Rip:
Was. Expired, didn’t renew his credential.
See, this is why I didn’t like people’s entire posting history being deleted. That response makes no sense now.
Of course not. I don’t see any BBM books on the methods of barbell lifting, nor do I see a BBM certification for teaching barbell lifts with that method.
I was referring to the market of post novice programming, as was Rip I believe.
Ah, gotcha.
Personally, I’m grateful that the differing opinions were brought to a head. Like many of you, I’ve spent a lot of time studying other methodologies the past few weeks, and I’ve learned more about programming than I otherwise would have. Conflict always has the potential to create clarity, and I think that’s happening now. It’s a good time to be strength training.
There’s a line I read recently in a science textbook that said something like, “Spend less time defending your beliefs and more time refining them.” I think that’s a good reminder for all of us. I find myself tempted by tribal thought/behavior as much as the next person, but I’m not going to throw out the baby with the bath water. We’ve all been positively impacted by Rip and the SS universe, and that will always be true. If you’re unhappy with the direction things took, then focus on making the experience in the BBM community spectacular. “Be the change you want to see” and all that jazz.
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I saw @Serack in the gym last week and talked about that. I find it immensely ironic that when it comes to exercise form any SSC or Rip Acolyte will tell you that just because a strong person performs the lift a certain way doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone or even right at all, yet when we come to questions of programming all dissent is countered with examples of people who got strong following whatever program you personally advocate. The notion that a person might get strong in spite of their programming choices beyond the novice phase is suddenly invalid even though that very reasoning is a core defense of the sanctity of the novice linear progression.
More choice will always be better than less, and I haven’t signed up to join any cult. If Jordan starts wearing sunglasses indoors and invites us on a trip to Guyana I advise everyone to run fast in the other direction.
But…but…I want to visit the giant wooden pot still at Demerara Distillers ltd. Jordan can take me to Guyana anytime.
Also, let’s not forget about the Wisconsin method:
Also guys…I am making sure stuff is getting done, little by little. @Serack note that our site now has a search function. Haha
Hopefully more stuff on the way, promise!
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All good, Leah! Growing pains are not a bad thing!
It’s funny how cult-ish the fitness industry really is, and how once die-hard SS followers have switched teams to BBM. Why do we have a need for being on a team? Even the higher-ups at SS have the need to be on a team - Starting Strength Online Coaching. Thus forcing any SS coaches with their own online coaching business to cut ties with the SS brand. It makes no sense for BBM to promote SS. As Jordan said, “…we very clearly are competitors.”
Reynolds seems to pay the online coaches pretty damn well from what he’s said in podcasts. However, it seems like the brand of SSOC would prevent any SS online coach from owning their own online coaching practices.
I previously posted this elsewhere, but every person on earth should hear and internalize the content of this podcast:
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I don’t want to be on a team, although BBM programming resonates more with me at the moment. I don’t have anything against SS. I will defend BBM or SS against any unwarranted attacks. I’m pro everyone who promotes systematic barbell training, even if there is diversity of opinion on how programming is best done.
However, SS allowing Reynolds to start an online coaching business that uses the Starting Strength brand is problematic, as you say. Rip even blessed Reynolds’ podcast as the Starting Strength podcast. It makes everyone think that the SSOC is SS. That thinking seems to be happening even with Rip. With that thinking anything that brushes up against SSOC is seen as brushing up against SS proper, which is a mistake in the long run, I believe. I wish that SS proper would have remained more impartial with regard to online coaching businesses.
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I also believe that becoming an SSC has become much less attractive for anyone who was considering that credential. Previously, SS was more narrowly focused on the approach taken with novices. That made sense since the approach is very effective (at least prior to advance novice training). Now SS wants to expand its dogma to areas where it has almost no credentials. I don’t think anyone in the powerlifting world looks at Rip as an expert coach for intermediate and advanced lifters. Yet he is now dictating the correct method for training these lifters. As a coach, I wouldn’t want anyone telling me that I couldn’t try different approaches with my clients. I also wouldn’t want anyone telling me I couldn’t have my own online presence. From a business standpoint, I think that is an incredibly bad move for SS. If they lose their coaches or can’t attract new ones, the organization will suffer tremendously. Previously, I was considering the SSC credential. I am certainly no longer entertaining those thoughts.
I will pass on joining any tribe and the first one who “tells” me I have to pick a side is the first side I will be against.
