I haven’t made it back to Texas yet, but I have come up with some more questions for Mark Rippetoe after reading some new material and reviewing some of his previous writings. Since the last time we spoke (“Texas BBQ, Part 1”), Practical Programming for Strength Training has hit the scene, and he has a new book coming out.

In the tradition of Dave Tate’s last couple of “meat” articles, let’s get right to the good stuff. As you’ll see, he can really run with a topic when you throw it out there. Enjoy.

Coaching the squat and deadlift

CR: The first thing I’d like to get into is some material that I came across in your first book, Starting Strength, as well as in a few of your other newer articles. This is regarding some technical coaching aspects of the squat and deadlift.

The first is related to head position on the squat. Conventional thought has been that the torso will always follow the eyes and for that reason one should not look down. In Starting Strength, you recommend looking downward at a point about 6–7 feet in front of you on the floor. Can you address why the idea that the torso will follow the eyes isn’t necessarily true?

MR: I’m not worried about the torso. I’m worried about the bar. I don’t really care where the torso goes. I want the bar to go up. It has been my experience that the best way to make the bar go up is to facilitate hip drive. You facilitate hip drive by looking at the floor. The best way to prove this to yourself is to get somebody to stand behind you while you get down into the squat position. Have your partner put their hand right on top of your sacrum. Then look down at the floor and shove your butt up in the air. Next, repeat this experiment but look up at the ceiling. Which one did you like better? I promise you that the one you like better is the one where you where looking down at the floor. That position better enables you to assume a back angle that will allow better posterior chain involvement.

There are several other side benefits as well. First, a closer balance point reference visually allows you to detect smaller movements in your position immediately against the close reference point of the floor. Second, and more importantly in my opinion, (especially for people who are just learning the movement) it is a much safer position for the cervical spine. Looking down at the floor produces a normal anatomical position for the cervical spine. Now, if an advanced powerlifter squatting 900 lbs thinks he is better off looking at the ceiling then let him do that. Those types of trainees aren’t my concern when I train people because I don’t train advanced powerlifters. My forte is in working with beginners. When I teach beginners, I’m concerned with safety. I don’t want their necks in the shape of the letter “C” with any weight at all sitting on the spine of the scapula where I place the bar. It isn’t a safe neck position, and it doesn’t work as well as the alternative. I’ll argue about that all day. I promise you that you can drive your ass up stronger looking down at the floor than you can if you’re looking up. I will take bets with anybody, absolutely.

CR: Do you see any problems with looking straight ahead rather than downward?

Rip: No, I don’t see any problems with looking straight ahead as long the cervical spine is in its normal anatomical position. I just don’t think looking straight ahead is going to give you the same balance advantages as looking downward. Don’t get me wrong though. I don’t want you looking down between your feet! I just want you looking at a spot in front of you on the floor that puts your neck in a neutral position. As mentioned above, the main effect that this has is to allow your back to assume the angle it needs to best use your posterior chain.

CR: Does head position change depending on the type of squat one is performing or on the deadlift?

MR: I always want the neck in a neutral position so it would change for say a front squat because of the more near vertical torso position. The head position for front squats would be looking straight ahead.

As an aside, what we’ve found about bar position is that the position of the bar on the body is what determines back angle. This is because the bar always needs to be above the middle of the foot for balance purposes and proper biomechanical efficiency. Your back angle is going to vary based on that. A low bar squat (depending on individual anthropometry) will have a torso angle of about 45 degrees in relation to the floor for most people. The high bar squat will be a bit steeper, maybe about 30 degrees or so for most people. The back is nearly vertical for a front squat. Of course, this all varies somewhat it if someone has a long back, short legs, etc.

This all happens because these are the positions that the back is required to assume if the bar is going to be over the middle of the foot. It’s very important to think about this as a coach because if you’re trying to teach beginners how to perform these movements, you need to be able to analyze their position for the best mechanical advantage that they can use during the lift. You don’t need to be trying to shove them into an inefficient position because you’ve got a preconceived notion about what their position should look like. Position varies with the individual and with the bar placement on the body.

