63+ Mark Rippetoe Quotes On Strength, Motivation And Bodybuilding

Mark Rippetoe is an American strength training coach and author. He is best known for his book Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, which is widely considered to be the definitive text on the subject of barbell training. He is also the founder of the fitness website Starting Strength, which provides online coaching and resources for strength training. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Mark Rippetoe on strength, motivation, leadership.

Top 10 Mark Rippetoe Quotes

1. You can't make people smarter. You can expose them to information, but your responsibility stops there.
2. There are no shortcuts. The fact that a shortcut is important to you means that you are a pussy.
3. There are few things graven in stone, except that you have to squat or you're a pussy.
4. Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.
5. If you insist on wearing gloves, make sure they match your purse.
6. A squat cannot be performed on a Smith machine any more than it can be performed in a small closet with a hamster.
7. Accumulating injuries are the price we pay for the thrill of not having sat around on our asses.
8. You don't get big and strong from lifting weights - you get big and strong from recovering from lifting weights
9. 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.
10. Mediocre athletes that tried like hell to get good are the best coaches.

Mark Rippetoe Short Quotes

• The deadlift also serves as a way to train the mind to do things that are hard.
• Poor form in the gym is caused by insufficient yelling.
• The spine is best at bearing a load in an arch
• The Olympic Snatch is gymnastics with a bar
• I recommend that you change colleges.
• Stronger people are harder to kill
• I welcome you to the community of people who have decided that EASY will no longer suffice!
• Humans are not physically normal in the absence of hard physical effort.
• Opinions are like phasers - everybody ought to have one.
• An adult male weighs at least 200 pounds

Mark Rippetoe Quotes About Strength

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Rippetoe Quotes About Bodybuilding

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

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

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. — Mark Rippetoe

Mark Rippetoe Quotes About Squats

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

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

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

I can teach idiots to squat in ten minutes. — Mark Rippetoe

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

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

Mark Rippetoe Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Mark Rippetoe

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. — Mark Rippetoe

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. — Mark Rippetoe

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

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

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. — Mark Rippetoe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Mark Rippetoe

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. — Mark Rippetoe

Your muscles cannot get "longer" without some rather radical orthopedic surgery. — Mark Rippetoe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Mark Rippetoe

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. — Mark Rippetoe

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. — Mark Rippetoe

There is no substitute for milk. Sorry. — Mark Rippetoe

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

Life Lessons by Mark Rippetoe

1. Mark Rippetoe's work emphasizes the importance of consistency and dedication in order to achieve success.
2. He also stresses the importance of having a plan and sticking to it in order to reach your goals.
3. His work also teaches us to be mindful of our progress and to adjust our approach if necessary in order to continue making progress.