Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Mark Rippetoe on the Right (and Wrong) Ways to Squat

Episode Date: April 6, 2018

In this episode, I speak with the grandfather of barbell training, Mark Rippetoe, who has given us many a great things, like Starting Strength and Practical Programming. I’m a fan of Mark and his work, of course, because nobody has done more to promote, teach, and defend barbell training than Rip, and because he’s extremely disagreeable, which always makes for a fun conversation. In this interview, we talk the squat, an exercise Mark kinda likes. In fact, he says that there are few things graven in stone, except that you have to squat or you're a pussy. And whether you agree or not, I think you’re going to find today’s talk helpful. You can find the basics of good squatting in Mark’s book Starting Strength, but once you get some experience under your belt, you begin to wonder how to optimize the movement. For instance, you’ve probably wondering... - Should you high- or low-bar squat? - Should you squat with a narrow or wide stance? - Should you use paused reps? - Should you use weightlifting shoes? - What are the best cues? In this episode, Mark is going to answer all of those questions and more. By the end, you’ll know more about squatting than 90% of the people in your gym, including the trainers. 11:12 - What is The Barbell Prescription about? 14:52 - What are you thought on high bar versus low bar squatting? 28:11 - Which is better for squatting - a narrow or wide stance? 33:57 - What are your thoughts on pause reps? 38:07 - What are your thoughts on heels elevated on plates? 42:07- What are your thoughts on weightlifting shoes? 43:16- What are coaching cues that you recommend? 50:30- What are your thoughts on the safety bar? 51:31 - What are your thoughts on functional training? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Thank you. Hello, dear listener, Mike here back with another episode of the Muscle Life Podcast. And this time I speak with the grandfather, the grand Jedi of barbell training, Mark Ripito, who has given us many great things like starting strength and practical programming. Of course, I am a fan of Mark's and I'm a fan of his work because nobody has done more to promote, teach, and defend barbell training than old Rip. And because he's extremely disagreeable, extremely opinionated, which always makes for a fun conversation. And this time around, we talk the squat, which is an exercise that Mark kind of likes. In fact, he says that there are few things in life that are graven in stone, except that you have to squat

or you're a pussy. And whether you agree or not, I would tend to agree. I think you're going to find today's talk helpful. Now you can find the basics of good squatting in Mark's book, Starting Strength, or in my books, Bigger Than You're Stronger, Thinner Than You're Stronger. of good squatting in Mark's book, Starting Strength, or in my books, Bigger Than or Stronger, Thinner Than or Stronger. But once you get some experience under your belt, you begin to wonder how to optimize the movement. For example, if you are an experienced squatter, you've probably wondered things like, should you high or low bar squat? Should you use a narrow stance or a wide stance? Should you do paused reps or box squats? What about weightlifting shoes? What about cues? What are some good cues to help you maintain

proper form, especially when the weight gets heavy? Well, in this episode, Mark is going to answer all of those questions and more. And by the end, I think I can say that you are going to know more about squatting than 90% of the people in your gym, including the trainers. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically by flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Now, this book has sold over

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The Shredded Chef for free. All righty. That is enough shameless plugging for now, at least. Let's get to the show. Mark, welcome back. It's been a while, man. for now at least. Let's get to the show. Mark, welcome back. It's been a while, man. Yeah, it's been a while, Mike. Glad to be back with you. Always have fun bothering you about your abs. That's the thing we talk about. We talk about your favorite subjects. So like, how do I get really small and skinny and have really good abs? Yeah, I know. What do you even want to talk to me for? I haven't had abs in 40 years, brother. I must have something else to bring to the table. It makes you completely unqualified to talk about anything then. I haven't had abs in 40 years, brother. I must have something else to bring to the table. That makes you completely unqualified

to talk about anything then. Why are we talking? Well, there you have it. Some people would agree with you. I mean, you've read YouTube comments, haven't you? What does Ripito know, man? He's fat. What does he know about squat? He's fat. A part of the bilges

of the internet, the YouTube comments. Can you imagine? We have to actually leave those on. We tried leaving them off for a while, but what we find is that viewership goes down if you actually turn this inane nonsense off. Oh, yeah, I know. I mean, because I'm sure it's part of their algorithm. It may very well be YouTube's thing. That's a good point.

I hadn't thought about that. I've kind of attributed it to the fact that people just like to post their inane, unqualified opinions on the Internet so everybody else can read it. Maybe it's both. Yeah, I think it's definitely part of the algorithm because people leaving comments is a good signal to YouTube saying, hey, people are engaging with this video. Show it to more people. to YouTube saying, hey, people are engaging with this video. Show it to more people. Unless it is saying things that they deem as thought crime. Then disappear that video. We must ignore him because he's clearly guilty of bad think.

Wrong think. That's the term. Wrong think. That's business, man. Tell me about how your business is going we're having a hell of a nice year so far it's the damn good year past couple of weeks i don't understand it but past couple of weeks we have exceeded all of our previous sales records and we're just we're killing them and i i think it's good economy has a lot to do with a good economy and uh this is the most solid economy anybody can, any of the kids can actually remember since it's been so long since we had one. But things are going pretty well for everybody. Not just the stock market, but we have good economic fundamentals.

