A Brave New Assault on RPE

[KyleSchuant]

It’s been pointed out here as well that Rip’s own program requires RPE. In fact, it requires it on the first session. This was even pointed out on his own forum.

Rip responded to that, "yeah but it's only in the first session." Hmmm, so you have the person use RPE when they have the least experience on which to base their perception of exertion... Now, for the novice it doesn't matter much, it'll come out much the same in a few months either way. But then why not simply tell them all to start with the empty bar?

It's nothing to me, I don't use RPE. But I'm not out there rubbishing it, either. And they know it's nonsense, or else they wouldn't be manually approving or rejecting each post and banning people for disagreeing with them.

My biggest criticism of the SS crowd being critical of RPE is that they put little to no effort into actually learning about it. That’s because they suspect that Occam’s Razor can be applied to all training methods with optimal results.

The problem is they're not applying it. If they were they'd compare the results of different programmes rather than just engaging in a circle jerk about how awesome theirs is. They'd collect data and compare.

[ColonelMoutarde]

What I find somewhat hilarious is that, when you distill all down, the reason why programming concepts such as RPE (and more broadly the style of programming used by RTS, Barbell Medicine and many others) have gotten so popular is because of Rippetoe and associated acts. I am not being facetious.

People usually start by Rippetoe-like programming (eat a lot, relatively low volume, add a little weight each session) simply because:
- Starting Strength is very visible on the internet
- The approach is the one that makes the most sense intuitively

Then they stall very hard and/or get hurt, because grinding max effort sets is not a sustainable strategy, and muscle hypertrophy is a thing. Which is why they get interested in complex programming. They do not go for complex programming because they are "not man enough" or "not doing the program" or because there is a "global conspiracy" surrounding reps in reserve, they go for it because simpler programming stops working.

@KyleSchuant A lot of data has already been collected. And the comparison does not look good for them.

[mouse]

I really only skimmed through the discussion here but here are my official takeaways from all this:

• It's absolutely astonishing to me that even after all this time Austin/Jordan still live rent free in Rip's head... amazing...

• It's not just enough for me to poke fun at all the armchair experts over there being relatively 'weak' or not being able to match the numbers of the people they're criticizing... but now I will click on the user and see where they post. None of them have logs, period. They mostly post in Q&A or the COVID thread. I honestly don't know if the majority of users there even train anymore.

• The site has approximately FIVE users who have updated a 'competitive' training log in the last month.

[mbasic]

They mostly post in Q&A or the COVID thread. I honestly don't know if the majority of users there even train anymore.

I bet a few of these are sock puppet accounts of Rip's.

And I would guess ... maybe the OP is one of those. Seems odd, like: "no one was asking you" type of things.
Of all the horrible shady scams in the fitness/strength-training industry these days, RPE seems like the least threatening, and/or the least talked about presently. (compared to ..... IDK say, jig-saw massager guns? and that type of thing).

There's a comment in there somewhere about overhearing the two teenaged gym-bros in the locker room talking about their RPE's on their Machine Lifts ..... seems like ...completely made up.

The Covid thread might be losing steam, since less people are caring about C19, in general.
POTUS Election is T+1 year now ....
The RPE thread might be the new EnP.

[mouse]

And I would guess ... maybe the OP is one of those. Seems odd, like: "no one was asking you" type of things.
Of all the horrible shady scams in the fitness/strength-training industry these days, RPE seems like the least threatening, and/or the least talked about presently. (compared to ..... IDK say, jig-saw massager guns? and that type of thing).

I find it hard to believe Rip needs to wage holy war on the egregious and unethical business practices of coaching people to train with a couple reps in the tank when ya know... Joel Seedman is still out there and he's totally silent.

There's a comment in there somewhere about overhearing the two teenaged gym-bros in the locker room talking about their RPE's on their Machine Lifts ..... seems like ...completely made up.

100% these things don't happen, at least not like they are described. It's totally possible that said poster saw two bros talking in the gym. But if you told me you had damning evidence that the OP just sheepishly walked past them and later made up the "They were talking about their RPEs!" just to get a nice back-pat out of Rip... I wouldn't be shocked at all.