CR: That’s a great point, and it leads us into my next question. Something that drives me pretty nuts is people who think that a vertical torso position on a back squat or on a deadlift is what one should strive for and that this is always safer than having an inclined torso or forward lean. I think that this is a very big misconception among most typical gym goers and some inexperienced trainers/coaches. Can you elaborate on why this is a misconception?

MR: Yes, and I’ll tell you were it comes from. It comes from a reasonable desire to try to reduce the shear on the intervertebral joints of the spine. The idea is that if you get the back more and more vertical, then you convert shear to compression, meaning there is no sliding tendency between the vertebral segments. I understand that, but this is a misinterpretation of the function of the back. The back (in a pull or a squat) is the transmission from the hips and legs, which are the motors. Force is generated by the hips and legs and transmitted up the rigid spine to the bar, whether it’s sitting on the back in the case of the squat or hanging from the scapulas as it is in the deadlift. Either way, the function of the back is to maintain rigidity such that no movement with respect to intervertebral position occurs during the transmission of force.

If any movement occurs here (if your back fails to stay in good extension during the movement), you reduce the efficiency of the force transmission from the hips and legs to the bar. Some of that force then gets absorbed in the bending of the back/spine. If you want to transmit all of the force to the bar, then the back must remain rigid and locked in extension. It must be locked in kyphotic and lordotic extension. Now, if the back is locked in this extension, then no shear occurs between those intervertebral joints because no movement has occurred. The forces on them may be shear forces, but this isn’t problematic if no movement occurs at the intervertebral joints. The squat and the deadlift are, in fact, back exercises, and the function of those muscles are to hold that column of bone rigid.

Because we’re supposed to be using sensible poundages when we train and we are theoretically supposed to reserve one rep max attempts for powerlifting meets and Olympic weight lifting competitions (where the competitors understand the risks involved in moving heavy things off the floor just for the hell of it), then we’re in a situation that requires sensibility. As long as you’re sensible about the poundages that you’re using, you aren’t going to be in a situation where you have a bunch of shear forces/movements going on across the spine. The back muscles are designed to maintain intervertebral relationships, and if they do their job, there’s no issue with shear forces because the muscles prevent the movement.

It will function as a solid unit like the femur. There is shear on the femur all throughout the squat. The femur is in a shear position. The minute the femur breaks out of vertical until it locks back into vertical, there is a bunch of shear on the femur. However, nobody wants to worry about the femur because the femur is a solid unit. The back is supposed to be too. If you do your job and hold the back flat (neutral) like it’s supposed to be, then the shear is on the muscles, not on the spinal components. That’s probably the best way to explain it.

CR: So we need to be concerned with movements at the spine itself occurring with those shear forces?

MR: Yes, shear is only “bad” when there is movement involved at the spine. That’s why the deadlift is a back exercise, and that’s why we use it as a back exercise. It exercises those muscles that are supposed to keep shear movements from happening. Now, if a vertical spine is attempted during the deadlift or back squat, it’s going to interfere with your ability to get into the correct mechanical position to move the bar.

For example, as we show in the second edition of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, the bar isn’t going to leave the floor on the deadlift until the weight is right underneath the scapula anyway. You can try to get into a vertical back starting position on the deadlift and what will happen is the bar will stay on the floor until your ass rises up to a point that puts your scapulas plumb in line with the bar. Then the bar will leave the floor. Look at any Olympic weightlifting video, and you’ll see that the starting position—where they want to start with a nice vertical back—isn’t the position where the bar will leave the floor. The bar always leaves the floor when the scapulas are over the bar. Now knowing that, wouldn’t it make more sense to just set up in that position and then pull the bar? That’s my point.