That's the deal. Everybody is confident that they're going to continue making money. And you and I live at the top of the food chain. So they spend money with us when they know they've got to spend. And it's just, this is a good time for our business. I agree. And then I think also health and fitness on the whole is on the rise. I mean, you can just see it on Google Trends, for example, like it's factually on the rise.

But we also see that in our lines of work where you have, there's obviously a seasonality effect, but every year, everything just gets a bit bigger because more and more people are not only find their way to health and fitness and wellness, but specifically to strength training, because it's probably a combination of factors. One, like I just read research that just came out. It was actually this month. It came out a couple of weeks ago that basically the long story short is the stronger your body is as you age, the less likely you are to die from all causes, which seems obvious, seems like an obvious statement. But for a lot of people, it's not so obvious. A lot of people go, oh, wow. So I should be

strength training then. And that's been in the literature a very long time. But you know how these trends resurface even in the literature from time to time. And if people are focusing on that now, that's good. There has been a demonstrable relationship between the retention of lean body mass and longevity, a demonstrable relationship between the loss of lean body mass and death. In fact, that's how most people die of cancer. Right. Yeah. You lose too much muscle and then your heart stops. It's a wasting disease. As much as anything, cancer is a wasting disease. I've got a guy in

here, for example, that three and a half years ago was diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer. And he's been on chemo more on than off since then. He's had a couple of operations. And when he came to the gym that day with his diagnosis, he was obviously panic stricken and crushed. And I just told him, look, you cannot die of cancer if your lifts are going up and you're not losing any body weight. So you do what you need to do to keep your lifts up and not lose any body weight.

And that seemed to make sense to him. And he came back from his last checkup a couple of weeks ago and told me that the two big nodes of this shit that were on his lung were gone. Wow. And that's obviously a consequence of treatment and then also lifestyle interventions. I'd like to think that most of it was that if you give the body a chance to fight it off, it will. You give it some help in terms of not particularly aggressive chemo because he he's a poor guy and he can't afford particularly aggressive chemo but so but they've been treating him you just stay big and strong i mean the guy weighs 265 he's 6'2 265 and he hasn't lost any weight during this whole process how do you kill a guy that's that's 6'2 265 if he if he's pulling 500 pounds off the ground.

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I can't say I've read much in terms of lean. I mean, I know lean mass is obviously just associated with a stronger immune system. So from that perspective, of course, it makes sense. In some ways, your muscle is kind of a fuel reserve for your immune system, right? And so you have that association between total lean mass and just longevity. And then also strength, though, like not just total muscle mass, but how strong you are as measured in various ways, even starting with as simple as a grip strength. That's an effective proxy for muscle mass as well. So long story short, the stronger your body is, the longer you are going to live and the better your quality of life is going to be. Precisely. Precisely. And that ought to be intuitively obvious to most people. But people handed a diagnosis like this are almost universally encouraged by the medical

profession to just take it easy. Sit down, take it easy. Get your fares in order. Get ready to die. Yes. They're not ever told, hey, you know what? Get your deadlift up. Imagine if that was your doctor. All right. So I have an unusual recommendation here. It's get your deadlift up. My what? Yeah, that's clearly insane. Your deadlift. You do know what a deadlift is, don't you, sir? So, yeah, that's clearly insane. Nobody would ever recommend that to a sedentary patient. But wouldn't it be neat if they did? Wouldn't it be neat if they understood the relationship between strength and longevity, between lean body mass and longevity?

It'd be good if the medical community updated. It'd be good if the medical community updated. Yeah, and looked more toward the preventative side of things as opposed to the palliative or the intervention. The barbell prescription, right? Dr. Jonathan Sullivan and Andy Baker. And it specifically deals with strengthening for people over the age of 40. It focuses quite a bit on the why. There's a very long development of our ideas about why older people ought to be strong. Some of them are obvious, some of them are not. All of them are quite straightforward and very well explained. And it is an excellent place to start if you, an older person, are thinking about actually giving this a

little bit more aggressive shot. Don't go quietly into that good, whatever the hell it is you go quietly into. Go kicking and screaming. Get strong, stay that way, and take like three weeks to die instead of 30 years. Yeah. Or just hopefully one day we're just going to go to sleep and not wake up, right? Yeah. I suppose that's an easy way to do it. There's a concept called compression of morbidity that I think is very important. I mean, we've all got older relatives who just laid there and wasted away in the rest home for years and years and years. And then we've all heard of people who were just fine up until three weeks prior to their death. They got a cancer diagnosis and three weeks later they were gone. But four weeks prior to being dead, they were having a pretty damn good time. And I think

that's probably the better way to do it. Don't you? Yeah. And that's actually my, my dad's neighbor went that way. Um, it was unfortunate. I mean, he was in his fifties and in great shape, um, family and stuff, pretty shitty situation,

but he, uh, yeah, he had some weird form of cancer behind his eye or something. He's doing fine. And there were no, there were no symptoms. I don't even know how they caught it.

Standard type of checkup type thing. And then three weeks later, he's gone. It was just like that. And that sucks because of his age. It sucks, but it would have sucked a whole lot worse if the guy had spent the last 20 years of his life disabled. That's not any fun. Yep, yep.

