Weights and Plates Podcast - #53 - A Chat with Uncle Rip on Food, The Great Fat Lie, and The Obsession with Leanness

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

Dr. Robert and Coach Trent recently met up in Wichita Falls, TX, the home of the Starting Strength organization, for a strengthlifting meet at Wichita Falls Athletic Club. While they were there they sat down with the man himself, Mark Rippetoe, author of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training 3rd Edition and many other books and articles, to chat about how much the food landscape has changed in his liftetime.   They also touch on the obsession with leanness in modern popular media, and how the average individual can look much better in a t-shirt with proper strength training, but not random trips to the gym to catch a pump.   You can find Rip and all his books, articles, videos, podcasts, and more at the mainsite for Starting Strength: https://startingstrength.com     Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host and a special guest. Yeah, that's right. That's right. We are, well, I was about to say we're live here in Wichita Falls, Texas, but we're never live. We're never live. Yeah, this is pre-recorded. Live is for stupid people. Yeah, yeah. We can't say what we need to say live. No.

So we pre-record this, but yeah, we have special guest Mark Ripito on the podcast. Uncle Rip, as we call him. And yeah, we want to talk about, well, we just kind of want to bullshit today about physical culture, the food situation in the U.S., how we got here, if we can untangle that knot. Well, we have touched on these topics in passing through various episodes. And well, we're here for a meet, as we talked about in our last one, and we're both physically here, so we figured we'd get you on since we mentioned you quite a bit. Neither of us would be hosting this podcast if it weren't for

you and your awesome content. But in talking about that, Trent suggested we should kind of go a different direction since you've kind of, you know, you've written the book, you've told the story a million times, you have your own show. So we wanted to get some perspective on how things were from a training perspective, you know, years ago when you used to train and when you were first getting into it. into it, and as well as the food, because on the episode that I did with you on your show, we quickly talked about how the grocery store 40, 50 years ago had fewer options than the grocery store today. You said now there's 50 different types of whatever, you know, pick your food. And Trent thought it'd be a good idea to talk about these things because this is just not really talked about enough these days. We're too busy worried about silly bullshit like, you know, GMOs and veganism and all this other shit.

RPE. Yeah. Since that came up recently. RPE, yeah. Yeah, I mean, so that's kind of where I wanted to start is when you were growing up, if we go back there. All right. What was your food situation like? So if I remember correctly, your mom and dad had a cafe, right? My dad operated a cafe in Wichita Falls, and it was an old-school Texas cafe with, uh, is a plate lunch place.

So we had a steam table and he would have various things prepared on the steam table. He'd have three or four vegetables on the steam table. I'd have greens, fried squash, boiled squash, mashed potatoes, green beans, know various things yeah and we he would have chicken fried steak and hamburger steak and had the chicken fried steak made up in advance on the steam table hamburger steak was made to order uh he'd have a roast beef in the ice box Uh, he'd have a roast beef in the ice box and, uh, you'd order that. He'd slice it off, put it on the grill on the griddle. He called it a griddle and warmed it up and, uh, ham, same thing, order hamsteak and, and all kinds of different things like that. And so the menu, and there was a featured item every day that was,

for example, Tuesday was sirloin tips. Yeah. So he'd made up a batch of sirloin tips that day. And all of this in his cafe was busy. And so that was kind of the norm there weren't very many chain franchise places to eat right in wichita falls back in the 60s there was a dairy queen one dairy queen the te Texas stop sign. Right around the corner from the cafe. Right around the corner. And it was all right.

You know, way better than it is now. Yeah. Real milk. Yeah. And I think they had that. The term Dairy Queen actually refers to their ice cream. The substance Dairy Queen is their soft serve ice cream. Oh, okay.

Okay. I didn't realize that. Yeah. That's what that term is. And then they named the place after that. Oh, interesting. I didn't know that. And I don't actually know if it's made out of real milk.

Yeah. I don't know. Chances are low. It may be. It may be millerine. You know, it may be the millerine version of the. There might be trace amounts in there. There might be.

I mean, even Blue Bell has kind of, you know, I'm only 34, but Blue Bell has gone downhill in my lifetime. Blue Bell's not near as good as it used to be. No. I remember when I was a kid. Yeah. Rich, creamy. Oh, it as good as it used to be. No. I remember when I was a kid, it was rich, creamy. Oh, it was good ice cream.

Yeah. Right now, the best ice cream, as far as I'm concerned, is Brahms. Yes. Yeah. Brahms is a fairly large regional chain out of Tulsa. Brahms probably has 70 or 80 stores. That many. Yeah.

I didn't know it was that many yeah they're a very interesting company they um the restaurants themselves are pretty aggravating because it's hard to get intelligent help right you know but as far as their as their products are concerned that's damn good ice cream. Well, they make it all right there. They have their own dairy herd, and they have all of their dairy in is in-house. It's a vertical operation. Yeah, and when you go in, they have, I think most Brahms have a little, you know, miniature grocery store, essentially. Yes, they do. And they sell butter and cheese and eggs and all kind of things, cottage cheese and yogurt. Yeah. All of which, if they can make it, they do. And they sell butter and cheese and eggs and all kind of things. Cottage cheese and yogurt. Yeah. All of which, if they can make it, they make themselves in Tulsa.

That's interesting. I didn't realize that they had their own herd and supply. Yes, they do. Very famous for that. I know where I need to go next. Yeah, well, it's funny. I actually, right now, I have five lifters that are coming to the strength lifting meet tomorrow. And some of them from out of state, you know, they want to go to Whataburger. And I said, go to Brahms. Go to Brahms. Go down to Brahms and get a triple with cheese, four pieces of cheese, and then get a butter pecan shake.

Oh, I haven't had the butter pecan. Oh. Oh. All right. Well, that's where we're going haven't had the butter pecan. Oh. Oh. All right. Well, that's where we're going. That's where we're going. Yeah. Oh, it's good.

The adult flavor down there is black walnut. Okay. That's for adults. Yeah. It's not very sweet. For discerning tastes. For discerning tastes, the black walnut is the preferred. But they've got their goddamn German chocolate ice cream.

It's real good. It's good. Yeah, if you haven't had it before, you've got to try it. No, I have. It's real good. It's been a long time. Get a dip of butter pecan, a dip of German chocolate. All right.