We also argued that you can have a pretty much vertical bar path on a snatch and on a clean and jerk when conventional wisdom is that the bar path has a curve at the bottom as the bar comes back toward the shins. It doesn’t have to come back toward the shins if it’s not left out away from the shins because you’ve started too low in a position that you erroneously think is your starting position. The bar leaves the floor when the scapulae are directly over the bar period.

Look at Andy Bolton’s 1003-lb deadlift or Magnuson’s deadlift. That weight is so heavy that his upper back is a bit rounded and his arms are vertical, which you don’t see in a snatch or a clean and jerk because the weights are relatively lighter. However, the scapula is still directly vertical to the bar. The lats can do their job of keeping the scapulae over the bar with that upper back flat with lighter weights, which will put the glenoid out in front of the bar and will produce an angle in the arms.

If you notice, when people snatch, clean, or deadlift not quite max weights, the arm is never straight down. The arm is always slightly ahead of vertical, and the shoulders are slightly in front of the bar because this is where the scapula is directly over the bar. The job of the lats is to keep the bar under the scapula as it comes off the ground. If you start in this position, your bar path will be vertical off the floor. So any attempt to defeat that set of mechanics will be met with failure. You aren’t going to pull the bar off the floor with your back vertical. You’re going to pull it of the floor when your scapulae are right over the bar. If you start off in the wrong position, it’s just not going to work.

CR: How about in regard to the back squat?

MR: Well, as I mentioned previously, the bar in the squat stays right over the middle of the foot. By the way, it also does in the deadlift, snatch, clean, and press. In all the weighted portions of those movements, the bar has to be balanced over the middle of the foot. That should be intuitively obvious. Once you hit the top of the second pull on the clean and you start going down under the bar, there is a deviation from that. However, at that point, you aren’t applying force to the bar anyway. During the time in which force is being applied to the bar in all these movements, the bar must be balanced over the middle of the foot.

Now, the squat will accommodate this with its back angle like I previously mentioned. The low bar squat will have your back in a more horizontal angle than a front squat by virtue of the fact that the bar has to stay over the middle of the foot and the bar is being held in a different position. Not everyone is normally proportioned so position is very individual. For example, I’ve got a 48-year-old female teacher in here who just started. She’s de-conditioned, and I’m real proud of her for just getting in here to start barbell training. Her arms are so short and her femurs are so long that when she stands up with her arms at her sides with her hands open, her fingers end at about the point of her greater trochanter. I mean she’s got really long legs and relatively short arms, so what’s her position going to be on the deadlift? Her torso is going to be almost horizontal to the ground. I can’t do anything about that. I’m not the one who put the woman together. She’s just built funny, and instead of me wrestling with that and trying to shove her into a position that she can’t occupy, I’ve got to line her up mechanically with a correct analysis and let her pull the best she can from there. No, she’s not going to be a really good deadlifter. But should that keep me from having her do deadlifts just because I can’t get her back vertical?

Well no. I want to get her back strong, and I can’t think of a better way to do that than with deadlifts. She’s not going to be pulling 405 lbs anytime soon so I’m not really worried about it. I started her off with 55 lbs the first day. As a matter of fact, she can’t even do a body weight squat right now so that is how valuable deadlifting is. It’s a nice barbell exercise that immediately allows her to start working on some hip and leg strength even in the absence of sufficient strength right now to do a correct body weight squat. But in two weeks, I’ll have her doing one. In a month, I’ll have her doing a squat with 55 lbs. You just watch.

CR: If you had to narrow it down to one thing, what would you say is the most common technical error that you see people making on the squat (besides not going to proper depth of course)?

MR: The most common error I see is people thinking that the squat is a leg press with the bar on your back. We have the fitness industry to thank for that along with lazy coaches who can’t seem to find time to improve their learning. We can also thank bodybuilding’s emphasis on the quads and everything else that you can see in the mirror. The squat depends largely on the posterior muscles, and most form problems involve the incorrect attempt to make the quads the focus of the movement.

