The wit and wisdom of Mark Rippetoe:
“Trust me, if you do an honest 20 rep program, at some point Jesus will talk to you. On the last day of the program, he asked if he could work in.”
“Only people willing to work to the point of discomfort on a regular basis using effective means to produce that discomfort will actually look like they have been other-than-comfortable most of the time. You can thank the muscle magazines for these persistent misconceptions, along with the natural tendency of all normal humans to seek reasons to avoid hard physical exertion.”
“You would look better if you gained about 10 lbs of muscle” Woman responds with look of utter horror. Rip: “Trust me, I’ve been looking at women a long time, and I’m really good at it.”
“And no, you don’t excrete excess calories, because evolution didn’t see fit to exterminate the species in this way. If that happened, fat people would be in zoos where they belong since they’d be quite rare.”
“There are few things graven in stone, except that you have to squat or you’re a pussy.”
Rip: “Leg Pressing is masturbation.”
Tuesday: “Oh, come on. Masturbation isn’t that bad.”
Rip: “Oh, I didn’t say it was bad. But at least when I masturbate, I am not under the impression that I’m making anybody else cum but me.”
On the possibility of a failure to deadlift resulting in stroke:
Deadlifts that are too heavy to pull generally don’t take very long; the bar just kinda lays there. So if trying to move immovable objects was dangerous from the standpoint of stroke, the history of the human race would be littered with stupid people’s corpses.
I recommend against a wooden squat rack, for much the same reason that I recommend against a wooden car.
We never consciously squeeze our asscheeks in the weight room. It’s not a valuable biomechanical cue, and it might get misinterpreted by the guys on the next platform.
If you insist on wearing gloves, make sure they match your purse.
Shitting yourself when you deadlift was omitted from [Starting Strength]. The best way to avoid this is to not deadlift when you need to shit, and vice versa. Planning is the key here.
Poor form in the gym is caused by insufficient yelling.
My opinion about barbell rows is as follows: fuck barbell rows. Really. Fuck them. Stop wasting time worrying about barbell rows and get your deadlift up to 500. By then you’ll have your own opinion and you won’t have to worry about mine.
“The environment we’re used to is designed to sustain us. We live like fish in an aquarium. Food comes mysteriously down, oxygen bubbles up. We are the domestic pets of a human zoo we call civilization. Then we go into nature, where we are least among equals with all other creatures. There we are put to the test. Most of us sleep through the test. We get in and out and never know what may have been demanded. Such experience can make us even more vulnerable, for we come away with the illusion of growing hardy, salty, knowledgeable: been there, done that.”
“Safety, convenience and efficiency are the opiates of the modern world.”
-Laurence Gonzales in “Deep Survival”
“Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.”
-Sir Winston Churchill
“T-Man is Batman, not Superman. He didn’t just show up with powers, he had to train his brain and his body and his skills. He gets dirty along the way. His character might be a little less sunny but it’s bulletproof.”
-TC
“I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.”
-Lao Tzu
“The more I can learn about music, the more I learn about other things.”
-Pat Metheny
“Nothing in music is hard, just unfamiliar.”
-Kenny Werner, from Effortless Mastery
My favorite:
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
Mike Tyson - “I broke my back”
Interviewer - “What do you mean by that?”
Mike Tyson - “My back is broken.”
Tyson is great…
“The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis, vanish, all duties even”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.”
-Plato
A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do
bob dylan
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
Always remember that the future comes one day at a time.
Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts
If there is no struggle, there is no progress
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again
Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.
Action is the foundational key to all success
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.
Laufet, Brueder, eure Bahn,
Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen!