The Problem with CrossFit, Kettlebells, and Functional Training | Starting Strength Radio #36

The intro music slaps

Actually it’s Rips Cacao connection .. we want to know …😂

I love rip but he couldn't be more wrong about Crossfit. Someone should tell him that rich froning Cleans 405, Deadlifts 570 and runs a 6 minute mile and he weighs like 190lbs... Rip has never trained an athlete that would even qualify for the Crossfit Games. He is right about the numerous bad coaches, but those affiliates never last.

I use light kettlebells as a warm up tool. I do swings ,cleans, snatches, etc to wake up my old body before I get under the bar.

Mushrooms do not make you vomit. You are thinking of something like AYAHUASCA which is totally unrelated. Mushrooms grow here in the UK I can get on my bike to a local field, about 15 minutes, pick hundreds. Will they change your life - I think so, yes, they can have a profound effect. But so does powerlifting... there is a certain overlap, there is a certain intensity involved, a certain sharpening , a certain overcoming of fear, demanding resilience, demanding overcoming discomfort, coming through the other side. Take running a 5k hard for a PR. It feels horrible. But afterwards you feel great. Maybe the theme is overcoming.

Conceivably one could programme crossfit rigidly. I imagine many have done it for years and simply called it training.

Bosu ball room 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Kettlebell hardstyle is good..

Thanks for clearing this up for me.

Just smoke weed after you eat mushrooms. You basically forget how to vomit.

Comments about Jeffrey Epstein are an example of why some don't take you seriously 😂
Just stick to strength training because you're so damn good at it

Maybe their job that requires a 3.5 hour round trip travel pays significantly more than anything within a 60-90 minute round trip commute. That type of commute is worth a 50-100% pay increase in my opinion

I've read a bit about Mark and I'm really suprised to be hearing so much wrong with this video.

Barbell workouts are great and when you want absolute strength or size. Those are the way to go. But strength isn't one dimensional.

He says that you don't improve in sports by doing strength training that mimics what you would be doing in said sport. That's absolutely not true. Anyone who has boxed will tell you. You don't increase punching power by doing barbell movements. You do it by hitting the heavy bag. Many boxing coaches will even discourage barbell training.

There's so much misinformation about what functional training and functional training is. Functional training will give you functional strength. Or as many call it, real world strength. Functional strength is not standing on a buso ball with a dumbbell. Functional training can be anything from a barbell squat to a kettlebell farmers walk.

There's a reason that Pro MMA fighters use kettlebells so much. They work.
A 495lbs bench press may be impress in the gym. But does little for you in a boxing ring or MMA cage. But Turkish Get Ups with a kettlebell or ballistic training with a medicine ball can make the difference between winning a fight and getting your clock cleaned.

Barbells have their place but they are no longer the cornerstone of strength training for all sports. I wish people would educate themselves and realize this.

Magic mushrooms don't make you puke.
I think Rip was thinking of peyote.

There is no other way to train other than with a barbell. If your a swimmer, track athlete, soccer player, -load that fuckin bar up and squat. No other forms of training needed. -RIP

This channel is a hidden gem. Great work guys. ❤

Joe Wieder was thesis, crossfit was antithesis, rippetoe is synthesis, and his is the dominant fitness paradigm now

How would you do this program as a fighter trying maintain his weight ?

I promise you we'll be a better Runner if you strength train like rip tells you 3 times a week at least and it doesn't matter if you run in the morning and then strength train in the afternoon or if you run in the afternoon and strength training in the morning.
Just get this Progressive overload stuff going and if you feel like running go ahead but a stronger Runner is a better Runner

Professional athletes can't just be 200 fucking pounds at 5'8" because it helps complete "the program." It's not an option. Athletes will do this shit when you figure out a way to gain strength without being an enormous fatass like all of your coaches.

This video was preceded by a Rogue Fitness CrossFit Ad to me.

That punching the ticket scenario is spot on and hilarious 😂

I was a competitive swimmer in high school - a sprinter. The summer before my senior year I weight lifted religiously in the afternoon and ran a fast paced 1.5 miles in the morning. I was in incredible shape when swimming started in the fall. I got my fastest times in the 50 yard freestyle. Of course everything when to pot when my coach had me swimming endlessly and doing no strength training.

The best part about this episode is it's before they gave f*cking Rusty his own microphone.

It’s exactly as expected, a 30lb kettlebell. This is straight from the box, no issue with appearance and no problem with the grip. Good buy for the price.

Strength is just one.. Pillar of fitness..health..And longevity.. Cant neglect other aspects

I am a professional couch potato (well technically a bed potato since I'm broke and I don't own a couch and sit on my bed all day). After going through Rip's linear novice strength progression, I've noticed that sitting on my behind all day and doing absolutely nothing else has become much easier, and I have much more stamina too (now I can sit for an hour longer before I have to lie down from sheer exhaustion). That means I can now watch an entire movie on my laptop in one sitting, instead of just single episodes of my favourite TV shows and cartoons. Thanks Rip.