My thoughts; (in case anyone cares)
I don’t really care for the new direction of SS, nor do I care for Reynolds and Hambrick, simply because of their insistence on talking politics, religion and booze. It isn’t a matter of whether I agree, it is just annoying and causes separation. Furthermore it may seem like they have a lot of content but much of it is them talking about themselves. They make SSOC sound terrible, which it probably isn’t, but they continuously talk about how they repeatedly run clients in SSOC through their NLP over and over, what kind of shitty scam is that? People are paying for this? Maybe it is the good nutrition advice like "My clients are busy so I tell them “hey when you go to McDonald’s just don’t get a coke”… Shut up about Rip dying and Chase getting married and talk strength! Plus what happened to “narrowcasting” and not dumbing it down for the masses. ($$$$?)
I like Rip, he’s funny and he started me on the path which led me here.
I am a huge fan of Sully and Greysteel. In my opinion his athletes are the most inspiring on the planet and the ones most likely to get the average person off the sofa and under a bar.
Jordan is brilliant and secretly really nice.
Austin has given me some of the best medical advice I have ever gotten, for FREE. Much better than advice I have gotten from my doctors and paid hundreds of dollars for. Leah is one of the nicest and most positive people on the planet. All of them have graciously and helpfully answered my many questions. Never being condescending or cutting me off if my question isn’t clear.
I have an in person form coach, they are an SSC and my coach is awesome!
I don’t feel like I have the level if intelligence, experience or knowledge to pick the “best” program. My wisdom and experience lead me to believe the best program is the one you can do consistently and you make progress on. Really though that is what I always hear BBM saying! Their radical new thinking is that if your program isn’t working you should change it.
I do trust the BBM folks enough that I have all their templates and if I ever reach a point where my level if training is advanced enough to need their help it would be my privilege to become a client!
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I’m not sure things are all that cult-ish. For example, it’s possible to believe the SS model is rather good for coaching the lifts and that the SSLP is a decent initial program, but that Rip’s ideas about intermediate programming are far from optimal and that Rip has major personality issues. It’s possible for the same person to believe a generally higher volume, lower intensity approach to intermediate programming (such as advocated by BBM or many many other coaches) is much better and that many forums are friendlier (and provide better advice in many areas) than SS.com (e.g, here and exodus).
It’s not clear to me how SSOC prevents SS coaches from owning their own online coaching practices. SSOC has existed for over a year, while BBM, Andy Baker’s stuff and some others are competing while their owners remained SSCs. I haven’t seen anything that prevents a SSC from saying “online coaching provided by a SSC”. They can’t say they’re providing “SSOC” as that’s now owned by SSOC.
I’m not denying there are cultish aspects, and there are certainly many fanboys and trolls on all sides, but let’s not overstate the issue.
I agree with ya. The tribal mindset in this specific situation is mostly jest. I was just saying that there’s definitely a tribal mindset throughout the fitness industry as a whole. Powerlifters hate on CrossFit and bodybuilding, etc. SS has it’s own niche, and you can see that people identify with certain “teams” within the SS community. Some kneel to Rip. Some follow Barbell Logic or BBM. Albeit the issue hasn’t really been a big deal for the most part.
I haven’t listened to the podcast that Austin posted yet, but I have a feeling it has to do with why humans intuitively feel the need to “belong.” I posed the question, “Why do we have the need to be on a team?” Not only as it pertains to fitness, but also to everything from politics to what football team you like.
I was curious if Baker and other SS coaches have had the same problems as BBM. I thought maybe Baker was also separating since he’s not in charge of the programming forum anymore. From what you’re saying it seems like BBM is the only entity separating.
One of the best things about SS is that they have clear, established models for how the lifts should be performed, and a large network of coaches who all can effectively get you to move correctly according to those models. Each coach may have some slightly different tricks that they use for different people, however the effect is the same: you can go to any SS coach on the planet and get the same (excellent) technique coaching on all the lifts. The same is clearly not true for programming after LP however, as we have seen with the recent debates on post-novice programming or with former SS guys like Izzy who have changed their opinions on some of this stuff.