CR: A common coaching cue in the back squat is to “pull the elbows forward.” In fact, Dave Tate has written: “You must also keep the shoulder blades pulled together with your elbows pulled forward. This will create the much needed upper back tightness to keep the barbell in proper position. When your elbows turn out toward the back, the bar will drift forward again and end up stapling you to the floor as well as ripping your head off. This is one common mistake I see in all my seminars.”

In Starting Strength (on page 35), you explain that the elbows should be elevated to the rear and that they should not be directly under the bar. You show a picture with the elbows pulled forward under the bar and note it as being incorrect. I’m sure much of this is semantics but could you explain the discrepancy?

MR: Yes, most of this is very simply semantics and just a matter of different coaching cues. When we place the bar on the back in the squat, we want to produce a tight muscular platform for the bar to sit. The posterior deltoids, the lats, rhomboids, and the rotator cuff muscles are all in contraction when the elbows are “back.” This essentially places the shoulder joint in a position of extension. That is where the elbows have to go. If you think about pinching someone’s hand between your shoulder blades, that’s the position in which those muscles are in contraction. If you stand behind your trainee and touch them on the elbows and have them pick up toward the back, that is what actively tightens all those muscles because that is the definition of what those muscles do in terms of movement.

They place the shoulder into extension and place the scapula into retraction and all those muscles are what support the bar. So pulling the elbows back is what contracts those muscles and makes things “tight.” Pulling the elbows forward is exactly the opposite of this because this takes the muscles into a position of elongation and doesn’t make them as tight as a platform.

CR: I think that people will often go to extremes with some cues if not coached hands on. I think that what Dave is trying to get people away from is having the elbows pointed straight back behind them and therefore allowing themselves to fall forward with the chest collapsed.

MR: People who pull their elbows too far back aren’t lifting their chest up at the same time. You can’t get your elbows that high in the back without bending over a little bit and dropping the chest to do it. Part of that comes from a misconception that many people have when they take the bar out of the rack. They think they need to make a flat spot for the bar to rest by putting some part of your upper back in a horizontal position (creating a “table” for it). That’s not how it works!

The bar is trapped between your hands and the upper back. We actually put our thumbs on top of the bar because I don’t want the elbows or wrists to intercept any of the weight of the bar. I want the back to have the entire load. When you lift the elbows to the rear a bit, it rotates the hands forward, thus jamming the bar even more firmly into that musculature back there. If you lift the chest at the same time, the bar can’t go anywhere because it’s trapped between the palm of your hand and the upper back musculature. The “trap” is produced when the elbows lift to the rear while at the same time you keep the chest up. I’ve found that this combination of elbows up in the back and chest up in the front is the position that produces the maximum amount of humeral extension, scapular retraction, and thoracic extension.

“Chest up” is largely a function of the upper back muscles. When you lift the chest at the same time as you lift the elbows back, you produce the maximum amount of stability in the thoracic spine and the maximum amount of muscular contraction of the set of muscles on which the bar sits. Everyone has observed that there is a “shelf” back there. Anatomically, in terms of skeletal markers, you are placing the bar right below the spine of the scapula. In terms of muscles, the shelf is created by the posterior deltoid. You place the bar on top of the posterior deltoids. The posterior deltoid pops up when the humerus is moved into a position that requires a contraction of that muscle.

CR: Anything else you would like to add about some of the perceived discrepancies?

MR: Yes, as you mentioned, most of the disagreements that are perceived between my descriptions of these positions and David Tate’s descriptions are purely semantics. He and I are in basic agreement on most everything because there is only one correct way to lift shit that’s heavy. It doesn’t go up if you do it wrong. His descriptions might be a bit different than mine, but we are probably always on the same page.

CR: Another common error in the squat that you mention is relaxing the hamstrings at the bottom of the squat. What is the best coaching cue to avoid this?