My wife's grandpa went through a bit of that, went through cancer. And it went on for about a month, surgeries and chemo. And it was pretty grueling. I was telling her, I was like, if I ever found myself in that situation, I'm going for euthanasia. I'm just OD me on barbiturates. I just want to get high as fuck and disappear. That's just not for me. I'm not really interested in being

in horrible pain for, for nothing too. Like there's no chance that you're going to make it. Really not interested in that at all. Not a bit. Not a bit. All right. So let's move on to less morbid things. Let's talk about squatting, a great exercise for increasing strength and not getting cancer and not dying in horrible ways. Okay. So obviously you have written and spoken extensively about how to squat and all the key things you got to do right to be squatting, at least with decent form. So I thought it'd be fun though, to pick your brain on some of the more nuanced aspects of squat and just hear your thoughts. And so I kind of put together a little bullet point list of aspects of the squat that I just want to throw out to you and see what you

have to say. So let's start with high bar versus low bar. This is an ongoing debate, something I'm asked about fairly frequently. I personally prefer low bar. It's more comfortable for me. But what are your thoughts on high bar versus low bar? Well, I think that we have got it. We've developed a set criteria that we use to analyze all of the exercises that we do. That set criteria are as follows. First is the exercise should involve the most muscle mass that it can. The exercise should involve to the longest effective range of motion that it can. The exercise should involve two, the longest effective range of motion that it can. And if these two things are satisfied, the exercise will allow you to handle the most

weight possible in order to four, get you as strong as you can get, because we're strength training. We're not bodybuilding, we're strength training. We're talking about getting stronger. We're not bodybuilding. We're strength training. We're talking about getting stronger. So if we correctly analyze the lifts and make a little list of the things that we can do to change the lifts, to head them in the direction of those criteria, then the outcome is one of increased efficiency in terms of the time we spend under the bar at the gym. Right. increased efficiency in terms of the time we spend under the bar at the gym, right? It would be better to get more done than less done at the gym in the same period of time. And as a result of that, because of the practical, well, because of the fact that wasted time is wasted opportunity. The people that we do business with, the people that you and I do business with are productive

individuals. They're not 23 year old kids living kids living in the basement, and they don't have six hours a day to fool around in the gym. So we have to look at this from a practical standpoint, and if there's a way to squat that accomplishes our objectives much more efficiently, then that's the way we ought to squat. And as it turns out, the low bar squat, squatting with the bar in what is called the low bar position, produces a more horizontal back angle and produces more use of the larger muscles of the posterior chain because we expose that muscle mass anatomically to longer moment arms as a result of these angles. It allows us to lift more weight, but it also causes us to have to use more muscle mass. And that's why we like the low bar position, because it produces a slightly more horizontal back angle and more activation of the glutes, the adductors, the low back muscles, the hamstrings.

The quads. But if we assume a little bit more horizontal back angle, then all of the other muscle mass gets brought into the equation. And you know this because you can lift more weight that way. You activate more muscle mass. You get stronger. You make that increased amount of muscle mass, lift heavier weights, and do more things during the squat than it would otherwise. And otherwise would mean high bar squats, a more vertical back angle, and front squats, the most vertical back angle of all. Now, in the grand scheme of

things, if you're squatting, you're doing just fine. All right. If you're squatting, you're doing what you need to do. All right. So high bar squats are obviously better than no squats at all. And some people can't do low bar squats because of their shoulders, because I will say this, the low bar squat is a lot more difficult to coach. It's a lot more complicated movement pattern. It can be done wrong quite easily. It has to be coached. It has to be dealt with correctly. And as a result, high bar squats are easier to do. And if you don't have access to some coaching, just squat. Okay. But if we're talking about what is optimum, optimum is the greatest amount of muscle mass

operating over the longest effective range of motion so that you can lift the most weight and therefore get the strongest. That's optimum. So in an ideal world, we low bar squat. In a less ideal world, we do something else, but we squat. You know, a lot of, there's a lot of yelling and screaming about how we're going to squat. It's a secondary consideration. We have to squat. But if we have the luxury of deciding which way we're going to squat, those are the criteria we use for the

decision. And the way we squat is a way that satisfies those. Makes sense. And you can apply that same logic to just weightlifting on the whole. And that's why, yeah, you start with your squats, your deadlifts, your presses. And if you can do those exercises, then those are the ones you want to do. And I would say, you mentioned earlier strength training versus bodybuilding. And I would say for people that aren't on drugs, there isn't as big of a difference between those two things as many people think. I would say a good natural bodybuilding program is kind of more like a basic strength training program with some, you could say, accessory work and diet, right? So some extra volume for the pretty muscles and then diet. That's really what bodybuilding is for most

people. Unless you're on a shitload of drugs, you're not going to get very far if you do anything other than that, actually. Right. If you do not base your training on that, which affects the largest muscle mass in the whole body, then you are not going to have as big muscle mass as you could if you did. And this ought to be obvious. you could if you did. And this ought to be obvious. It ought to be obvious that a guy with a 500 pound deadlift has got bigger back, hips and legs than a guy with a 200 pound deadlift. So how do you best get to a 500 pound deadlift? Well, you just sets of five, basic heavy loading on sets of five, gets you to those big numbers. Do sets of 15 get your deadlift up to 500 pounds? I've never seen it happen because the set of 15 is light relative to a set of five. So if you want to get strong

and get big by getting strong, then you do sets of five and you do sets of five as long as that simple program works. And then when it becomes necessary much later on to get more complicated in terms of your programming, then do what you want to do. But until then, what we do is just do a set of five on the deadlifts. Go up five pounds next time, do a set of five. Go up five more pounds the following workout, do a set of five. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. Change as little about your programming over time as is necessary. Make the smallest amount of change at any given time that you have to to keep progress going on. PRs, personal records on the lifts, on your sets of five, are the guarantee of progress. You cannot put five pounds a week on your deadlift and fail to make progress because that is by definition progress. You cannot put five pounds a week on your deadlift and fail to make progress because

that is by definition progress. And since you're getting stronger, your muscles have to get bigger to get stronger. And therefore you get bigger when you get stronger and sets of five is the best way to do it. And there's just not any other analysis that makes as much sense because it is simple and straightforward. And the human body, the human mind for some bizarre reason, just is in love with complexity, complexity cells.