Yeah, all right. I'm in. That's some excellent shit. I'm in. But their hamburgers are pretty good. Now, they don't put mustard on them. No. They've got some kind of sauce

but it's it's very very similar to five guys yes very very simple less greasy less greasy but it's it's the same kind of basic style of hamburger than five guys you like five guys rip not particularly i'd rather have brahms i've never wasted my time with five guys yeah the crinkle cut fry as well yeah yeah that's yeah that's good stuff oh they're you know brahms are real good but see back in the day we brahms are relatively recent development i think we've had a brahms here for oh probably 25 years you, something to that effect. But back when I was a kid, all of the places to eat were pretty much, there were a few chains. There was a Piccadilly cafeteria.

But all of the restaurants were independent and locally owned. There was a chain called Pioneer Restaurants that were owned by the McBride family here. And they had eight or nine places around town to eat. And it was good. It was good. There were good barbecue places back then. And they were, were these restaurants like, so where did your dad order the food from? So where was he getting his beef and his – He got his beef from a plant out on Shepherd Access Road, Central Packing Company.

He used – I believe Cisco was in existence back then, and the Cisco man had come by a couple of times a week. Yeah. And then if he needed something, he would send me over to the grocery store across the street and i'd buy what we needed at the grocery store and bring it back sure and do you remember at the time was he cooking with like lard tallow i mean seed oils weren't really a thing he used margarine okay. Okay. One pound blocks of margarine. I remember those being in the inventory.

He didn't use butter. He used margarine. Yeah. Yeah. Because you have to remember these people all grew up in the Depression. And everything has to be cheap. Yeah. Nothing can be wasted.

Right. Nothing can be wasted. When I cracked an egg, I was taught to scoop all of the white out from the inside of the eggshell into the pen. Because there's quite a bit that will stay in, especially if the egg's real fresh. So that white will stick to the inside, and I was taught to take my finger and run it around in there and get all of the white out of the egg. So, yeah. That was done. Oleo, right? That was the thing, right?

Oleo margarine was the fake butter after World War II, during World War II. I haven't heard that word in a long time. Yeah, that's, yeah. It's butter-flavored grease is what it is. Sure. And it was vegetable oil. It's butter-flavored grease is what it is. Sure. And it was vegetable oil. It was not lard. Right, yeah, they kind of, like, de-rancified.

Butter-flavored lard would really be pretty good. Well, yeah. It'd be better for you. Sure. But this is before anybody knew anything about trans fats and stuff. So, yeah, so I have an idea of where I want to go with this, but I want to touch on one more topic. I want to elaborate more on what we talked about in terms of the grocery in our episode on Starting Strength Radio, where you said there were fewer options back then than there were

than there are today, and how that has probably influenced a lot of the shit people are eating so can you uh kind of tell us more about the grocery store experience if you went in a grocery store back in 1965 1966 there might be three kinds of apples maybe maybe just two maybe delicious and golden and delicious. And they had oranges. And they might have tangerines. Been on time of the year. They might have, well, probably not.

Probably just one kind of grapes. Had Thompson seedless grapes, and that was all. Peaches, or they grow peaches around here, so there might be some local peaches and some California peaches. But the local peaches around here are real good. Still? Real good. They smell like poisonous levels of peach. Right? So I'm familiar with the Parker County peach, but...

Parker County down by Mineral Wells, you mean? Yes. Yeah, they make some good peaches down there. They make real good peaches down there at Fredericksburg. Georgia is famous for peaches, but Texas has better peaches than Georgia. Yeah, I can't say I've had... You know, I live next door to Georgia now in Chattanooga, right over the state line, just a few miles away, and can't say I'm impressed with to Georgia now in Chattanooga, right over the state line, just a few miles away.

And I can't say I'm impressed with the Georgia peach. They're just not as good as Texas peaches. They're kind of hard. They're hard. And you would really, to be fair, you'd have to go out in the country to a fruit stand and buy them off of the fruit stand. Or go to the orchardard and if they're selling them across the desk at the orchard yeah then you'd actually know and they're probably good they're probably real good but the ones oh my god i stopped one time coming back from austin and

stopped at a fruit stand and i was kind of hungry so i bought five peaches and I got in the car and I picked one of them up and I ate the damn thing. And I stomped on the fucking brakes and went back and bought like a half bushel of the damn thing. Oh, it was just, you know, you've had a peach that was just in your nose and it's almost bitter. It smells so good. Oh, shit. that's how good these were so you might had you know in the grocery store you might have had you probably had navel oranges and temple oranges you had two or three kinds of apples you had bananas you had maybe pears depending on the time of year, and you'd have Thompson seedless grapes.

This is before they had the red seedless grapes. All they had was Thompson seedless grapes. They didn't usually have Concord grapes, but every once in a while you'd find some Concord grapes. Now you can't find Concord grapes in the store. But then you can find them, and those are so much better than Thompson seedless grapes, but you're just tasteless little lumps of sugar, you know. Yeah.

I don't know that I've had a Concord grape. I've got a real thick skin, thick purple skin, and the inside of the grape is not tight like a Thompson, and it's got seeds okay yeah and i mean just eat them okay yeah i think i might have had this before yeah this is you wouldn't forget grapes yeah actual that type of grape is there's there's two or three kinds of those grapes i don't remember the genus uh maybe they're vinifera. I can't remember, but there's some green ones and there's purple ones and there's two or three guys. And they've all got a thick skin. They've all got seeds.

They've all got kind of an egg white consistency flesh to them, and they're real good. You might have seen those. You might every once in a while have seen apricots in the store. But the produce department in the store is probably the most different thing now in the 21st century than it was back 50, 60 years ago. There's just so much bigger selection in the produce department now. Right. And even little shitty stores will have a pretty good produce department. Sure. You know, amazingly enough, sometimes Walmarts will have a real good produce department because of the

turnover. They sell so much out the door. there's just not any bad shit on the shelf. Right. Because it all runs out the front door all the time. And it's a bunch of changeover, and there's a lot of fresh stuff. You can shop at the produce department at a Walmart. Unless you're just being a shithead, you get, you know, decent fruit and vegetables at Walmart. It's funny you mention that.