MR: Any time the knees move forward, the hamstrings relax. Any time the knees move forward, the knee angle becomes more acute. If the knee angle becomes more acute, the two ends—proximal and distal ends of the hamstrings—have approached each other. The muscle has therefore shortened but not because of an active contraction. If the origin and insertion of a muscle get closer together without an active contraction, you haven’t produced force. You haven’t moved the load. Gravity has moved it for you. So if you let your knees move forward at the bottom, you have relaxed your hamstrings.

The best way to keep this from happening is to think about the proximal end of the hamstring at the hips. There are several cues to fix this. You can think about sitting back at the bottom or reaching back with your butt. Also, an underappreciated cue is to shove the knees out as you descend, thus stretching the adductors and letting them contribute to the movement even more. Many people have trouble understanding what the adductors do in the squat. If the knees go out, the adductors lengthen and make a better contribution to the movement. The key is that if the knees go out, then they can’t go forward!

Another cue that is most favored by modern powerlifters is to try to keep the shin vertical because if the shin is fairly vertical, then it isn’t moving forward. This is a useful cue for all people who are just doing a general strength training squat if they’re having a problem with the knees going too far forward.

The knees can move too far forward in two places in the squat. You can start out at the top in the squat with the knees too far forward like someone does if they try to front-squat their back squat. This is more common in beginners. Much more common in those with a bit more experience is relaxation of the hamstrings at the bottom of the squat such that the knees travel forward during the last third of the bottom part of the movement. We also mention another way in Starting Strength to cure this using a handy piece of lumber.

Programming concepts

CR: In our last interview, you mentioned that you include the deadlift in the training routines of Olympic lifters. You’ve also mentioned elsewhere that you would have powerlifters incorporate power cleans into their training routines. In practice, how would you suggest that the powerlifter implement power cleans into his routine?

MR: George Hechter is the best example I can give you. He pulled up in the mid-800s back when it wasn’t fashionable to do so. He was the guy who showed me how to do this a long time ago. He would power clean all of his deadlift warm-ups. He would start off and power clean 135 lbs, 225 lbs, 315 lbs, and 405 lbs. He would high pull 495 lbs and then deadlift 585 lbs, 675 lbs, 765 lbs, and on up. All of his first work off the floor was explosive.

Louie has taught all of us the importance of the Westside methods in regards to power production off the floor. I really can’t add anything to the discussion that he hasn’t already told us. However, I will add that this is how George did it. Louie just has everyone deadlift fast. I feel you can pull faster off the floor if you know you’re going to clean it. For example, the clean is extremely important because it convinces/forces you to move it fast enough to be able to get under it. If you intentionally high pull a bar, I promise you that it will not come off the floor as fast as it will if you are going to clean it. Even in the most experienced Olympic weightlifters, you will not high pull the bar with the same bar velocity that you will if you know that you have to get it on your shoulders. This is why cleaning is such a good way to incorporate explosion off the floor. In my opinion, it works better for this than the timed deadlift singles.

I think you can incorporate this concept the way George did it, or if you don’t want to do that, you can have a power clean day. You can recover from pulling two times per week if you do it intelligently. Cleans aren’t as difficult to recover from as deadlifts because they aren’t an absolute strength movement, and they don’t get bone-on-bone like a deadlift. You don’t miss a clean for the same reasons that you miss a deadlift, and as a result, the stress is different.

I would use triples and doubles. The heaviest weight you can clean will still come off the floor faster than your deadlift for a powerlifter. But interestingly, if you look at the velocity of the bar off the floor, there isn’t a great deal of difference between a real heavy third attempt clean and jerk and a deadlift. There is some but not as much as you may think. This is also why I advocate the use of heavy deadlifts for Olympic lifters as I mentioned last time. That first pull off the ground looks pretty close to a deadlift to me. As I have stated, I’ve always been of the opinion that if you can deadlift 600 lbs, then that 400-lb clean isn’t going to feel terribly heavy off the floor.