Complexity is novelty and complexity. Both of them are confused quite often. Sometimes novelty, sometimes the, to your doctor, if you go in with cancer your doctor is going to find the five pounds of workout approach to your deadlift to be quite novel isn't he it's not complicated but it is novel because he's never heard of that before but complexity to a lifter

complexity for some reason oh people want to do a program that sounds complicated because the guys they want to be like do complicated programs. So they copy what their heroes are doing. And that may or may not be useful. It usually is not useful. It is usually best to stay as simple and uncomplicated with your training as you can. as you can. And as long as merely adding some weight to the work set, next workout works, do that and save all of this complicated shit for later when it will in fact be necessary.

But for most people, it really is not, is it? In some ways, it's never necessary. I think of a review in Mass, which is Greg Knuckles' and Mike Sordos' and Eric Helms' research review. And they were talking about, I think it was DUP versus just straight sets. And the long story short was, and these are smart guys that I don't think that they have an agenda or an ideology they're trying to sell. I think they truly are just trying to get at the truth of things. ideology they're trying to sell. I think they truly are just trying to get at the truth of things. And based on a pretty extensive review of just relevant literature, it was that in high level strength athletes that are doing everything right, DUP does seem to be a little bit better over the long term. But by a little bit better is like 5% better in terms of strength gain. And what does that really mean in terms of like, yes,

that matters if you're a strength athlete, that does matter. And so if you're an advanced strength athlete and you can gain strength 5% faster or gain 5%, it was something around there. It was a relatively small increase that, yes, I can understand that if that's what you live and die by are your numbers, that matters. Now, how does that matter though to the average guy or the average girl who just wants to be fit? They just want to put on, the average guy, I've worked with thousands and so have you, the average guy wants to put on, let's just say 30 to 40 pounds of muscle and wants to be relatively lean and look good. The average girl, I'm speaking from my personal experience. Your experience is a bit different actually, because you probably have a

little bit different crowd. But in terms of just the everyday gen fit person, that seems to be the sweet spot for guys. And for girls, it's probably mostly, let's say 15 to 20 pounds of muscle added in the right places and around 20% body fat. And they're thrilled. For those people, they don't even need to ever hear the word DUP. You know what I mean? Here's, I'll tell you a little secret, right? I don't know what DUP means. Oh, daily undulating periodization. So, um, it's one of these, yes, yes, yes. You would appreciate it because it's actually from a programming a programming perspective, it's just working in different rep ranges and different workouts. That's all.

So it's like you're doing your really heavy training on one day and then you're doing a little bit lighter on another day and a little bit lighter just to work in different rep ranges is the long story short. Obviously, it's a bit more technical than that, but that's the gist. Anyways, so yes, I totally agree. Keeping it simple is going to get the vast majority of people listening to this. And just the vast majority of people out there that are interested in strength training is simple is better. Just stick to the fundamentals. Right. The vast majority of the time, who are the vast majority of people? Are they competitive?

Exactly. That's the point. That's not who we do business with. I don't care what competitive lifters do. They can figure all this out themselves. They're certainly entitled. You've been training 10 years. You probably know more about your training than I do.

And I'm going to always defer to your judgment. Whatever you want to do, have fun. Look, as long as you're making progress, as long as you're making PRs on a regular basis, then what you're doing is obviously working. But I don't care about those people. They're going to be, they don't need me to care about them. I care about their mom. I care about their uncle. I care about their little brother who's not a competitive lifter. I care about people who want the most straightforward, uninterrupted period of progress that we can hand them with the simplest, most effective programming possible. And that's all I'm concerned about.

I mean, if a guy is lifting at the Nationals this year, I'm not even going to presume to offer an opinion about what he ought to be doing. He'll figure that out. And if he doesn't figure it out right, he won't win. And he'll come back, he'll reassess, and he'll go through the process of making better decisions next time because he has to if he's going to win. But that's not who we train. It's not who you train. It's not who I train. And for our clients, our demographic, the best approach to all of this is always the most simple, straightforward way to squat that you can do it. And the only conflict I would have is that our low bar squat is not always simple and

straightforward. It requires a little bit of coaching. And as a result of that, I am aware of the fact that most people who squat are squatting in what we would consider to be a less than optimum way. They're probably doing high bar. I don't care. At least they're squatting and at least the squat is going up. Does that sound more reasonable than I'm expected to sound? That makes perfect sense to me. That's what I say, at least. And for me, low bar, I like it more for the reasons that you gave. And now I'm also used to it. I've been low bar squatting for years now

and high bar squatting feels awkward to me. All right, let's move on to another point here. Let's talk about the width of the stance, like a more narrow stance versus a wider stance. Well, we coach a position that is about, and this works for 98% of everybody. We use a position where heels are at about shoulder width. So if you draw a line vertically down from your shoulders to your heels, that's how wide your stance will be. And then we use a stance angle of 30 to 35 degrees. We use a stance angle of 30 to 35 degrees.

