Rippetoe is all about gaining weight and putting on muscle. Probably not practical for most people. I'd also be hesitant to teach yourself both how to deadlift and squat - I hurt myself doing both after reading Rippetoe, despite the detailed instructions.

Also, according to Nick Curson (coach of UFC Champion Rafael Dos Anjos) on the Joe Rogan podcast, heavy slow weight lifting is counterproductive for most sports [1] [2]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJmYFlvKloE&t=26m18s

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJmYFlvKloE&t=43m23s

Rippetoe is all about being strong, because being strong is better than being weak. For the average dude starting to lift, that will likely involve gaining weight and adding muscle. This is, however, not the be all and end all of what he is talking about.

Please take a look at Gus, a woman in her 90s who has recently started to train at Rip's gym and has improved her quality of life such that she no longer requires her walker.

http://youtu.be/3585w9FmOGs

It's hard to hurt yourself if you truly read the book, because if you start with an empty bar and only add small amounts of weight using the proper form (as the book instructs) it's tough to hurt yourself.

If anyone needs some help with barbell form you can drop into the forums where coaches will gladly review a video for you, or if necessary find someone to help you in person.

And before I fall down the rabbit hole of repeating Rip's gospel word for word, what a coach says they do for an elite athlete has little bearing on the general population. Elite athelets are genetic freaks that could be trained in many ways and still achieve their results.

Lifting heavy is not going to slow you down or make you big, it's going to get you strong. Training for strength and practicing your sport of choice will just make you a stronger version of your previous self. If you train and eat like a power lifter you are not going to be able to maintain your 3:30 marathon time, but if you add in properly programmed strength training for the goals you are looking to achieve, it is petty hard to argue that being stronger is worse than being weaker all other things being equal.

> Rippetoe is all about being strong, because being strong is better than being weak.

Then again, too much strength competes with balance and flexibility.

Citation needed here.

I don't get the down votes. If you have several hundred pounds on the bar, you are by definition in balance.

If you can move through the full range of motion of the movement you are flexible enough.

Being able to squat above your body weight is going to make you a more useful human being than putting your leg behind your head.

Hey, don't worry about down votes, it's only internet points.

I don't think strength is bad, but: you only have so many training hours and you might want to spend some of them on balance or flexibility instead. Further, it's possible to have such a volume of muscle that you cannot achieve certain positions (e.g. trying to touch your elbows together leaves an 8 inch gap). And it's also possible for your muscles to weigh so much that you can't move as gracefully because equilibrium is harder to maintain. That's all I meant. Ask any dancer, yogi, acrobat, gymnast, skier, martial artist, figure skater, etc. Any discipline where you need strength, balance, and flexibility in approximately equal measure, it's possible to overtrain or undertrain any one of them.

True, I misspoke, and thanks for the link. But Curson's stuff has made me rethink the practicality of heavy, slow lifting. He does think that it will slow you down.

I second Mr. Rippetoe's work. Starting Strength is a great book for those learning to lift. The technical detail he goes into is lost on a lot of people, but I really enjoyed how thorough he was.

It's lifting not the barbell that is the great thing. Outside of lifting the barbell is an abused piece of equipment in men's fitness. Barbell presses and squats have long been the staple of men's fitness. The first contributes to many shoulder injury and the later to lower back injuries. Then there is also the psychology of our desire to slide on huge plates. As well as lifting, our rediscover of bells and balls and movements that activate our "stabilizer muscles" and more systens is the best thing.

There is absolutely nothing inherently dangerous or injury prone in lifting a barbell. It is the second part, the desire to slide on huge plates that gets people in trouble. One could say the same thing about someone who decides they are going to run a marathon, slide on their 5 year old Nikes, and heel strike their way to a knee replacement.

I do say, once you have had the experience of 400 pounds loaded on your back, there isn't a muscle in your body, stabilizer or otherwise, that isn't 'activated'. There are not many other movements out there, and none that can be progressively loaded and trained, that will match a back squat to proper depth for engaging more of the body's muscle systems.

A barbell bench press is not ergonomic. Keeping your hands at a fixed distance throughout the movement is not ergonomic.

We'll have to disagree on the progressive loading and training. For most people there are high impact, safer movements than barbell squats. An example being the kettlebell swing.