So my mother's husband is a manager at a Walmart in Chicago, and he had told me that – because I used to refuse to eat this shit because I tried it when I was a college kid. It tasted like shit. I wouldn't buy produce there. And he said that apparently it was a company-wide initiative to step that up. They have pretty much got a damn good line on produce in Walmart Corporation. They've got their vegetables. They've got five or six different ways to buy carrots in there. I mean, they've always got parsnips. They've always got rutabagas,

stuff that is seasonal everywhere else. Walmart seems to have in stock. They've got four different kinds of potatoes in there. There was one kind of potato 50 years ago. It was russet potatoes. Russet, yeah. And then you started to see some red potatoes. But these wonderful yellow potatoes we take for granted now weren't in existence back then.

Sure. And it's one of the things I'm observing about what you're talking about, the grocery store as a kid, is you had varieties of fruits and vegetables, which it sounds like they were pretty good. They were. They tasted good. They were fine. And I think that's one of the problems today. Case in point, a delicious apple back then was a crispy, wonderful thing.

Yeah. You buy delicious apples right now for 98 cents a pound, you're going to throw the damn things away. Yeah. They're all mealy. They taste like shit. And they look like apples, but they are not anything like what we used to get. Right. Yeah. but they are not anything like what we used to get. Right, yeah.

I don't know what happened there, but I wouldn't believe you except for the fact that I've had one good Red Delicious in my life. Yeah. And that, yeah, I believe it. I have a friend in Colorado that's got a big, giant, 100-year-old Red Delicious apple tree in his backyard. Now, those are not like what you find in the store sure yeah those are not the same thing but the ones in the store are shitty yeah but they've got stuff out like these cosmic crisps you ever had those things oh those are good pink ladies

pink ladies and yeah fuji's used to be good 20 years ago. They're kind of on the way out now. They've been overbred or whatever. I had one called an Envy. Have you seen those? Envy. Yeah. Envy apples are real good.

They're real good, yeah. Jazz apples are real good. Opal. Crispy, sweet. Opal, those yellow apples. Yeah. Those are damn good. I haven't tried those.

I mean, you know, so that is a huge improvement over what was in the produce department. And Apple's industry is that those guys have got their heads out of their ass. They are making a nice product these days. And that's genetic engineering. Now, you ideological purists that don't like GMO, well, aren't you precious? Aren't you just so sweet that you've got the luxury of sitting in your $250,000 house with all this bounty around you that you bought at the fancy Whole Foods store and everything and make fun of genetically modified organisms that keep people from dying, that keep people from starving to death.

Genetically modified organisms keep people from starving to death, that would otherwise starve to death. And I'm not concerned with your moral posturing. Moral posturing. You know? So I'm interested now to know, if you walk in the middle of the grocery store in 1966, you know, how much packaged food do you see? Oh, you know, Fritos and, you know, there's all kind of canned stuff. I mean, we've always had packages. Yeah.

Packages are, if you can't eat it fresh, you have to eat it packaged. Right. Right? Yeah. Now, what is wrong with packaged frozen corn? Not a goddamn thing. Right. Packaged frozen English peas and black-eyed peas and green beans and carrots and okra packaged frozen okra.

Yeah, I want that. I want access to that food. There is very little difference between frozen corn and fresh corn. Yeah. Sometimes better. Very little difference. Well, you know how they do this, right? They go out and if you're going to harvest a field of corn and you're going to grow it in proximity to the plant you go out you combine the corn you bring

the ears in to the plant they strip the corn off the ears and they freeze it yes right at the right now they freeze it as opposed to selling the ears of corn in the store. The ears of corn stripped and seeded, you know, into the bag are fresher than the ears of corn you're buying at the store fresh. Right. Yeah, sure. Right, and that's true of all of those vegetables. Yeah, absolutely. Because California is set up to do that

yeah they're set up to deliver from the field to the plant immediately and it's all high quality stuff so it's genetically modified so the segue and i know where i want to go with this so the the way that i've the context in which I've had to deal with this shit is in the context of body composition. Because somehow they've tied all this shit to we're fat because of all these various forms of food technology. And my response – We're fat because – is Coca-Cola a food technology? Oh, save that. That's coming.

Coke is – oh, I got a thought on that. So without knowing anything, my common sense was thinking – my immediate common sense thought was these fucking people are drinking Coke, eating donuts, pizza, all sorts of other shit in excess. And they're worried about GMO when most fucking people in this country don't even eat fruits and vegetables. Right. That's true. And that's one of the GMO fruits. You don't eat fruits and vegetables because you're worried about GMO. You are truly a stupid son of a bitch. Truly, truly stupid. But we were just talking about this at the gym. The new thing now is, I don't think it's a new thing because when I did your podcast, there's a comment on YouTube from some guy saying fiber is shit, literally shit. You don't need it. And there's this whole- You don't need fiber.

Anyhow, I've worked- All right. Yeah. Well, maybe you don't. Maybe you do. Maybe you don't. Maybe you don't. But you don't like fried okra? Oh, God, yeah. You don't like fried okra? What's wrong with you? I do. It's not something I eat all the time, but I like it. So I worked in a clinical setting with dialysis patients, and they have some of the worst diets. And I've had a lot of fat loss clients that have hired me that are very obese. And fruits and vegetables are rarely the fucking problem.

Fresh meat is rarely the fucking problem. No, sugar is the problem coke so soft drinks are the 95 percent of the time somebody that's morbidly ass obese buys one gallon containers of sugared soft drinks right i, we've all been at the store and watched these big waddling tubs of shit push their grocery basket up to the checkout and what's in it. Next time you see a big waddly tub of shit at the checkout counter, look in his basket. Whatever's in his basket, don't eat that. Whatever is in his basket, don't eat that. That's good advice.

I like that. That's a good approach. It is. So I had a client from Texas, and I was talking to him on the phone. I cited a conversation you and I had about that. Coke is why they're 300, 400 pounds. And he stopped me and said, in the state of Texas, all soda is Coke. That's why Rip said that. That's right. No, in the state of Texas, all soda is Coke. That's why Rip said that.

That's right. No, in the state of Texas, if I say Coke, you know, I'd say we're driving down to Austin. I think I'm going to stop and get a Coke. And you want to get me a Coke, and you say, yeah, what do you want? I say, oh, Dr. Pepper. Yeah, well, I was about to say, if you don't specify, they're going to assume Dr. Pepper. Yeah, because I don't drink Cokes. No. Hell, it might have GMO in it. Right. Artificial sweeteners. Yeah, right. Artificial sweeteners. So going back, a lot of the foods that you mentioned that people ate were high in fat. We've talked about this before, you know, in the 80s, low fat became the thing. Now keto a thing so you know i've asked other people from that era the same question

i kind of get the same answer were there a lot of fat people running around back then not as many as not half as many as there are now that's not half as many as there are now yeah and that's what the epidemiology says and that's one of those cases where it lines up passes a smell test you know we see it as is the smell test what what fat is not the problem dietary fat is not the problem it never has been a problem dietary sugar is the problem and when we assign the dietary fat the responsibility of being the problem what is everybody else going to eat now sharp carbs right they're going to eat carbs. And when you eat a bunch of carbs, some of it's going to be a bunch of sugar. And you're going to be fat.