And the reason for this is because it produces conformity with our criteria. It uses more muscle mass. And by that, just to clarify, you're talking about the position of the feet, right? Yes. Yes. The stance is heels at shoulder width, toes out at 30 to 35 degrees. And then when you squat, you keep your knees in line with your feet so that feet and knees and femurs are parallel. And the parallel nature of that alignment at 30 to 35 degrees of external rotation requires that your hips engage all of the musculature that produces external rotation. Now, all of that musculature is the three big glute bellies, as well as the internal,

the physical therapy muscles, I like to call them. The piriformis, the obturators, the gamelli, and the, I always forget the quadratus guy in there. I think he's the quadratus lumborum, but I don't really care. What I care about is that all of the muscle mass that produces external rotation is called into the squat. It's involved in the exercise if external rotation is a part of the execution. So we intentionally choose a stance that produces external rotation, thus involving the external rotator muscle mass in the exercise. This has another side effect. It produces a more complete activation of the AD ductors, the groin muscle, which when

that stance and when external rotation is involved in the movement, the adductors, the groin muscles, become very, very strong and effective hip extensors because of their anatomy. And you'll just have to look this up. So, in other words, if we are pointing our toes out at 30, 35 degrees at that stance width, and we're keeping our knees out in a line over the foot, knees out in a line over the foot. Then we are involving all of the muscle mass that produces that external rotation, the glutes and all the physical therapist muscles. And we're involving the AD doctors, the groin muscles in the squat. Whereas if you take the standard conventional wisdom, narrower stance, toes pointed, knees pointed straight ahead, you leave all of that muscle mass completely out of the movement pattern. And I don't think that's a good idea because I'd like to train as much muscle mass when I squat as I can so that I can lift more

weight and get stronger, strengthening all that muscle mass. So that's the reason for our stance differences. You know this works if you've ever had a groin injury and trained through it. Groin pulls are amazing little things. You have no idea how many things your adductors are involved in until you tear one of them. It's exquisitely painful, but you probably had one yourself. Fortunately, I haven't had an injury, but I've had very sore adductors that got in the way of squatting. I remember I had to work through that. I actually had to drop weight for a bit. If I remember, for about two months, I was just working through extreme soreness. This was the first time when I started to get up into the

low and mid 300s on my back squat. There was a period I may have been in a deficit at the time. I don't remember. There was just a period when for some reason, my hip flexors and my groin muscles, they were just very sore. And I actually had to back off on the weight and I had to let them recover and get strong enough to allow me to continue progressing. them recover and get strong enough to allow me to continue progressing. Hey, before we continue, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my best-selling health and fitness books.

My most popular ones are Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical hands-on blueprint for personal transformation, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find them anywhere online where you can buy books like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google play as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores. So again, that is bigger, leaner,, Stronger for men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation.

Oh, and one other thing is you can get any one of those audio books 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account. And that's a great way to make those pockets of downtime like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. Now, if you want to take Audible up on that offer and get one of my audiobooks for free, just go to legionathletics.com slash Audible and sign up for your account. So what are your thoughts on pause reps? I think they're useful for advanced lifters. thought on pause reps? I think they're useful for advanced lifters. I do them myself because a pause rep below parallel to a box allows me to stay out of my creaky old knees.

I tend to make mistakes because I train in here late at night by myself, and I tend to make mistakes with my form. Just like everyone else does, I need a coach. And if I'm in here by myself at night, what I do is squat to a box that is 12 and three quarter inches high, which puts me about a half inch below parallel. Then I pause on that box and then I drive my hips up. And then, and in doing so, I am able to stay out of my knees that I hurt my left knee doing this wrong about a year and a half ago. So I've just decided I'm going to do all my squats to a below parallel box with a pause. And why that's not good for novices should be obvious. I'm 62 years old.

I'm just barely held together with chewing gum and bailing wire. I think that, you know, the older you get, obviously, the more nuanced your training is going to have to be. But for the vast majority of people, they don't need to do a pause squat. They just need to squat. They just need to learn how to squat correctly and do it correctly. So that's what we coach. We don't use pause squats for many people. Now, later on, advanced lifters, once again, can do anything they want to do.

Makes sense. And what are your thoughts on pause reps without the box? They're real hard. So you're simply, you're getting down in the hole and you're pausing a few seconds. Yeah, they're difficult. They're difficult because they remove the stretch reflex, the rebound from the bottom of the squat. Yeah, you don't get the hamstring bounce, right? You don't get any bounce at all.

