Achieving The Standards 1.0 - 135 press, 225 bench, 315 squat, 405 deadlift - is more important and useful than getting down to 10% bodyfat and it's not even close.

This is pretty interesting from former powerlifting champ Pete Rubish, for what it reveals about the almost universal tendency in the lifting world to elevate anything said or done by lifters at the top of the sport and making their form or programming essentially immune from criticism or questioning from anyone who isn’t themselves also at the top of the sport. Back around ten years ago I had a client - himself barely even a dedicated recreational lifter, but interested in the sport for whatever reason - who couldn’t believe I disagreed with a lot of what I saw from many high level powerlifters including Rubish, who he particularly liked for whatever reason. Of course, I wasn’t criticizing them personally, but pointing out shortcomings in their approach, and trying to explain to my client that what Rubish did wouldn’t work for him or pretty much any of my regular clients training three or four days a week for an hour, and not on gear. A common theme of disagreement I have with people here on Twitter all the time. Anyway, Pete dropped out of powerlifting and I also stopped following the sport as closely so I hadn’t heard or thought of him in a while. But this post showed up on my IG feed today, and I thought it was very interesting regarding this topic. Here, Pete more or less admits to getting wrong many of the things I was pointing out to my client 10 years ago, but my client had trouble believing me about - and about which, if this was happening today, my comments would be bombarded by people telling me I was an idiot for disagreeing with a record holder since I myself am not a champion lifter. Of course I cringe watching these teenagers do these absurd “optimal“ movements and asserting that the only reason they’re not as big and strong as everyone else is because of genetics and gear. But at the same time, we have to remember that it really is indeed true that a lot of the top people get that way because of genetics and gear (and hard consistent work), and their approach is not necessarily scalable and would not work well for the general population. IOW, their success is often in spite of the way they do things rather than because of it. It takes wisdom and discernment to see the difference between those two and not just automatically pick one side or the other, which is what most people seem to do.

Just add five pounds