Top 52 Mark Rippetoe Quotes
#1. But then again, those who argue against squatting and deadlifting on the same day may just be pussies.
Mark Rippetoe
#2. but the reality of millions of years of adaptation to a ruggedly physical existence will not just go away because desks were invented.
Mark Rippetoe
#3. The deadlift also serves as a way to train the mind to do things that are hard.
Mark Rippetoe
#4. There is no such thing as "firming and toning." There is only stronger and weaker.
Mark Rippetoe
#5. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#6. Opinions are like phasers - everybody ought to have one.
Mark Rippetoe
#7. 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".
Mark Rippetoe
#8. I recommend against a wooden squat rack, for much the same reason that I recommend against a wooden car.
Mark Rippetoe
#10. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#11. Humans are not physically normal in the absence of hard physical effort.
Mark Rippetoe
#12. 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!
Mark Rippetoe
#13. If you insist on using a thumbless grip on the bench, you need to do it at home so that when the ambulance comes (if anyone is there to call 911), it doesn't disrupt anyone else's training.
Mark Rippetoe
#14. What we're trying to do is get things fixed, not allow them to stay broke.
Mark Rippetoe
#15. If you insist on wearing gloves, make sure they match your purse.
Mark Rippetoe
#16. But a hot gym is where most of us have trained before. Learn to deal with it: more water, more minerals, bigger balls.
Mark Rippetoe
#17. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#20. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#21. Women who do look like men have taken some rather drastic steps in that direction that have little to do with their exercise program.
Mark Rippetoe
#22. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#23. Poor form in the gym is caused by insufficient yelling.
Mark Rippetoe
#24. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#25. Your muscles cannot get "longer" without some rather radical orthopedic surgery.
Mark Rippetoe
#27. 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
Mark Rippetoe
#28. You can't make people smarter. You can expose them to information, but your responsibility stops there.
Mark Rippetoe
#29. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#30. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#32. Accumulating injuries are the price we pay for the thrill of not having sat around on our asses.
Mark Rippetoe
#33. There is no easy way to do a deadlift - not involving actually picking up the bar - which explains their lack of popularity in gyms around the world.
Mark Rippetoe
#34. 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
Mark Rippetoe
#35. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#36. A squat cannot be performed on a Smith machine any more than it can be performed in a small closet with a hamster.
Mark Rippetoe
#37. History tells us what works in the gym, and everything else walks down the road with a carrot in its ass.
Mark Rippetoe
#38. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#39. You don't get big and strong from lifting weights - you get big and strong from recovering from lifting weights
Mark Rippetoe
#40. There are few things graven in stone, except that you have to squat or you're a pussy.
Mark Rippetoe
#41. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#42. There is never an absolute answer to everything, except of course that you have to do your squats.
Mark Rippetoe
#43. Mediocre athletes that tried like hell to get good are the best coaches.
Mark Rippetoe
#45. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#46. There are no shortcuts. The fact that a shortcut is important to you means that you are a pussy.
Mark Rippetoe
#47. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#48. Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not.
Mark Rippetoe
#49. Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.
Mark Rippetoe
#50. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#51. 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.
Mark Rippetoe
#52. 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
Mark Rippetoe
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