And it's not just the hamstrings you're bouncing off of. It's all of the posterior chain, all of the glutes, all the adductors, the quads, all of that muscle mass is involved in the stretch reflex if you produce a bounce out of the hole. So, pause squats, box squats, pin squats, all the variations of a squat that removes the stretch reflex makes the movement much harder because the stretch reflex increases mechanical efficiency of the squat to a gigantic extent. It's supposed to be in there. The stretch reflex is a normal human movement. Anytime we jump, we use a stretch reflex. Anytime we push on something hard in real life, we're using a stretch reflex. All of that movement pattern stuff is quite thoroughly dependent on the stretch reflex,

and so is the squat. And if we artificially remove it from the squat, that's a good way to increase the difficulty of the squat. But think of it like this. What is force production? If doing a pause squat reduces your ability to squat by 25%, just like going eight inches below parallel, does it have the ability to make you strong? No. It may be necessary later on for special reasons. It may be useful for an advanced lifter as an assistance exercise, depending on the particular nature of his squat training, but it does not have the capacity to allow you to lift as much weight. And therefore, it cannot make you as strong.

So it's been, I would do my heavy regular squats. And then simply because, I mean, I feel like, and it's not, I guess I can't say for sure. The reason why I was doing it for a period of time is that I was just trying to get stronger out of the hole. And I feel, and also just get more, I don't know, get used to, because I would actually still keep the weight heavy, just be fewer reps. You know, I was progressing on my squat nicely at that time, not necessarily because of pause squats, but it was something that I had read about. And I'm like, oh, interesting.

I'll try it. Well, I think everybody will try it after they've been training for four years. You need to be experienced at doing all kinds of things. But there really isn't a better way to distract a novice or an early intermediate trainee than to introduce a bunch of assistance exercises that have the net effect of lowering the amount of weight on the bar. Right. Totally agree. What about heels elevated on plates? That's something we see fairly often. Well, we don't see that as much as we used to in most gyms. I think that's gone away. A heel on a shoe is a useful thing for some lifters, depending on their anthropometry. I'll ask you to consider the case of femur-tibia ratio, the length of the femur to the tibia.

And in your mind, I want you to draw a person in a squat, at the bottom of the squat, who has a short femur and a long tibia. Where are his knees compared to a person with a long femur and a short tibia? You can see that the person with a long femur's knees are going to be forward of the person with a short femur. of the person with a short femur, right? And you can see that the knee position relative to the shin produces a different angle in the shank, that part of the leg dominated by the tibia. A person with a long femur is going to have a more horizontal shank angle than a person with a short femur. Oh, yeah. That's me. My knees, they just are more forward than a couple of guys in the office who have different legs and they're much more upright. Their tibias are much more upright at the bottom. Right. And you'd mentioned earlier that your femurs were long relative to your tibia. So,

if a guy is going to have an anthropometry that produces a more forward knee relative to his toes, because that's really what we're talking about here, then I don't see a point in elevating the heel for him because he's already, and the reason we might want to elevate a heel is to get more quadricep into the movement pattern. All right. Well, a guy with that anthropometry, with your anthropometry is already using a whole bunch of quad anyway, because below parallel, his knees are going to be more forward than the guy with short femurs and long tibias. Now, the guy with short femurs and long tibias at the bottom of a squat may very well see his knees

behind his toe at the same depth that you're at, two completely different tibia angles. And as a result, a person like that might find that even a one-inch heel on his lifting shoes helps him squat more weight because it more thoroughly activates the quads and adds that muscle mass in a little bit more to the squat that his anthropometry is interfering with, right? Now, long tibias and short femurs are typically what we see in sprinters. Have you ever noticed that sprinters, if you look at the last heat of the 100 meters at the Worlds,

you'll see that every one of those guys is built the same way. They've got short femurs and long tibias. And it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see why that might be very, very useful for a sprint. By the same token, it doesn't necessarily make for the best squatting. Best squatting is going to be effective with a more normalized anthropometry, neither long or short femurs relative to tibias. But if you have an anthropometry situation where you have a long femur relative to your tibia, a flat shoe works just fine. Plates under the heels are heel high. So I think you just have to make the judgment call. I recommend that most people are going – I say coach, in fact, all the time.

I wish I could get somebody to make shoes like this. I think about a 5'8 heel is optimum for most people to squat. It helps a little bit with quad push off the floor in both the squat and pulls off the floor, deadlifts and cleans too. Yeah. off the floor in both the squat and pulls off the floor, deadlifts and cleans too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, uh, I, that's actually one of the, I just want to transition into weightlifting shoes and get your thought. And I think you've pretty much covered it, but, you know, I've noticed, um, probably not so much because of the heel. Cause again, just how my body's built, but I find that I'm able to, uh, generate like a one. I like the

stable base of the, of the shoe. And I like the shoe and I like the torque that I can generate. And I've noticed a slight increase in performance with good lifting shoes with no apparent change in technique. I just am able to dig my feet into the ground and generate a bit more power. That is because lifting shoes' primary role is to produce stability between your foot and the floor. And stability increases the efficiency of the force production between your foot and the floor. It increases the efficiency of the force transfer between your foot and the floor. If you have a solid block under your feet and your feet are squeezed in tightly, stabilized laterally by a nice metatarsal strap. Just shut up and buy some shoes. This is not silly. They last for 10 years.