And that's all there is to it. And I mean you go in anywhere and half of the goddamn people in the building are fat. Yes. Yeah. And I don't think that's an exaggeration. No. I mean a quarter of them are obese. Morbidly. Yeah, And I don't think that's an exaggeration. No. I mean, a quarter of them are obese. Morbidly.

Morbidly. Yeah. A quarter of 25% of the people in a store of any type right now are morbidly obese. Way over 30% body fat. Yeah. Way over 30%. I think that's around the figure I last read a few years ago when I was doing research on it. But I'm not unclear about why that is. Right.

You know, you have all these fucking people running around talking about how fat is the – dietary fat is evil and shit. fat is evil and shit you know covert bailey and all these people running around talking about how you know fit or fat eating fat's terrible for you eating fat well you're good fat if you eat fat eating fat causes heart disease you know but you know and and so you you hypnotize a couple of generations of people into thinking that snack wells are the answer. Yeah. That's why I was asking about the grocery store. When you're a kid, what kind of packaged food was there? And you're talking about canned foods, frozen peas.

Oh, we had cookies. Yeah, but there was cookies. There's not aisles and aisles full of devil's food. No, there wasn't aisles and aisles full of cookies. There wasn not aisles and aisles full of devil's food. No, there wasn't aisles and aisles full of cookies. There wasn't aisles and aisles full of chips. There wasn't aisles and aisles full to the brim with packaged forms of carbohydrate. No, there weren't. When did you see that change? And potato chips and maybe some pork skins.

Mm-hmm. And that's probably all. There was crackers. Mm-hmm. Right. And crackers, to me, still means Nabisco saltines. Right. You know, we had Ritz crackers. Those were in existence at the time.

So were the packages, they were smaller back then, correct back then correct oh i think uh for some of the things there's four sleeves of a the visco salty now there's a recent decent development in saltine crackers they started packing those things instead of a sleeve this long they started packaging them in the box with double the sleeves this long. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because you eat a sleeve at a time. Yeah. Right, of course. So that makes sense.

That's a wonderful development. But in terms of the snack stuff, the types of cookies that were in existence back then, there's Oreos, and keebler had those wonderful little pecan sandies which were oh yeah those are those are shortbread pecan flavored shortbread those are good hard to only eat one of those damn things but as far as a bunch of different cookies and you know oatmeal raisin stuff they had those They had three or four other kinds, but there wasn't infinite variety. Right. Because when you make fat the villain and you make carbs the friend, then you give yourself permission to eat a bunch of fucking sugar,

and that's what you do. And then one day you wake up and you're 38% body fat, and God damn it if you don't understand why that is. But then now, in recent development, it's moved the other way. And when people are demonizing carbs, they'll say, oh, I'm eating too much rice. And then I'll start looking at everything else they're eating in addition to the rice. Let me invite you to think about this a different way okay which is worse demonizing carbs or demonizing fat don't just immediately answer i know what your answer is i know what my answer is yeah

and we've just demonstrated that I'm correct. Because when you started demonizing fat. You brought a whole new slew of foods in that weren't brought a whole bunch of sugar into everybody's diet. And now what has happened to the rate of type two across the population? Skyrocketed. Skyrocketed. Yeah. So I guess the problem that I run into when I'm working with people, and there's two problems, and we'll get to the second one, which I know you're going to love to rip into. The first one is they're afraid of carbs that are necessary to facilitate effective training. And there's a few reasons for that. But when I...

Yeah, there's a bunch of physiology. I mean, carbs are necessary if you're going to train. You can't train on a no-carb diet. I know this for a fact. You've tried it. We've all tried it. We've all tried it, and it can't be done. We all know it can't be done. If you're going to train heavy, you've got to eat some carbs. You've got to time them correctly, and you've got to eat more than you think you need, but you've got to have carbs. But I'm talking about population wide right what is more harmful sugar or fat i'd say sugar yeah obviously yeah right sugar is not a normal substance and fat is dietary fat is a part of every animal that we've ever eaten and we've eaten the fat because it's a dense source of calories and a long time

ago that was an extremely important fact you didn't waste any part of the animal you killed because you needed the calories but with the invention of sugar right and you know it does well we're talking about sugar we're not talking about rice and pasta complex carbs no right we're not talking about sugar. We're not talking about rice and pasta and potatoes. No, we're not talking about complex carbs. No. We're talking about sugar. Complex carbs don't make people fat. Sugar makes people fat.

Well, that's what people believe right now. People that believe that are bodybuilders or something. I don't know what the hell they are. Quasi-bodybuilders. Yeah, quasi-bodybuilders. So that's the next half of that argument. The expectation for leanness has changed. And this is what Trent wanted to touch on in this podcast.

Weeder magazines on the checkout shelves changed everybody's perspective on what leanness is supposed to look like. All right. Now, people make fun of me all the time because I'm fat. You're a fat guy. Fat. Ripito, everybody's program, everybody that does his program gets fat ripto everybody's program everybody's everybody that does his program gets fat because ripto's program makes you fat and ripto's fat and fat's bad blah blah blah on and on and on and on all right look i'm not that fat all right i'm 67 years old. I eat whatever the fuck I want to eat. I drink too much. I freely admit this,

but I am, I am not anywhere North of 25% body fat and I don't care. Right. Yeah. I don't care. I'm not a 35 year old guy in a bar. Exactly. I was about to say, yeah. If I've got a little belly on me, but I am not, you're not going to find a skin fold on me except right around my navel that's in excess of 25 millimeters. Right. Yeah. I'm sorry I'm not that fat.