That whole 'encounter' screams of the OPs insecurities by the way. The resentfulness of the bros 'admiring their pump' is just dripping off every little keystroke hahaha...

[omaniphil]

Also, there is a guy taking it to the SS morons with a 530lbs DL. It’s obvious he’s much stronger than the idiots remaining in that forum. Even better is some imbecile later coming along and telling him to get up to 242 and do sets of five and he’d be pulling 750 in no time.

Reading these threads makes it obvious that no one over there understands how to train or program successfully.

I have nothing to add to the RPE discussion, and stopped giving a rip about Rip years ago. That guy in the thread, Josh K, was an intern at Chris Kurisko's Black Iron Training gym a number of years back and met him when I went to one of those SS camps back when I was drinking the kool-aid. He's a nice guy - he would fit in well here.

[wiigelec]

So, BBM--who used to recommend and use SSNLP--completely severs from SS after trashing TM, presumable taking some of the market share with them, then releases their own beginner template that uses, wait for it, RPE. Rip says straight up use TM not The Bridge because RPE is bullshit.

Rip rails incessantly that RPE is bullshit (even though PPST3 intermediate basically advocates against failure and to use some form of autoregulation), which he claims is not a marketing message because he doesn't have any competitors. Now I may be of questionable intelligence (ad hominem?), but this just doesn't seem to make much sense to me. I guess I shouldn't realistically expect SS to officially declare anti-RPE an official marketing position as a differentiator between them and other RPE centric competing (this is a free market, isn't it? isn't competition the cornerstone of the free market?) training outlets. Maybe he's right and I just don't know what I'm talking about.

Sorry just had to get that off my chest to someone who would know what I am talking about, my wife just stares at me blankly when I bring it up, and wonders why I should even care (she's right of course). I may have been kinda done with the "other" forum (or is this the "other" forum? it's so confusing) previously, but I'm completely done with it now. Rip may or may not be an asshole but he sure plays one on the internet.

[mgil]

Also, there is a guy taking it to the SS morons with a 530lbs DL. It’s obvious he’s much stronger than the idiots remaining in that forum. Even better is some imbecile later coming along and telling him to get up to 242 and do sets of five and he’d be pulling 750 in no time.

Reading these threads makes it obvious that no one over there understands how to train or program successfully.

I have nothing to add to the RPE discussion, and stopped giving a rip about Rip years ago. That guy in the thread, Josh K, was an intern at Chris Kurisko's Black Iron Training gym a number of years back and met him when I went to one of those SS camps back when I was drinking the kool-aid. He's a nice guy - he would fit in well here.

He indeed seems reasonable.

[mgil]

@wiigelec an implicit point of your discussion is that Rip’s methodology requires some sort of assessment (when the barbell slows, when things get heavy, before you start missing reps, etc.) to frame programming, but he had no explicit method of articulating it.

Maybe the reasons RPE goes up his ass sideways is because they beat him to the market with a “it’s just plain arithmetic” approach to defining a feedback loop.

Or maybe he just likes picking on that topic because the idiots there don’t know any better to keep their mouth shut or offer a experienced and reasonable deconstruction on why RPE didn’t work for them?

I stay away from that site for months on end, but the new, yet old, hate for RPE and now Rip saying it’s a way to con people (yet he’s building boutique gyms to charge people $315 and up a month for knowledge that’s in his own $25 book [and can be found for free]) is magnificently ironic.

A guy with loosening standards on his own certificate that costs $1000 to get, charges $$$ to watch videos on content in the books, and requires $$$ triennially to go to the SSCA calling RPE a con is fucking funny.

This is before discussing actual data. SS has data and it’s stunningly mediocre. The NLP works for 6-8 weeks like every other novice program. His system does not provide enough understanding for the average lifter to progress past post novice programming. Even on his own forums, when there was traffic in the intermediate and competitive logs, people where having to modify TM or run blocks of non-SS programming to make progress.

Basically, it’s as all perspective has been lost as the circle tightens and the echoes grow louder. He’s allowing guys that have never pulled 405 for a single or benched 225 for a single to weigh in on what works for making strong people. That’s simply wild.

