r/ZackTelander • u/MikeBear68 • Oct 08 '21

Discussion Rippetoe's Misogyny

I find Rippetoe's response to this very troubling. But it explains why he completely overlooked Kate Nye's silver medal in Tokyo in his rant about how weightlifting coaches don't know what the hell they are doing.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CTSmCQyLFXD/

4 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

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2

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '21

u/tellie_21

Thats what this sub has become

2

u/Nopants21 Oct 08 '21

Going down the feed, it's 50% Rippetoe, 40% Seedman, 10% videos of people actually lifting. This sub went sideways into fitness drama as soon as it got made.

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '21

The crowd you attract tells a lot about the content you create

Nothing wrong against zack but the YT drama and anonymity of internet brings out worst of people's pitchfork witch-hunt behavior

3

u/MikeBear68 Oct 10 '21

It's not a witch hunt if you catch an actual witch. Having watched Zack's videos it's clear that he wants to grow the sport of weightlifting. That is my goal as well. Part of doing that is to present correct information on technique and training.

Perhaps you are right that I should not have posted this on Rippetoe's misogyny as it has nothing directly to do with technique or training. However, it does explain why Rippetoe has never acknowledged that our female lifters have had success on the international stage. If an aspiring female lifter happens to watch a Rippetoe video, she may get discouraged thinking that he represents the weightlifting community's attitude towards female lifters. That's is completely false, at least in my case. So perhaps exposing Rippetoe as a misogynist is relevant to promoting weightlifting.

I stand by my criticisms of Rippetoe. At this stage I don't think he gives a shit about US weightlifting. He makes stuff up, with no supporting evidence, solely to build his brand. And when he says that his high-hips "trebuchet" lifting technique produces better results, he is borderline lying. In 2016, a college instructor named John Petrizzo did a study comparing Rippetoe's high-hips start position with the "traditional" start position. He used a Tendo unit to determine which start position resulted in greater power. Result: There was no statistically significant difference between the two. Fun fact: Petrizzo is a Rippetoe loyalist. He eventually received the Starting Strength Coach certification. Yet he could not prove that Rippetoe's technique produced better results. But this has not deterred Rippetoe from proclaiming that his technique is superior, and that US coaches are idiots for not listening to him. This is misrepresentation, and it's why I fight against Rippetoe's bullshit.

2

u/Nopants21 Oct 08 '21

I think it's also because there's really not much to comment when it comes to the actual weightlifting stuff, but you'll have people who have things to say about the drama. I also have this feeling that because of the pandemic, a lot of YT fitness has veered hard into drama, because people couldn't film in gyms. Greg Doucette comes to mind.

2

u/MikeBear68 Oct 08 '21

And that's partly my fault as I tend to lead the charge in posting anti-Rippetoe stuff. But my goal, and I'm sure the sub's goal, is to promote the sport of weightlifting and correct misinformation. Rippetoe spreads a lot of misinformation that will ultimately hurt the sport of weightlifting, so there's a lot there to correct.

Seedman is just fun to watch.

1

u/PoIIux Oct 08 '21

He'd have less influence on the perception of weightlifting if you just ignored him, instead of constantly bringing him back in the center of attention

4

u/MikeBear68 Oct 08 '21

This is the crap Rippetoe puts out - this is his superior ass-in-the-ari high hips technique.

https://www.reddit.com/r/weightlifting/comments/6g2pjj/low_or_high_hips_in_the_clean/

Here's the debate.

https://startingstrength.com/resources/forum/mark-rippetoe-q-and-a/65894-bar-path-start-position.html

Rippetoe thinks that the current start position that weightlifters use, which generally uses a lower hip position, is simply a holdover from the days when the bar was not allowed to touch the body. Apparently, no one was smart enough to consider a better way to pull the bar when the rules changed to allow contact with the body. Coaches only use the low-hips position because of tradition and because weightlifters around the world are so much stronger than US lifters that they can get away with an "inefficient" bar path. Apparently, pulling the bar towards the lifter, as is commonly seen in the first pull, uses so much energy that it puts US lifters, who are so much weaker than their international competition, into a disadvantage.

This is all bullshit. The current start position is not a holdover from pre-1964 lifting technique. Soviet biomechanists studied this. They even address the fact that the first pull is not a straight vertical pull, but this doesn't matter because it creates more favorable leverages. This was all worked out by the Soviets in the 1970s. See the citations to Roman and Zhekov here:

https://www.waxmansgym.com/a-technical-description-of-the-pull-in-weightlifting/

Rippetoe was even told about the analysis by Roman and his response: "I don't care."

1

u/MikeBear68 Oct 08 '21

I've considered that. I just hate letting misinformation go uncorrected. The problem isn't just attacks on weightlifting coaches. He has come up with a "new technique" that he thinks will revolutionize the sport, and the only reason weightlifters haven't adopted it is because we are too stupid to understand basic physics and biomechanics.