You know, I've got this belly because I'm 67. Sure. You'll have a belly when you're 67 too you know that's always happened it's always happened everybody that's 67 that's not starving to death in a third world country has a belly there's nothing wrong with having a belly. I had a girl tell me this. I remember, I remember this like it was yesterday. And I just recently saw this lady at a wedding last year. All right. Guy at the gym guy used to be a member of the gym used to date this lady. this lady and and you know she's probably seven or eight years older than me and uh and she was a responsible wonderful single woman at the time she's probably 45 and was probably vicious probably a vicious monster right and i was talking to her one evening and and i don't know how the subject came up but she said you know i don't i don't mind a belly on a man and i was you don't mind a belly or you

don't mind if a guy is fat she said i don't want a giant fat hog but i'm just talking about a little belly on a man that's not offensive at all right and this lady was a nice looking gal and here she is telling me challenging at the time my deeply held convictions about male aesthetics. And she said, I don't mind a little belly on a man. I think it's sexy. That's what she told me. Yeah. I'm not surprised. You know, at the time, I was.

Sure, yeah. At the time, I was, but I've heard from too many other women since then that, all right, what attracts a uh a 50 year old woman what attracts a 50 year old woman well she wants somebody that's accomplished some things yeah right she wants an accomplished guy. She wants the money. Security. It represents security and accomplishment. Understandable.

But the belly goes along with the accomplishment and the money. And the security, the man is comfortable. How has he made himself comfortable? This is reminding me of Shakespeare, the seven ages of man, right? Belly with fair cape and lined. Well, I had an Indian tell me that in India, they think you're poor if you're skinny. You've got abs. Yeah, abs.

A lot of cultures are that way still. And what she was saying was the same thing. You know, if you're worth a fuck, when you're 50 years old, you're going to have a little belly. Yeah. And what is the first thing you think about a guy who's 40 years old who's got razor abs? Oh, yeah. You think the guy's a psycho. Narcissist, yeah.

He's a narcissistic fuck. Right. You think the guy's a psycho. Narcissist, yeah. He's a narcissistic fuck. Right. You know? He's so concentrated on his physical appearance.

Yeah. That he's probably not paying any attention to yours. Right, exactly. They love themselves that much. You know, women don't. I had to tell a mutual friend of ours this the other day. I was on the phone with her, and I'm like, if he has abs at 65, he's mentally ill. He's fucked up.

He's mentally ill. Yeah. Yeah. If he's showing you his abs when he's 65, get the fuck away from the guy. Or he was born that way, and these people are fucking rare. They're very, very rare persons born with six percent body fat i know a guy it happens but those kind of guys tend to die in famines you know like your brother yeah my brother is born with what 11 10 naturally yeah but that's not that's not the norm no and uh yeah so i i i saw this lady at this wedding and i thought you know i

all came back to me and i thought you know you've that was a very insightful thing you told me all those years ago and i appreciate that yeah you know how old were you when you when she told you that i was probably 35 or 36 7 somewhere in there yeah Yeah. Probably 30 years ago, this one. So when I met Christy, I was probably like 9% body fat at the time. It was six years ago. And I started putting the weight on after that, and she said that she did not like when I was that lean because it made her insecure about her own body. That was insightful.

There you go. Well, you know, I mean, you can understand that. I don't like the fact that she was insecure about herself, but by the same token, you can see how that might operate. And she had visible abs herself. If she was looking at your abs and seeing an obsession in you. Right. Because now it's a non-issue. No, it's still an issue,

and I just told you about that about an hour ago. All right, now didn't I? I don't have visible labs right now. No, but you need to weigh 205, and you need to shut the fuck up and go ahead and do it. Now, all the comments from the haters, I hear them right now.

Rip, tell the guy to get to 205. I'm not telling you to get to 205 and do it. Now, all the comments from the haters, I hear them right now. Yeah. Telling the guy to get to 205. I'm not telling you to get to 205 and not train. That's not the point. Exactly. That's not the fucking point. The point is that the body weight facilitates your training. And if you're strong, you're big. Sorry.

Yep. Just, you know. A hundred percent. You know, I've had a kid back in September and been busy as fuck trying to build out a little bit of a homestead on our little property in Tennessee. And I've dropped, you know, 10, 12 pounds. And what do you know? My squats dropped like a rock. Yeah, it does.

I'm not a big guy to begin with, so I didn't have a whole lot to lose. Right. Yeah, absolutely. But you know, you need to gain, you need to be as big as you can without being a fat pile of shit. Right. Now I'm, I'm not a fat pile of shit. I probably weigh 235. I'm 5'8". I weigh 235. I'm 67. And that's not, I mean, when you, when you competed in powerlifting, when I competed in powerlifting, what was your weight class back then? I was in the 220 weight class, and it's the biggest mistake I ever made. Okay. Because my coach was about half bodybuilder, and I got wrong advice. If I had it to do over, I would have been 242, and I would have totaled another 150 pounds at 242 i believe that sure you know i would have

actually been an effective lifter at 242. so yeah because that's 220 i was probably that's probably 11 12 body fat at 220. which is stupid i've seen the the pictures. He's not lying. Which is stupid for a 220-pound power lifter. For 5'8", 220, no, no, that's not the way it works. Ed Cohen did his best total at 242, and he's 5'5". Right, I was about to say that. Yeah, he's 5'5". And he was 242. Now, you don't stay that way forever,

but had I been serious about this and I had been listening to the right guy, I would have gone on up to 242 and I would have squatted 675 or 7. I would have benched 4 1⁄4, 435 maybe, and I would have deadlifted 7 1⁄4 at that other body weight. But no, I didn and you know didn't know right i didn't know i had the pleasure and rare opportunity of looking through rips old training logs one night at the gym a few years back and what i saw was 220 down to 198 up to 220 and in between knees knees right i can't remember the other thing i was injured all shit was always hurting in that training always hurting yeah always hurting and then you pointed

at the body weight in the notebook you're like that was the fucking problem that's exactly the truth exactly the truth and all these fucking people that want to yell and scream and be about being fat you know just shut up well that's what I was going to point out. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Just shut the fuck up. So you competed at 220. Yes. You should have been 242.

Right. And you're walking around at 235 today, years after. Years and years after. Your competitive peak. Injuries and injuries after. So it's not like you're walking around at 308 today. No. No, it's not.