[wiigelec]

@mgil you mean any failure to progress can’t be boiled down to the trainees failure to execute “A Clarification” and “The First Three Questions”?

[mgil]

@mgil you mean any failure to progress can’t be boiled down to the trainees failure to execute “A Clarification” and “The First Three Questions”?

How does one know if rest time between sets is sufficient? Too much?

[wiigelec]

If you can’t distinguish between sets then your rest times are too short, and if you die of old age between sets rest time was too long

[mgil]

Also…



How can anyone write this gibberish and then have an issue with swagging a number to adjudicate exertion? lol wot m8

[coolniceman]

"RPE has always sounded like bullshit. Listening to powerlifters at my old gym talk about it made me roll my eyes, even before I started training.", is post (I think) 10. What was he doing at the gym talking to Powerlifters before he started training? Seriously. Is the guy some sort ofPower Bear creeper?

That aside, why do you guys bother going to that echo chamber of stupidity? Is there something valuable there occasionally? Is it just to gloat of the fact that you escaped the cult? It seems like a negative force in your lives that just drags you down, and maybe your happiness level and quality of life would be better without it.

The SS forum community honestly fascinates me. They've managed to marry paleoconservative/libertarian politics with strength training. For the more hardcore base of the community, Starting Strength isn't a programming methodology, but a lifestyle. They've isolated themselves from the rest of the strength training community and created a nice little echo-chamber. They frequently engage in identity politics, and cast anyone who challenges their opinions of strength training (especially the RPE users) as "libs".

The SS community is less about discussing strength-training, and more about reinforcing their red-pilled/go-their-own-way lifestyle.

[KyleSchuant]

Remember, though: that's the comments allowed through. So there's the opinions of the "community", whatever that might mean, and then there's the opinions of the person deciding whether or not to publish the comments. And if enough of your comments get rejected you stop bothering to make them. Which means the person deciding sees fewer comments they might reject, and decides that this means everyone agrees with them. And it also means that the people agreeing with the leader are more likely to comment there. And so on.

I've seen many a discussion forum go this way, and interestingly the topic in question seems to be irrelevant. It's just human nature.

[mgil]

@coolniceman i joined the SS Facebook group in 2014. It was a small group, and owned by someone not affiliated with SS. It was an interesting mix of opinion, and some sheer nonsense, as moderation was essentially nonexistent.

Then Nick Delgadillo coerced the group from its owner and started cleaning things up. At first it was kinda welcome, but it evolved into a realm of acolytes only by around 2017 when I was banned from SS and subsequently thrown out of the Facebook group.

Just before then, when Rip and Matt Reynolds were courting the AoM guy Brett and promoting his main site and the badges site (the strenuous life), I was getting leery of the acolytes that were doing akin to what I felt was “barbell larping”. We started shitposting a bit too much on SS and poking holes in this #ruffntuff bullshit being promoted there, and that got quite a few of us rolled out.

But yeah, way too much of a cult of personality vibe to many of those sites.

[ColonelMoutarde]

The people who fantasize about "strenuous lives" and "voluntary hardship" never experienced either. It's kind of hilarious when you think about it.

[MarkKO]

The people who fantasize about "strenuous lives" and "voluntary hardship" never experienced either. It's kind of hilarious when you think about it.

Voluntary hardship That's a thing other than an oxymoron?

Don't get me wrong, lifting weights can help personal development. But hardship or strenuous life? If you can voluntarily go and lift weights, your life is neither as hard nor as strenuous as it could be.

[AlanMackey]

promoting his main site and the badges site (the strenuous life)

I just checked that website out. What the actual fuck!?

I’m beyond speechless.

[cole]

Regardless, given the normal (and unpredictable) variation in day-to-day performance, it is wise to have some strategy to account for this rather than to deliberately ignore it and force a potentially inappropriate dose of stimulus just because "the program" said so. At least, if you care about sustainable long-term training, rather than a myopic focus on absolute performance today.

This may be the most important thing ive learned so far in 5 years of training.

It took a while, but im pretty confident in my RPE scale now at least for anything in the 1-5 rep range. And although I still get the stubborn impulses to blindly follow the target weight for the day, I can usually take the emotion out of it and take whats there on that day by using RPE.