Top 65 Quotes & Sayings by Mark Rippetoe

The BEST training program in the entire world will be a DISMAL FAILURE if people fail to hold up their end of the deal. The success of ANY training program is ultimately the trainee's responsibility.

Poor form in the gym is caused by insufficient yelling.

There is no such thing as "firming and toning." There is only stronger and weaker.

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.

A squat cannot be performed on a Smith machine any more than it can be performed in a small closet with a hamster.

There is simply no other exercise, and certainly no machine, that produces the level of central nervous system activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density enhancement, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning than the correctly performed full squat.

I am of the opinion that anyone who can squat 400 lb below parallel without a suit or press200 overhead has a strong core. I am of the opinion that when a person increases their squat, theyhave increased their core strength. I am also of the opinion that if a person wants to strengthentheir core, they must make something quantifiably stronger.

An adult male weighs at least 200 pounds

History tells us what works in the gym, and everything else walks down the road with a carrot in its ass.

You don’t get to mis-define a thing, and then on the basis of that mis-definition, say that that thing is bad … it’s incumbent upon you, if you’re going to make a criticism of something, that you actually have at your command a working definition of the thing you're criticizing

I was driving home the other night, listening to the radio, and the guy filling in for Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM was talking to some other guy about Nazis, UFOs, the Kennedy Assassination, time travel, and George Bush, and how it all relates to OneWorldGovernment. This, of course, made me think about barbell training.

People seem to have acquired the idea that they have the inalienable right to stroll through life without either having sweated, picked up anything heavy, worked hard, or eaten less than they wanted at every meal. This approach is, of course, wrong. And it has resulted in a lot of expensive, unattractive, and entirely preventable problems amongst people who seem puzzled about why things aren't going well.

The full-range-of-m otion exercise known as the squat is the single most useful exercise in the weight room, and our most valuable tool for building strength, power, and size.

For young males that weigh between 150-200 lbs., deadlifts can move up 15-20 lbs. per workout, squats 10-15 lbs., with continued steady progress for 3-4 weeks before slowing down to half that rate. Bench presses, presses, and cleans can move up 5-10 lbs. per workout, with progress on these exercises slowing down to 2.5-5 lbs. per workout after only 2-3 weeks. Young women make progress on the squat and the deadlift at about the same rate, adjusted for bodyweight, but much slower on the press, the bench press, cleans, and assistance exercises.

What we're trying to do is get things fixed, not allow them to stay broke.

Mediocre athletes that tried like hell to get good are the best coaches.

But a hot gym is where most of us have trained before. Learn to deal with it: more water, more minerals, bigger balls.

Big arms are fun, and if their training doesn't interfere with the rest of the program, wait till everybody's gone, like I do.

The spine is best at bearing a load in an arch

Most of the problems with the bodies and minds of the folks occupying the current culture involve an unwillingness to do anything hard, or anything that they'd rather not do. I applaud your resolve, and I welcome you to the community of people who have decided that EASY will no longer suffice.

The hang clean is unweighted and is of little use to watch, except that it shows a problem known as a Donkey Kick. As the jump occurs, the heels come up in the back and then stomp back down into place. This is a terrible waste of time and energy, and contributes nothing to making the bar go up. Stop doing this immediately or I will have you killed.

Your ideal body weight as an ectomorph at 6' 0" will be 214.378 lbs. There. Happy? And if you lose or gain a pound, I will have you killed. It is important to be ideal.

A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.

You can't make people smarter. You can expose them to information, but your responsibility stops there.

The only legitimate use for a glove is to cover an injury... A desire to prevent callus formation (possibly so as to not snag one's pantyhose) does not constitute a legitimate use. And if you do insist on wearing gloves, make sure they match your purse.

There is never an absolute answer to everything, except of course that you have to do your squats.

Stronger people are harder to kill

If you insist on wearing gloves, make sure they match your purse.