Right. No, it's not. Yeah. The heaviest I've ever been is probably what i am right now yeah and and once again i don't care right i don't care you know i i am not my knee has been destroyed both of my knees been operated on a couple of times both shoulders been operated on a couple of times i've been hurt so bad i've i've just i'm i'm a collection of injury you can't hurt yourself in a way that i haven't already hurt

myself five times right right right and so no i my lifting career is my my best lifts are far Far in the past. Sure. But in terms of what I'm going to do during the day, I'm going to train. And I still train. I'm in decent shape. I still do some conditioning. I squat. Even with this knee, I squat. I pull heavy. I chin myself.

I can do 10 chins. Yeah. Even at this body weight. Well, that's an interesting thing, right? And, and I've, and I eat what I want to, and I drink what I want to drink. And I'm, I'm not happy because my knee bothers me and I'm physically compromised in in ways that most people aren't so i'm not tickled to death i can't ride horses anymore can't even ride a bike anymore but in terms of my level of satisfaction with the way things are right now i'm i'm okay right yeah i'm okay now i'm not i'm not so upset that I have to comment on random people's videos and tell them they're fat.

Now, a couple things there. So I have watched this man train late at night and warm up, and I've said this on the podcast several times. I've told people in my gym, too, and I'll remember your your words, but man, it looks fucking painful when you fucking train. And I remember you saying, you got to fucking show up. And this is why I feel no sympathy for these pussies that complain about pain. Right. You know, those were your words. And I had a, I've had a pretty good attendance record the last 20 years. I've never had a problem with attendance. No. But these days I get fucking tired, and when I go in there, I remember that.

And I won't miss workouts for that reason, no matter how shitty it feels. I had fucking COVID, and I still went in there and did something. You got to do something. There's no reason to not do something. Nobody has an excuse. But you're just a fucking pussy. You got to go in. It's a decision.

Yeah. It's a fucking decision is what it is. Every time I train, whether I'm doing deadlifts, rack pulls, squats to my box. I'm squatting to a box about that far above parallel. I have probably 40% of the extensor mechanism remaining in my left knee. I take the bar out of the rack and every time i do a work set i take the bar out of the rack and what do you think goes through my head is this going to be the rip where this thing tears is this going to be the rip that cripples my ass. And you know what I do?

I do it anyway. Right. I do it anyway. Because the alternative is worse. The alternative is I gave up. And I'm not going to do that. No. Yeah.

It's a decision. And that's just, you just make the decision that a man makes. So a lot of people listening are not competitors. And they don't understand what we're saying. No, no, but it's important to clarify because somebody listening is thinking now,

why the fuck are you having me do all this shit if this guy just said he's all fucked up? Not one of those injuries has taken place in the gym. Most injuries typically don't. Most injuries don't take place in the gym. Yeah. Now, this knee happened in the middle of a very bad thunderstorm out at my house when I was climbing up on top of my water tank, trying to hook up my collection system. And I fell off of the goddamn thing and apparently got my foot caught underneath me as I fell.

Ouch. That'll do it. And, you know, my shoulders were all, you know, outside the gym. Shoulders were all, you know, outside the gym. I tore the long head of this bicep loose, putting a big piece of firewood up on my blog splitter. Was that the one a couple years ago? Yeah. I remember that.

Yep. Yeah. You've seen the pictures. I took them. And, you know, first one thing then another, but none of these are gym injuries. So, you know, look, if and another, but none of these are gym injuries. So, you know, look, if you guys, well, Ripto's hurt, he's beat up, and he's training in the gym.

Don't train in the gym, and you won't be like Ripto. Okay? I don't care. Right. You want to draw that conclusion? Go ahead. That's not the truth. But that never stopped anybody in 2023 from saying anything, did it?

No. Right. Right. Well, the alternatives, you can end up looking like the whale at Walmart, pulling down the leaders of Dr. Pepper off the wall. Right. I'm so fucking offended. This dude.

So anyway, yeah, things are different now than they used to be. We have – things have intensified. Things have been heading this way for a long time. But things over the past three years have intensified to the point where nobody feels the slightest compunction to not lie to you. Nobody will, everybody that has an agenda won't mind lying to further that agenda. Especially if they work for the government or a big corporation. That's what bureaucracies are for, to avoid responsibility. And you are right to be cynical.

And if you're not cynical, you don't know what the hell's going on. Right. You know? But, yeah, things are different than they were back then. We've touched on a few things, but. So when you saw those Weider magazines start to appear, I'm curious, like, have you seen, it seems to me like one of the things that's happened with this obsession with leanness and body composition, which as we've noted already, that abs are for other dudes.

They're not for women. It's like this internalization or this internal focus rather than an external focus on what's actually going on in the world. It's narcissism. So, I mean, did you see a rise of that alongside bodybuilding culture? Do you think that had an impact on it? a rise of that alongside bodybuilding culture do you think that had an impact on it or is it just no i don't think most people at the time paid any attention to that i really don't uh i think uh the rise of of narcissism recently is a uh you know and i hate to pile on but i think it is a function of social media that took it to the next level for sure. Oh, it did. It did.

It, you know, it's ready access to all kinds of unhelpful information is, it's got something to do with this. We've chatted about this before. So you always bring up the Weider magazines of the 80s where it was big and ripped 250 and ripped 300 and ripped yeah that you know you can still find that but in the late 90s and trent attributes this to the movie fight club did you ever see that yeah brad pitt brad pitt oh yeah he only was what a buck 50 probably and six percent probably 155 160 something like that yeah yeah so trent's theory is and I think I'll agree with this, that that started the whole small and lean movement. It very well be.

It very well be. Because that's when I started looking at stuff was around the year 2000, 99, and 165 to 185-pound guys with visible abs. And it was around the time that movie came out. Right. five pound guys with visible abs and it was around the time that movie came out right and uh now we get a lot of these guys that hire us you know they want to look better and to them looking better means looking like that i felt like looking like tyler durden yeah yeah right you know yeah abs on a skinny guy are like big tits on a fat girl. Right?

Yeah. You know, it's not impressive. No. It's not impressive. Dorian Yates was impressive. Right, yeah. Ronnie was impressive. You know, great big huge fuckers with abs were impressive. But they are not the norm, and they are not what you can aspire to be.

Right. Because you will not do the things those guys did to get that way. You won't do it. Even if you did, I don't know that. And even if you did, those things are 100% controlled by your genetic potential. Yeah. You can do everything they did and still look like just kind of a larger version of you. Yeah.