IMO, licensing the SS brand to the online coaching business implies (perhaps unintentionally) that not only will you get the same technique coaching from every coach in the SS network, you will now also get the same type of programming. So what happens when you have SS coaches who don’t necessarily agree with this simple-hard-effective style of programming beyond the novice phase? If you put them in the SSOC network, you’re not providing a consistent service to your clients: some clients might get vanilla TM while others get RPE-based programming or something else entirely. If you don’t put them in the SSOC network and let them do their own thing, you now have SS coaches who are in direct competition with the SS brand which both alienates those coaches and also doesn’t make any sense from a business standpoint. So I can definitely see how the formation of SSOC and the corresponding implication of a consistent post-novice programming model could be a source of conflict, or at the very least, confusion.
All that said, I am a client at SSOC, have a great coach, and have been happy with the service. However some of the less-narrowcasted (some might even say #nuanced) ideas at BBM do resonate with me, and I certainly will discuss them with my coach as appropriate. There is a wealth of information to be had at both SS and BBM, and I think the idea of having to separate into “camps” is silly.
Since I started participating in this disucssion, I came across Andy’s post addressing this as a sticky in the SS Programing board.
Just wanted to write a little note to all of you, many of whom I’ve been communicating back and forth with on this forum with since 2012.
I mainly just wanted to thank each and every one of you for your support over the last several years. It’s been an honor and privilege to host this programming forum and I thank Rip & Stef for giving me the opportunity. Many of you guys have purchased programs and coaching from me over this time, and again, I thank each and every one of you for supporting my businesses. It means more to me than you know.
I hope you guys have learned as much from me as I have from you. As the quote in the book says - When one teaches, two learn. So thank you again.
Finally, I have received more than a few emails from some of you essentially asking “What Happened?” Nothing. Sorry, there is no drama.
As the community of SS Coaches has grown it’s simply time to let some others step in and showcase their skills and knowledge and offer you guys some fresh perspective. We have an unreal amount of talent and experience within our ranks and you guys need to get to know them. Chief among them is Mr. Carter.
I maintain a great relationship with Starting Strength and Rip, intend to stay active on the forums, and will continue to be active with articles at my blog, and perhaps now have some time to do some article writing for SS.com. I’ll be speaking at the StrengthCon I event in April and would love to see some of you guys there!
Thanks again everyone, it’s been my pleasure.
Andy Baker
My take on how Andy and BBM are taking different paths is that BBM’s embrace of RPE and volume for intermediates is sufficiently more complext than Rip is willing to countinance within his brand, whereas Andy’s programming paradigm divergences from Rip are less radical. I also have suspicions about ego involvement too.
There are many SSCs and SSOCs who provide programming strongly in contrast to the programming described by Rip in his intermediate programming article, including emphasizing volume over intensity and using RPE.
Simple-hard-effective is a marketing slogan, not a description. The debate is mainly over what is effective. It appears that for many if not most people over the long term, the intensity driven, grind it out, “minimum effective dose” approach advocated by Rip and Reynolds does not work very well. It both provides inadequate stress to drive progress and the intensity is so high that in many cases clients essentially burn out. It will likely work for some amount of time for young men and some others, but there are many others in the world.
Consider this from Izzy (former SSC): https://startingstrength.com/resources/forum/ends-and-pieces/79637-barbell-medicine-crew-starting-strength-28.html#post1659708 Or consider what a mess Rip’s paper is, evidenced by his refusal to defend it in his own forum.
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@quark Yeah I know a bunch of the SS/SSOC coaches (including mine) and former coaches use RPE etc. in their programming; my question was hyperphora. I’ve followed the debate closely, including Izzy’s comments which seem quite valid to me.
My bigger point was that as the faces for SS and SSOC respectively, Rip and Reynolds advocating so strongly for the “minimum effective dose” approach and publicly shutting down all discussion on the subject ultimately ties that philosophy very strongly to both SS and SSOC. That means that now you have a group of SSOC coaches who are effectively “going against SS/SSOC” on post-novice programming which I don’t think is a great look for either brand, even if it doesn’t necessarily cause more internal conflict. Furthermore, now we have to consider that SSOC may not necessarily provide a consistent service to clients beyond SSLP. To me this is a much bigger concern, particularly if the guys doing the RPE-based stuff are indeed getting better results. If you are going to operate as a network of coaches under one online coaching brand, IMO the programming styles should be consistent.
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Does it make a difference what road you take if you arrive at the destination eventually?
Strength training is like a country drive on holidays, when you treat it like the rush hour grind then it just isn’t fun anyone.
I hope all sides of this continue to prosper because the more exposure for both means more people lifting and we will all find our place in the world as far as which ever method we choose to employ.