How about cues? I'd be curious as some of your cues or some of the cues that you recommend for, let's say, the knees starting to cave, the butt shooting out of the hole, the standard kind of mistakes, one leg, you feel like one leg is working harder than the other, stuff like that. First off, let's talk about what a cue actually is. When we coach really anything, what we coach, and let's just use the lifting example. If I'm going to coach lifting, I have to know what it is that I'm trying to coach. I have to have a personal experience with what I'm coaching. Just reading a book doesn't do it. I've got to know what actually the guy I'm trying to coach is going through under the bar. I have to use my own experience. I have to use the information

I've gathered from reading. So I've got to accumulate quite a bit of information in order to be able to coach. And then what I need to do is condense all of that information into a teaching method. When I take somebody out into the gym and teach them how to squat, I have a procedure that I go through that I've distilled from over 40 years of doing this. still from over 40 years of doing this. I can teach somebody how to squat in about five minutes with an extremely high degree of accuracy in about five minutes, because I've convinced all of my experience and all of my information into a method that very, very quickly puts somebody in the correct positions at the bottom of the squat and gets them out of that position effectively with the most effective force transfer to the load. Okay. So that's my teaching method. So I'm going to teach a guy how to do the squat. I teach him how to do it as he's squatting. He's taught under the bar,

his first set, empty bar, second set, empty bar. Then we put a little weight on it. And what I am doing during that process is I'm watching him do the thing I have taught him. I am gathering information about how he is executing the model of that movement pattern that I have taught him. And then I must communicate to him the corrections that he needs to hear in order to more accurately execute that movement pattern. Those corrections are cues. Those are the things that I've already taught him about the movement he is supposed to be doing that are essentially reminders of things he already knows.

Cues are reminders of things that we've already given him in terms of what he's supposed to be doing under the bar when I taught him how to do it during the teaching method. He learned all of that stuff. And now I'm reminding him to do the things that he needs to do to execute the movement pattern correctly. I see him making errors on. Okay. So a cue is a reminder to do something that I've already taught him how to do. That's how cues can be short. So looked at like this, not everybody needs the same cue. Not everybody will process the teaching method the same way. Not everybody will execute the teaching method perfectly. And as a result, cues are highly

personal. They're highly dependent on the coach-athlete relationship. All right, if I've just been coaching this guy five minutes, I'm going to see a different set of problems. He's going to show me a different set of problems that an advanced lifter who's been training 10 years is going to show me. So cues are going to vary pending on the history between the coach and the lifter. If I am being coached, for example, somebody sees my knees going too far forward. How many ways could a person trying to coach me tell me to not let my knees get too far forward?

Well, there's several things they could say. They could remind me of my back angle because a too vertical back angle is going to drop the knees too far forward. They could remind me of the knees themselves. They could say, shove your knees back on the way down. Knees back, knees back. They could say knees out. If there is a forward and adduction component to my knee problem, they could say knees out because if knees are going out, they're not going forward. They could remind me of my hips. They could remind me of weight on my feet. There's several different ways that all these things are interrelated. And depending on which of these interrelated things that we see the guy doing wrong and how

we know that he's going to interpret that cue, that might determine the cue that we're going to give him. Are there any cues that you find yourself that just are useful with most people for, again, some of the more common mistakes, like let's say shooting the hips up too quickly, right? The cues that are useful for most people are in the teaching method, right? So the most common error we see, and we've coached thousands of people through this process. We coach, this year we'll be doing 16 seminars with 30 people and we're we're coaching lots and lots of people all the time and the most common error we see in squatting is the tendency to try

to squat with too vertical the back because it's normal for most people to think that squat is legs squat is hips the squat is a hips movement and in order to get the most out of the hips and thereby accidentally get the most out of the leg the thereby accidentally get the most out of the leg, the back angle must be more horizontal than most people want it to be. This is why we put the bar down low and why we have to continually remind people to bend over. Present your hips to the floor. Present your chest to the floor. Point your nipples down.

There are several different ways to work with this back angle because if your back's too vertical, you can't drive the hips up out of the bottom, and hip drive is an inherent part of every heavy squat, whether you want it to be or not. There are no videos available of people squatting heavy weights without an initial hip extension, without the use of the hips as the way to get out of the bottom. Whether you've been taught not to do that or not, that's what you do. And it makes absolutely no sense to ignore that perfectly reasonable way to improve your ability under the bar to think correctly about what it is you're going to do with that movement pattern. As a result, hip drive is

the primary feature of effective squatting. And there are all of the stuff that goes into driving the hips up needs to be the thing that you as a coach get very good at getting out of your lifter. And there's many ways to interact with lifters, those that are our coaches. But squats are all basically the same. Squats are hips out of the bottom. They may all look different because of anthropometry, bar placement are all basically the same. Squats are hips out of the bottom. They may all look different because of anthropometry, bar placement, all that other stuff, but the human body squats one way. And this is why my experience in coaching the barbell lifts is the most important aspect of passing our certification. And it is the least accessible thing that we can

provide with a person we're trying to train. You just have to go coach a whole bunch of people, develop your ability to watch what they're doing wrong, to explain effectively first what to do, to watch what they're doing wrong, and then to effectively communicate through cues. I just feel as though Ripito is teaching a good morning. I just feel as though Ripito is teaching a good morning. I just feel as though Ripito is teaching a good morning. Well, he's not. So what you feel is irrelevant. Deal with it.

Okay, last question for you. Safety bar. I can see a role for it. I don't have one here. I've never found it. What's that role? I've never found it necessary myself. Well, a guy with one arm, he could probably squat more effectively with a safety bar.