So the question is, if you want to look bigger, you want to look better, you want to look strong, you want to look like you lift weights, what do you do? Well, you get your deadlift up. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You get your squat up. You want to look like you lift weights. What do you do? Well, you get your deadlift up. You get your squat up. You get your bench up. You get your press up. And what happens when you do that is your neck gets bigger. Your traps get bigger. Your arms get bigger.

Your hips get deeper front to back. Your quads get bigger your calves fill out and in your clothes you look different exactly if you have to take your shirt off to look like you train then you need to gain 30 pounds of body weight right yeah right yeah yeah you know and we're not talking to guys with baseline deadlifts of 500 because these are the these are the guys that will turn around and say i don't have to focus on that well no you fucking didn't man you already had it you know right you were already you know that's genetics but you've got a guy that walks in the gym and he's – first day he deadlifts, he's going to go 185. In two years, that guy could be pulling 500.

And he will look completely different, completely different than he did on day one. Night and day. Yes. Night and day with his shirt still on right every single one of these fuckers that is saying you don't need to be strong to be big they're all fucking strong have you noticed that you don't need to be strong to be big the guys they've separated growth from strength when we both know they're in they're inextricably related they're inextricably related. They're inextricably related. If you want bigger muscles, you've got to get stronger

because that's how muscles get stronger is they grow. Right. This is what's so aggravating about this recent emphasis on what's called now hypertrophy training. But the guys promoting it happen to be fucking strong, and they completely ignore that. They completely ignore the fact that their set of five is real heavy. Yeah.

I just squatted 650 for four sets of 10. Yeah. Let's say Ronnie Coleman with his 800-pound deadlift. If you're doing 650 for sets of five, you're real fucking strong. And more importantly, you didn't get 650 for five by doing sets of 10.

Right. Yep. You didn't. Exactly. You didn't get 650 for five by doing 550 for 10. Yep. You did not train that way. Don't tell me that. I know better. Right. Yep. You did not train that way. Don't tell me that.

I know better. Right. Yep. All right. So what the fashion is now is, well, I'm just going to do a year of hypertrophy, and then I'll make myself stronger. And then they'll squat 95 for four sets of 10. When the guy who told them to train for hypertrophy is doing 595 for four sets of 10.

Yeah. He's just making money off of them. He's making money off of them. I mean, you want to lie to somebody like that, then go ahead. They're too stupid to believe you anyway. But I'm not impressed with this five sets of 12 bullshit. Look, I've done all of that shit I've done everything you can think of to do I already did 30 years ago right yeah I already did it and I know what works

and what doesn't work and what works is heavy weights for sets of five and sets of 10 can go down a road with a carrot in its ass because it doesn't make you any stronger and what's even the most what's the most stupid thing of all is sets of 20. That's utter bullshit. Yeah right. And I've done them. I know they're bullshit. They're complete and total bullshit. Yeah. They are psychological exercises. That's what they are. Yeah. Can I do this 20th rep? Right. I am about to die.

Can I do the 20th rep? Well, I might as well go ahead and do it because I've already done 19. And so you do the 20th rep. And you know what? And it doesn't occur to you at the time. But what happens is you did that rep at the same bar speed as you did number 15 yeah the bar speed is the same you did for number 10 they're fucking terrible and it's the same speed you did for the fifth rip the same bar speed it just feels much shittier. Yeah. But it doesn't do anything because it's a light weight, and light weights don't make you grow.

I am sorry. Who is the exercise physiologist that has done all this shit on hypertrophy training? Oh, Schoenfeld. Look, I know better than that. He wrote an article on T-Nation years ago with Contreras talking about, oh, Tom Platts went head-to-head with Hatfield on squat, and Hatfield had a bigger 1RM, and Platts had a bigger weight on his set of 25, ignoring the fact that that set of 25 was like 525, and Hatfield got it for 11 still, which nobody reading that will ever do. No. Right. You know? No. Right. No.

But they ignore that detail and focus on, well, the bodybuilder did more reps than the powerlifter. The bodybuilder did more reps, but who was the strongest? And who was the biggest? And were either of them weak? No. No. No, they weren't. Platt was an amazing guy at sets of 10.

Amazing guy at sets of 10, but he wasn't any stronger than Fred. And he went on record saying that he was a power lifter at heart. Lats did. Yep. Andy Baker recently introduced me to Dante Trudell, who trained a bunch of bodybuilders back in the late 90s. And he's been on a tear about that since then that every good bodybuilder adds weight to the bar you know like he basically says pick your rep range do eights tens twelves whatever but you got to add weight you got to go up it's got to go up and you got to make incremental increases

and what is starting strength yeah right yeah you know and we do it with sets of five because it works best. Right. It works best for the greatest majority of people who are in their first two years of training. So it's a five work best. Now, if you've been training 10 years and you want to do some eights, go ahead. I've been training 10 years and I did eights. And you know what happened? Nothing.

Right. I wasted that part of my training cycle. Yeah, yeah. And by doing all that much volume, I made it much more difficult to recover. And I fucked up the subsequent workouts at five because I was carrying all this unrecovered fatigue into the fives. Whereas if I hadn't done that, and by the time I tapered down to doubles, I'd been doing heavier weights, especially if I'd been at 242 instead of 220.

Yeah, he's trying to tell me something. I've made all these mistakes personally, and I know what to do and what not to do you know and i'm just telling you you guys you're you don't be distracted by all this hypertrophy exercise physiology bullshit in the laboratory with isolation exercises if they don't matter they don't teach you anything everybody that seems to be obsessed with them is far too novice. Yes. To even worry about it. To have an opinion. Right. Yeah. To even have an opinion about it. Right. Right. Well, let's also bring up that, you know, fives on a squat or deadlift or a barbell lift in general are more productive because as you and I have discussed

many times, if you're doing a set of 10 or a set of 8, you know, I like doing 8s and 10s sometimes. Guilty as charged. But by the time you get to rep number 7, what starts to happen, you know? Forearms start to break down. Exactly. These are technical movements, and 5s are more productive, you know, especially if you're a novice. 5s are more productive. 5s are safer.