Bodybuilding is men on a stage in their underwear wearing brown paint showing other men their muscles. It is training for appearance only, and at the contest level requires a degree of vanity, narcissism, and self-absorption that I find distasteful and odd

I recommend that you change colleges.

You don't get big and strong from lifting weights - you get big and strong from recovering from lifting weights

Accumulating injuries are the price we pay for the thrill of not having sat around on our asses.

But then again, those who argue against squatting and deadlifting on the same day may just be pussies.

You are right to be wary. There is much bullshit. Be wary of me too, because I may be wrong. Make up your own mind after you evaluate all the evidence and the logic.

You do not need to do many different exercises to get strong - you need to get strong on a very few important exercises, movements that train the whole body as a system, not as a collection of separate body parts. The problem with the programs advocated by all the national exercise organizations is that they fail to recognize this basic principle: the body best adapts as a whole organism to stress applied to the whole organism. The more stress that can be applied to as much of the body at one time as possible, the more effective and productive the adaptation will be.

Since the trainee is both inefficient and unadapted, only a few basic exercises should be used, and they should be repeated frequently to establish the basic motor pathways and basic strength.

Any idiot can get on a treadmill and watch TV and then take great pride in the fact they've ‘exercised.

Strength is an excellent example of a physical characteristic that drives improvement in other athletic parameters. More strength means more power, more endurance, better coordination, and better everything else. This is why, all other things being equal, the stronger athlete is the better athlete.

I welcome you to the community of people who have decided that EASY will no longer suffice!

I know that I'm an animal that displays bilateral symmetry. I understand that one side should be the mirror of the other, and that human perceptions of beauty are intimately associated with symmetry. For example, I am very handsome.

There is no substitute for milk. Sorry.

I recommend against a wooden squat rack, for much the same reason that I recommend against a wooden car.

There is simply no other exercise, and certainly no machine, that produces the level ofmuscular stimulation and growththan the correctly performed full squat.

Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.

There are few things graven in stone, except that you have to squat or you're a pussy.

On resting in between reps: It varies with the length of the set. 5s or fewer get a breath to reset. Longer sets might take 2 breaths. During the last few reps of a true 20RM squat, just do what Jesus tells you. 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.

The full squat is a perfectly natural position for the leg to occupy. That's why there is a joint in the middle of it, and why humans have been occupying this position, both unloaded and loaded, for millions of years. Much longer, in fact, than quasi-intellect ual morons have been telling us that it's 'bad' for the knees.

I like musicianship, and it's quite lacking in most modern popular music. You're always safe with old Chicago, the Allman Brothers, Gov't Mule, or Tower of Power.

If you are so inflamed that you can't train, and ibuprofen and fish oil help with inflammation, maybe you'd better take the ibuprofen and fish oil.

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-comf ortable 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.

If every day of your life you are told by authority figures that the Earth is flat, you will be scared of falling off the edge whether you want to be or not.

If a program of physical activity isn't designed to get you stronger or faster or better conditioned by producing a specific stress to which a specific desirable adaptation can occur, you don't get to call it training. It's just exercise.

You guys that worry about eating clean are actually merely bodybuilders looking for justification for your obsession with abs. You cannot get big and strong on 3000 kcal/day. And you cannot eat 7000/day and eat perfectly “clean”.

The deadlift also serves as a way to train the mind to do things that are hard.

Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not.

There are no shortcuts. The fact that a shortcut is important to you means that you are a pussy.

Humans are not physically normal in the absence of hard physical effort.

I don't even like Greg Glassman. I don't have a cult like allegiance to the guy. I really don't like him. He's too hard to get on the phone and he doesn't drink my kind of scotch.

Exercise is not a thing we do to fix a problem - it is a thing we must do anyway, a thing without which there will always be problems

Start training yourself. You don't have to have been an elite lifter to be a good coach - I sure as hell wasn't. But you have to at least have been under the bar enough to know why wedon't look up at the bleeding ceiling when we squat!