A guy with a bad shoulder injury, a guy with terribly arthritic shoulders, some kind of a problem with interfacing with the bar with his hands and upper back is what a safety bar is for. But what does the safety bar do to the back angle? It makes it more vertical, doesn't it? It turns a squat into a front squat. And what do we want to do? We want a more horizontal back angle

so we can do more muscle mass over a longer range of motion. So I don't see a point in using a safety squat bar unless there are special considerations with respect to injuries. Yeah, I see no point in front of it. It's unfortunate that Olympic lifters have to do those, but they have no choice, but they're a terrible exercise. Great.

Okay. So last thing, just for fun, I don't have any other squad. Those are all my squad questions. It's not, we can't, we can't complete one of our interviews without you ranting about

something. So, so what's something that is, what's, what's, what's something that is just annoying the shit out of you these days? What's something that you wish were not so? Just one thing, quick.

Just give us something. Make us laugh. Functional training. Still functional training. It's still functional training. The worst thing that's ever happened to strength and conditioning is functional training. We were talking about this.

What's the state of functional training now? Has it changed since the last time? As far as I can tell, it's the norm. All of the D1 and pro teams are using some version of functional training, apparently in the complete absence of the ability to think logically about any of this. Now, when you run, for example, what are you doing? You're using one leg at a time, right? Well, what they want to say, of course, is that if you're using one leg at a time, then we ought to train one leg at a time. So we get better at using one leg at a time. This is so preposterous.

I can't. Do you want to be strong or not? Does an NFL football player need to be strong? Now, if all NFL players have agreed that they're not going to worry about being strong, then everything is fine. But if we come to the awareness that we need to be strong, what's the best way to get strong? On one leg at a time? What are you doing on one leg at a time? Anytime you're on one leg, what are you doing? Or you're going somewhere, right? You're moving forward. And what are you

doing with respect to your body's center of mass in relationship to your body's center of balance? You're translating it forward across the ground. In other words, you are unstable when you're on one leg at a time. You are unstable. Can you produce strength under conditions of instability? Well, no, that's not what it's for. It's for moving across the ground. You get strong on both legs at a time. And now you take your stronger body and you move it through positions of instability. And it works better because it's stronger because you got that way on both legs and so that's so that's a big thing that i'm doing the unilateral you know doing split squats over barbell squats right it's a basis of the whole thing you know they have to you know the best functional trainers are the ones that have figured out novel approaches to doing shit

with light weights on one leg at a time. And I just don't see the, I mean, the only way anybody gets away with it is that everybody in professional and D1 sports has somehow bought into this nonsense. And so since none of them are squatting 700 now, when they ought to be, a lot of them can do that without a lot of training. These guys are freaks,

right? But if we all decide that we're just going to do one leg at a time and nobody ever gets their deadlift up over 500, then, you know, A, it works just fine because everybody's weak. And B, when they get hurt, you know, because their knees are not nice and strong, like I just explained to you about front squats, when their knees hurt, I think it's probably good because that enables a guy down the bench to do your job that he wouldn't be doing had you actually just done your squats and deadlifts. So I guess it's good. It makes an opportunity. I mean, there's also probably something to be said for – it's almost like a survivorship kind of bias.

Because like you said, these people that – these guys are super freak athletes. And they're going to be super freaks. They've been super freaks their entire life. It doesn't really matter what they do or don't do. Now, they could be more freakish. But yeah, you're looking at... If you got a whole locker room full of guys with 36-inch verticals, this is another thing we always talk about. If you got a locker room full of guys with 36-inch verticals, it automatically looks like you know what the hell you're doing, doesn't it? Because guess what always happens with guys that have 36 inch verticals when they go from 18 years

old to 22 years old, they get stronger, they get bigger because they're still growing and you get to credit, even though all you've had them do is dancing around on BOSU balls with 10 pound dumbbells. Was there a time when, and this is something you know a lot more about that world, about this whole world we're talking about than I do. Was there a time when that was not the case, when it was more just about traditional strength training than football? Back in the 70s, I think it was, back in the 70s. And do you know why it moved away?

Did people think the traditional strength training was riskier or was not as effective as what is being done now? How did that happen? Well, I don't know the actual mechanism by which this took place, but I suspect it has something to do with the training programs at colleges and universities that generated the strength coaches. Who's dominating those programs now? You know, the the certifying bodies, the NSCA is the one that's dominating all of this. You can't even you you have a CSCS just by virtue of the fact you graduated with a PE degree. Now, what changes have you seen in the NSCA since Boyd Epley established it back in the 70s? Can you name one important change in the NSCA?

I can. I mean, I can. I can. The physical therapists have taken over the damn thing. See, this is a whole world I'm not familiar with. What do the physical therapists do? Rehab. And what is functional training based on? Rehab. It's not based on anything that ever got anybody strong. How many people have the NSCA made strong? How many 600-pound deadlifts have CSCSs generated over the past 20 years? They don't even do the exercise.

Yeah, I think it's all gone down the toilet as a result of that. I mean, once we're all operating under the same assumption, then it gets real hard to change that paradigm, doesn't it? Yeah, you just get stuck in the cave, right? And that's where they are. Interesting. Interesting. All right. Well, that's everything that I had.

We've talked about squatting. We've talked about functional training, one of your favorites. We even talked about abs, two of your favorite things. In fact, functional training is the best way to get abs. I want, uh, is that that's correct. Perfect. No, this has been great, Mark. I really appreciate it. Uh, super, super informative. Thank you for taking the time. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet,

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