5s at a heavier weight are safer than eights and tens at a lighter weight because you're less likely to get out of position i will yeah i will attest to that yeah yeah i've given myself uh patellar tendonitis that way oh yeah a little knee slide creeps in rep five six seven eight once you get patellar tendonitis you might as well name it yeah right it's there for a long time it's there in the backyard for the rest of your life yeah i've had the brachioradialis golfer's elbow that shit fucking lingers forever too yeah if you don't know how to get rid of it it it we our chin-up protocol fixes it pretty quick but most people will keep that shit for anytime you get an inflamed tendon the tendency is to keep it right yes yeah that's

the tendency and out of position shitty technique is a real good way to produce that right and i'm sure is. Yeah. Eights and tens and research literature and all that, they're using machines and isolation. They're using machines. It doesn't apply to what actually happens. It's not actually strength training. You can do 10 in a row on a knee extension and not fuck it up, but that's not squat. It's not strength training. No.

It's not strength training. If you can't make long-term progress on the movement pattern, how is it strength training? Right. What's the longest you can make a leg extension go up in weight? Six weeks. Yeah. If that.

What's the longest you can do weighted back extensions and make them go up in weight? Six weeks. Right. What's the longest you can do sit-ups, weighted sit-ups, and go up in weighted sit-ups? Six weeks. What's the longest you can do sit-ups, weighted sit-ups and go up in weighted sit-ups? Six weeks. Yeah. All that shit that goes up for six weeks, it's not strength training. Right. It's not strength training. Strength training is normal human movement patterns that are loaded with a barbell that can be incrementally increased over a long period of time. That is strength training.

Nothing else is strength training. You can't do it on machines. You can't do it with dumbbells. You can't do it with isolation exercises. Right. There are only a few exercises that can be trained for strength for a long period of time. Yeah, Yeah. And I think you would find to wrap up that discussion about the bodybuilders, I think you would find that the good bodybuilders that

continue to grow year over year are the guys who have- Are doing actual strength training as their base. That's right. Yeah. So if they're making their 12 rep tricep extension go up, they have a big ass bench and hopefully a press too. A lot of them have said it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. They go heavy when they're eating and gaining weight. That's what I remember reading when I first started reading that stuff. You know, one last point before we kind of close out. When we're talking about bodybuilders and powerlifters,

you know, you're introducing competition there. You know, it's no longer about health. You've said this many times. No, shit no. And for a lot of people listening, they, you know, they care about their health. They don't want to get hurt. And, you know, I understand that. But that's not to say you get a pass from training because you don't want to get hurt. You still got to go in and train. You got a fucking life to live, right? Yeah. Well, not everybody wants to train. Yeah, exactly. A lot of people just want to exercise. That's fine with me. That's better than sitting on your ass. Yeah. But we're not talking to you. We're talking to you if you're trying to train for strength and get stronger and see what you

can get done and explore the limits of your strength potential. You are the ones we're talking to. We're not talking about people that just swing by the gym on the way home from work and catch a pump. I'm not condemning that, but it's not training. It's not the same thing we do. Right. So the problem is a lot of people think they can exercise their way to a trained physique. Can't be done. Can't be done. Can't be done. No. Can't be done. Can't be done. Training is not the same thing as exercise.

Nope. And, you know, I've written a whole bunch of stuff about this. And it's, you know, a lot of people are trying to apply an exercise paradigm to their physical activity when their goals are more compatible with the training paradigm. Training is more productive over the long run than exercising. And if you are, uh, in a, in a situation where you find yourself interested in getting bigger and stronger, you have to train.

You can't just exercise. You have to plan an incremental increase on the basic barbell exercises that you're going to do on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis. That's training. Planning to go up in weight incrementally on a regular basis is training. Running by the gym and hitting the pump is exercising. It's two different things. Right. Now, if you're happy just exercising, good. It's fine.

It's a lot less trouble than training. Yeah. Right. A lot less trouble. But if you want more out of your time spent at the gym than you're getting with just catching a pump on the way home from work, you're going to have to learn how to train. you in a pump on the way home from work, you're going to have to learn how to train.

And it's a completely different way to approach walking through the doors. Right. That's something I've come to realize coaching people is very overlooked, is the planning. And it's something that still has to happen. If you have a coach that's writing a number down on a page for you, you still have to do the planning yourself in the sense that tomorrow I'm going to get up, I'm going to go to the gym at whenever, six o'clock, eight o'clock, and I'm going to squat 235 and then I'm going to squat 240. But you have to mentally decide that's what I'm going to do. That's the plan tomorrow. You have to know what you're going to do before you get there. That's right. I was recently talking to someone who was talking about writing their, they write in their logbook, they write what they're going to do,

or they write what they have done after they did it. And I said, no, no, no. You have to write down what you're going to do, three sets of five at 315, and then go do it. And then go do it, and then check it off. Right. You have to check it off. Right. Not write it down after the goddamn fact. Exactly. Because that's the thing, you give yourself an out. If you don't write it down, well, I only did two sets of five. Well, but if you wrote three sets of five, now you've got to scratch it out. Now you're lying. Or write an X or whatever.

Now you're lying if you don't fix your life. Well, fuck. I missed that fucking memo. I've got to start doing that. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, you've built the discipline for that not to be a problem. But I think a lot of people that have just started training. You're just starting off.

That's a real good point, Trent. If you're just starting off, you need to write your workout down. You don't need to write it down at the house, but when you get to the gym, you need to pull your notebook out and you need to decide what you're going to do that day, what your warmups are going to be and what the work sets are going to be. And you're going to write them down and then you're going to do them. Yeah, that's right. Because if you don't, then you're a liar. Right. And if you've got any integrity at all, lying to yourself should be a problem.

That should bother you. That should bother you. Oh, man. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, on that note. All right, boys. I appreciate it. Ready to close out? Yeah, that's good. Yeah, on that note. All right, boys. I appreciate it. Ready to close out?

Yeah, let's close it out. Thanks for joining the podcast, Rip. We appreciate it. Big time. Sure, glad to do it. Thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. If you are in the Metro Phoenix area, you can visit my gym, Weights and Plates Gym,

which can also be found at WeightsandPlatesGym.com. And Rip, I think 95% of our people know where to find you, but for the 5%, can you give some information? Well, I'm in Wichita Falls. Okay. I'm in Wichita Falls. Just ask any, once you get here, ask anybody. Yeah. Where do we find Rip?

Where's Rip? Yeah, you can always go to startingstrength.com. And that'll be, that's probably the easiest way to do that. Yeah, you can find all the content there, the books, the podcast, the videos. They're all linked there for the website. And we'll drop that in the show notes as well. All right. Well, thanks again for joining us. And we will talk to you all again in a couple weeks let's go to brahm

yeah we gotta go to brahms now you need to go to brahms man the triple for you Thank you.