I agree with you completely. Rereading my post, it looks like I was excusing him. That wasn’t my intention. Really, I was just surprised he has the ability to hold a two-sided dialogue. You’re absolutely right, though; it’s much more cowardly to “bully” third-party.
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Paul is one of my favorite authors and least favorite posters. We all have our talents.
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Was trying to sum up my feelings about him and you nailed it. And, to be honest, I prefer to read thought out writing instead of knee-jerk posts. No matter how you slice it, I’m stronger and healthier because of him.
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For sure dude. Some people just plain aren’t good “on their feet”, and when put in such a situation will come up with a terrible reply, but you give them time to compose their thoughts and they come up with gold. Conversely, some folks are the masters of dialog and are fantastic podcast guests, but you give them a chance to put pen to paper and what comes out is just schlocky garbage. Much like Albert Einstein’s “judging a fish by it’s ability to climb a ladder” thing, or Plato’s allegory of the surgeon, we gotta consider the lens.
I REALLY liked Paul’s “blue collar” series. Simple and rapidly applicable.
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His total would be big if he was 180lbs natural lifter, but he’s not either of those. He hasn’t coached any champions. As for life outside of the gym, it appears that anyone who has spent time around the guy eventually can’t stand him.
He had a top twenty total with no belt (need to check to see if he held American records as well) and did it with no belt - okay for a natural 180 is wrong - and he was not focussing only on three lifts. Rubish won big shows and had second highest total at the time. Happy for you to find me a non lifting article from him that you think is garbage.
His best total is 802 kg. That would put him outside the top 20 in the IPF 83 class.
Open Powerlifting shows Paul with 4 meets, one of which he didn’t finish and a best total of 1770 at 275 in wraps. (I have no idea if he actually wore the wraps.) That’s not a powerlifting career to write home about and I was surprised that 1) his best total was not higher and 2) that he only competed 4 times.
And I say that as someone who his writing has helped a ton, especially as I made the transition away from powerlifting. Hell, I even hired him at one point to coach me and his programming was just what I needed. His ideas still influence the way I train now, and actually going back to what he sent me in 2019 this was the definition of failure: “You cannot perform another rep without compromising form.” No idea if that’s still what he’s promoting.
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His total was as a submaster (I didn’t know this - it’s a top 100 lift across all ages):
He was also top 10 the year before as a 110kg lifter (top 70 here)
What I am getting from all this is that Paul C had a confirmation bias that led him to think that the studies behind his “Real Driver of Growth” article meant you should lift to failure, when the conclusion he originally came to in the article was that volume beyond two or three sets per lift was largely redundant, and that rep PRs were a great driver of growth. But HOW you get to the rep PRs?..he decided that lifting to failure was the logical approach, rather than lifting in a sustainable way that efficiently leads to a higher rep PR. At 42 min 41 seconds, you can see Paul has a moment of clarity and literally calls for a time out, to make a point in defense of to-failure, about needing to go to failure at least to find where that is. Like the rest of us, you live and you learn. I would still point any new lifter to Paul Carter articles. The posts, I agree, are more hit and miss. 
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I honestly feel like success in training and nutrition is mostly personality driven at this point. You have to find a way of training and eating that matches your personality such that you maintain compliance to a significant degree. If you follow the “best” program but it doesn’t gel with your personality and you just pay it lip service and spent the entire time doubting it, you get terrible results. You pick the “wrong” program and become a fanatic about it, never miss a workout, and give it your all? You get results. You like never mixing carbs and fats and you stick with that? You get results. A calorie counter? Sweet: go do that. But you flunked 5th grade and don’t own a food scale? Get on the Warrior Diet, because counting isn’t for you.
Like, we have evidence of SO many training and nutritional systems “working” in the form of people being products of them. We also have evidence of them not working when someone comes along and dorks them all up. I feel like it’s not the methods that are changing but the humans applying them.
Which, of course, lends into nuerotyping…but that’s also goofy.
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Kind of like the Orks in 40k. They’re a race of idiots who make things work by just believing. For example, they think red cars go faster and their latent psychic belief causes the cars to go faster, even though it doesn’t make any sense.
I can definitely say that I had a really bad problem with being consistent until I found the methodologies/habits that suited me. Calorie counting and daily weigh ins were two things it took me a long time to drop. When I did I started actually making progress.
Plenty of threads and online activities that certainly make the case for his less than stellar reputation,… but what always stuck out to me in the Carter threads is his fluctuating regard of anecdotal stories and scientific evidence.
I’ve watched Paul repeatedly argue that one or the other supports his particular viewpoint but when anyone he disagrees with does likewise, he’s quick to dismiss them and their “support”.
S
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You have that set to Sub master and for 2014 only. Sub masters is only people from 35-39. If you slice the pie small enough, everyone gets a piece. Go ahead and change that to all ages and years. An 802 total puts him at the number 1048. He’s not top 100 across all ages for 2014 either. What are you talking about?
Him saying that he HAD a total vs HAS a total would infer it was in the past, no?
Like, I had a national record in the deadlift. I don’t have it now, but I had it.
Geez, you’re almost as bad as Paul Carter:
Jesse Owens was the fastest person on the planet. Now high school kids outrun him. He’s still one of the greatest - that’s how sport works. And I am not slicing the pie in any other way than his age, weight class and equipment - that’s less ways that powerlifting typically does. Plus I acknowledged that I didn’t realise top 20 wasn’t across all ages.
All ages for 2014 with Raw and Wraps and he’s at 186.
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Uhh, guys - it’s one thing to criticize somebody for acting like a dickbag, but are people really going to take shots at someone’s powerlifting total here? That’s a shitty way to criticize somebody. Paul’s emphasis is on hypertrophy anyway.
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I think it’s just an attempt to say that his ego and attitude are not only unappreciated but unwarranted (?)
S
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This is such a good point. I made outstanding progress on DC training, CT’s high-frequency stuff, and Meadows’ stuff. They’re all very different, but when I’m just all-in it all works. My brain is more the special snowflake than my body
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