If you mix strength training with politics you will sound like an ignoramus to 1/3 of the listeners.

Rip need to invite Joe on Starting Strength Podcast

I agree with his assessment of kettlebells from his purely strength perspective. However, kettlebells are not about maximizing strength, they are about work output. The anecdote about the kettlebell champion who wouldn’t squat all the way sounds problematic. I’ve never met a kettlebeller who doesn’t make an attempt to go ass to grass on their squats.

Anybody who watches the NBA can tell you players are hurt way more frequently now that when you watched in the 90's and early 2000's. Yet we're "supposed" to be having the best sports medicine ever these days. Every workout you see is these guys on a little half yoga ball. No wonder.

There is not a problem for fitness they are much better than his teaching starting strength. However, for max one rep strength his power lifting routine is better. They each have their advantages. Neither are bad. I don’t know why rip has to insult other tools in tool box

Force = Mass x Acceleration. So, assuming an athlete has the god given ability to accelerate then increasing muscle mass will only produce more force. I supposed there is an upper limit where being too heavy will limit acceleration and slow down force production but my guess is that’s further off then we think and we might not be able to train to that level anyway. So, yes, he’s absolutely correct.

Tiger Woods, Bryson DeChambeau or Brooks Koepka or Rory McIlroy the golfers hit the ball longer and got better players after strength training (not hypertrophy workouts)
All number one players.

Well, getting stronger is great unless you need to run a marathon, and a 500lbs squat makes you gain weight and no cardiovascular endurance for it XD

cuh-cane

🇺🇸🥛🙏

All of her fans are Nazis.

starting strength is a good program, but if you think professional tennis players would risk their joint health by doing heavy "fahves", you are obviously too sold on your own dogma. Their is no top 20 mens tennis player doing 3x5 bench press or overhead press...period.

Becoming strong from the SSLP helped me with my 3 point shots in basketball dramatically. I just wish I had figured that out when I was in high school instead of at age 25 when that sort of marksmanship won't, and shouldn't for moral and legality reasons, get you any fun time with the homecoming queen.

My high school's weight training program was pathetic. We wasted so much time on periodized training with max charts on novices. A complete avoidance of teaching and doing the deadlift for fear of injuring our lower backs despite having us do hang-cleans and... picking the damn bar up off the floor. All of the bars were bent as well, so they would pop out of your hands during the pull or the rack. They were probably bent due to irresponsible programming of heavy rack pulls. Because we didn't do deadlifts, our grip strength was not even sufficient for the hang cleans, so we used leather straps to hold on. We did seated overhead "military" presses for no apparent reason. Squat form was atrocious and rarely to full depth with feet forward and "eyes up to go up" cues. Pullup form was nonexistent, and it resembled Crossfit kipping. Isometric body weight holds (planks, hand stands) were in vogue because it "filled up your muscles" or some BS like that. We also did bench burnouts, steering wheel shoulders, agility ladders, and other useless things. I think it was to just keep us entertained. One particular summer we even did a P90X program.

The track weight lifting program in college was not any better. They had us read a book from Istvan Javorik, a previous D1 football trainer at Texas A&M, and there was no apparent explanation for the training program's methodology. It was pulled, in my opinion, from his ass at random, similar to CrossFit. There was even a section dedicated to the benefits of herbal teas that boiled down to basically his opinion. The program ran me into the ground, and all I did was get skinnier as a sprinter. Both Istvan and our track coach Lester were lucky guys who were made to look good by the freak athletes they had the good fortune to be coaching.

To squat 800 you need to squat 725 in set of 5? Its about 90% :D No athlete can do this.

As a counter point - you can get pretty strong with kettlebell cleans, presses and squats. Combine these into doubles monster lifts and you have a complete body developer.

Of course, barbells will always be king for strength in absolute terms.

What is this guy talking about? Did he actually see any pro tennis pro player or any other sport competitor training? There is tons of other functional exercises that they are doing. His lifts are actualy not mandatory. Sure they do squat or deadlift but that is minority of strength work. Its not all about strength Mark

Kb swings are moreso cardio not for building a bunch of strength

Mark's argument is just too simplistic and short sighted. Yes more strength is fairly universally positive but SO IS CONDITIONING, and arguably much more so. Conditioning without strength is only a problem when someone is so weak that they can't participate at all, something that is incredibly rare unless we're talking about elderly people because activities are DESIGNED to be as universal as possible, but strength without conditioning is far more useless when you consider the type of tasks we actually ask people to do and activities people participate in in the real world. A well conditioned "weak person" (that isn't even necessarily really weak at all, only by strength community standards) will always be capable of doing far more work or meaningfully usefully participate in an activity for longer than the bodybuilders we see out there who seem to be gassed out of breath just from having a conversation. Strength will only exceed in raw power output over the shortest lengths of time, something that we as a civilization has long since moved past having humans physically carry anything heavier than 45 pounds.

Rich, what do you think of disrespect on Barbells… the dumbbell offers rich rooted blood for deep raw muscle growth through offset loading.