top 0.1% athletes is definitely something to boast about because pretty much anyone who refuses to do one of the 2 good LP programs will likely never get there
Sets of 5 are good, progressively adding weight is good. Rest days are good.
Squats 3x a week with bench and overhead press 1.5x a week is not good.
His program only has:
Squats
Bench,
Deadlift
Overhead Press
Rows
Chin-ups.
Why the FRICK can this not be arranged in a better way? Training 6 days a week with only one lift a day would be better than this moron's program.
You'd be completely fresh too instead of trying the moronic idea of trying to make progress on your bench after five sets of squats.
Did you actually read the book? The novice progression at the end has cleans instead of rows, dips and he talks about adding other accessories and even direct arm work when it makes sense. There this consistent misconception that SS is some well defined program when it’s not. In the actual book Rip gives you two progressions, one for a fresh novice that you should only be on for a couple weeks and another that will last you for a few months. He’s pretty specific that at some point you have to move past this and it’s likely within a year.
You even copy rippetoes standard response "did you read the book?" frick that book. Half of it is diagrams explaining how to do a squat. I skimmed through it.
No he doesn't talk about dips and arm work. There's no program by him that includes that. And he doesnt say about a year or whatever, he wants you on the basic linear progression until you have an ok level of strength which to him is squatting 500lbs and deadlifting 700lbs, if you're over 6 foot.
These are the answers he gives to people directly on his radio show and his forum. It doesn't matter what some book that wasn't even fully written by him ten years ago says.
This is literally what he says to people today.
Yes rippetoes genius idea of squatting 3x while benching either once or twice a week must not be changed. Even if it goes against my own experience and the experience of many others.
This fat texan is extremely stubborn, arrogant and disagreeable so his ideas must be 100% correct, and his intellect must be much higher than mine.
Well don't go to the gym 6 days a week to do 1 lift then, that's a stupid idea anyway, but it's still better than this. You could go 3 days a week and do 2 lifts, then add more bodybuilding exercises after.
Your way makes more sense too. It's pretty much how I ended up doing it.
Not that guy but there is a chapter on assistance work that goes in depth about both dips and barbell curls.
>I haven't read the book but I'll gladly criticize its content based on what I heard about it from other homosexuals that hadn't read it either
Every single time.
>he wants you on the basic linear progression until you have an ok level
No, he wants you to do linear progression until you can't progress in a linear fashion anymore. Which makes sense, because why the frick would you change something that works for you without milking it fully?
>goes against my own experience
I'm pretty sure Rip's experience with making homosexuals like yourself strong is a bit greater than your own.
>No he doesn't talk about dips and arm work. There's no program by him that includes that. And he doesnt say about a year or whatever, he wants you on the basic linear progression until you have an ok level of strength which to him is squatting 500lbs and deadlifting 700lbs
>on a linear or even weekly (texas method) progression
Unless you're Mitch Hooper this just does not happen. Rip especially should know this because he has never deadlifted 700lbs in his life.
>why not modify it like this based on my hunch, instead of sticking to the way that's been proven to produce optimal results on countless people?
Said pretty much everyone who failed to make good/quick progress on his "creative" variation of SS.
Who are these successful natty bodybuilders that have run Starting Strength?
And who are these top 0.1% athletes that Rip has created?
>Who are these successful natty bodybuilders that have run Starting Strength?
>And who are these top 0.1% athletes that Rip has created?
They exist in the imaginations of rip fanboys and that's good enough
>Then you have to be really fricking strong AT VOLUME
Technically true but you seem to imply LE STRENGTH BASE FOR HYPERTROPHY which is a moronic myth that is 100% backwards, the exact opposite of truth.
You are extremely low IQ. Please stop pushing this stupidity.
He's right about everything but his followers and newbies are morons that can't read the book let alone the title: "STARTING strenght".
It's great for your first 6 months, then you move on to hypertrophy, weightlifting, powershitting, etc.
If he advised a small surplus & added CGBP & seated curls to B day he'd be a fricking hero to this day
>Rip is a hack
>He's competent
You're fricking moronic