CR: You also mentioned in another article that you feel snatches are important for powerlifters. Can you elaborate on this briefly?

MR: I was taught how to do power snatches along with cleans as a way to learn to explode.  It was Starr’s version of Westside. I feel that it’s important for powerlifters to be athletic with their training, more because of my interest in producing well-rounded athletes than any idea I might have about training for a suited and wrapped 1100-lb squat. The snatch is hard and requires a learning effort and a bit of practice. And as such, it is useful, more to the athlete himself than to powerlifting.

CR: What kind of general periodization cycle would you suggest for a powerlifter? What type of plan did you follow when you were powerlifting? What changes would you make knowing what you know now? I assume it would be similar to the Texas method in Practical Programming, correct?

MR: Well, the answer to this would be very long indeed, and most of the thought process behind this is contained within Practical Programming. That being said, there are several ways to go about this. As a general set of remarks, I’d like to try the hormonal fluctuation model on powerlifters to see the results I think that research need to be done on. The way I personally prepared for a meet was very traditional. I would go from high reps to low reps over the course of a twelve-week cycle just like most people have always done. I used some similar concepts for the Texas method in Practical Programming. I would write out a 12, 10, or 8 (or maybe 2 eight-week cycles and peak twice) on a piece of paper for each lift. I would start out with eight reps or maybe ten reps and gradually work the weights up and the reps down over the course of the cycle.

The Westside guys have powerlifting down to a science, and I feel I need to state my position on this. I’m not making myself out to be an advanced powerlifting coach. I don’t handle any advanced powerlifters. I wouldn’t claim to be capable of doing so. There are many guys who have way more business talking about advanced powerlifting than me. That is what Louie, Westside, Dave Tate, and the guys at EliteFTS are for. My forte is in working with beginners and teaching people how to properly do the barbell exercises when they start out. There are plenty of people in the world who need to learn to do these movements properly at first. So there’s plenty of shit for me to do without claiming to know things I don’t.

One other thing that I would add is that had I known then what I know now and had I used Louie’s Westside methods, especially the timed doubles on the squat and the timed triples on the bench, I feel I would’ve had much higher lifts. For example, I squatted 611 lbs, benched 396 lbs, and deadlifted 633 lbs on two separate occasions at 220 lbs. I got a 622-lb squat in a meet, but it got turned down due to some technical B.S. Anyway, I did the 396-lb bench in a T-shirt. I’ve never even had a bench press shirt on. I feel that if I knew then what I know now, I would have squatted about 675 lbs, benched 450 lbs, and deadlifted 700 lbs. I think that I was capable of those numbers because I was so badly overtrained at the time. I could have avoided this by using Louie’s ideas. It’s like people always tell me, “I wish you had written Starting Strength twenty years ago.” I wish I would have had Louie Simmons twenty five years ago.

The new book

CR: Please tell us about the new book. What kinds of things do you address in it?

MR: This is a second edition titled, Starting Strength, Second Edition: Basic Barbell Training. We’ve added extensive material on the lift variations and all of the assistance exercises in the new edition. This includes all of the pressing, squatting, and pulling variations. The three basic types of squats—front, high bar, and low bar—are addressed in great detail as well as rack squats, box squats, and everything else you can think of. The same goes for the presses and the pulls. The assistance exercise chapter deals with the other ancillary lifts like glute ham raises, rows, chins, and pull-ups. We also firmed up and elaborated on the programming chapter. We laid out 8–10 workout examples for a hypothetical novice showing exactly how we would do it and how we would write it up in a training journal. Quite simply, we worked our asses off on it so I hope it will make a valuable contribution to the field.

CR: Are there any future plans for a DVD series on the basic lifts?

MR: Yes sir, there are.

CR: Thanks as always for your time.

MR: You bet.