And for the record, Tim is a great guy with a huge amount of knowledge, which he is very willing to share.

***

So what is goat getting, anyway?

It is said that one way to calm a racehorse down before a race is to put it in a pen with a goat.  If you want to upset your rival’s horse, then, you go and get their goat so their horse gets stressed and loses the race.  Hence the expression, “they really got my goat”, meaning “they have really annoyed me” (by stealing my goat).

I liked the expression so I started a new series.  “Don’t let them get your goat” is about any and all articles that I have some issue with, either in part or in total.  I can’t promise I’ll leave any of your sacred cows unbarbecued but I’ll try to leave your goats untouched…

A goat  I saw in the Alps.

***

So what’s the problem this time?

This time, I have managed to work myself up into a knot about an article that Rannoch McDonald has written on Gym Junkies.  Rannoch really got my goat by proposing three mandatory strength guidelines as follows:

• 10 pull ups
• 30 press ups
• 60 free (bodyweight) squats

Now I think it’s a great idea to promote these routines and I wouldn’t want you to go thinking I don’t see any benefit in them.  If you can’t do this routine then Rannoch is absolutely right to be on your case about sorting your issues out so that you can do them!  The only problem I have with them is that they are nothing to do with strength.  They are tests of endurance.

I mean, I’d be happy if Rannoch had written the same article and titled it “three mandatory bodyweight endurance guidelines” but “three mandatory strength guidelines”?  Sorry, but no.  Strength is too important to be confused with endurance.

***

Some more realistic guidelines

I prefer Rippetoe’s novice standards (shown here for a 165lbs and 198lbs male):

• Overhead press – 100lbs (45kg) /146lbs  (66kg)
• Back squat – 204lbs (92kg) / 232lbs (105kg)
• Deadlift – 254lbs (115kg) / 289lbs (131kg)

I think these are a good yardstick that will show if you have a basic level of strength.  The sort of basic level that will enable you to:

• play sport (with your kids)
• carry your own bag at the airport and not have to resort to one of those stupid suitcases with little wheels on
• put your shopping away in cupboards without pausing for breath
• bump start a car
• lift a bicycle over a gate

Yes, that’s right.  I mean that basic.  I see a lot of people walking around who struggle with that list who wouldn’t struggle if they mastered Rippetoe’s novice standards.  And like Rannoch, I’m not suggesting that these are goals, more of a checklist that should sound alarm bells if you can’t do them. 

***

Strength is really important

I really believe that strength is vital for our health and our ability to enjoy life.  I think that we’re supposed to be a lot stronger than most people are today and I think that confusing strength with endurance sends out the wrong message to people.

People still talk about going to the gym and think of endurance training.  They think of jogging on the treadmill and cycling on the stationery bike.  Press ups and pull ups aren’t far away from that (although they are much better for your physique).  We need to convince people that strength training is good for them and essential for their health.  Confusing strength with endurance won’t help that cause.

Goat getting, a basic primer

It is said that one way to calm a racehorse down before a race is to put it in a pen with a goat.  If you want to upset your rival’s horse, then, you go and get their goat so their horse gets stressed and loses the race.  Hence the expression, “they really got my goat”, meaning “they have really annoyed me” (by stealing my goat).

I like the expression so I’ve started a new series.  “Don’t let them get your goat” will be about any and all articles that I have some issue with, either in part or in total.  I can’t promise I’ll leave any of your sacred cows unbarbecued but I’ll try to leave your goats untouched…

A goat  I saw in the Alps.

This week’s culprit

This week, the goat getter is Tim Henriques on T-Nation, writing about 5 Deadly Strength Errors.  He really got my goat because  he made some fairly misleading remarks about one-legged squats and pistols in the context of an otherwise quite sensible article.

And that brings me on to my next point.  I don’t like flame wars and taking big stands on issues just for the sake of it.  I’m not trying to suggest that everything Tim has said is wrong.  Quite the opposite, as a brief summary of his article will show…

5 Deadly Strength Errors, By Tim Henriques – a brief review

By my reading of his article, Tim suggests that you are erring if you:

• Listen to weak people – check
• Programme hop – check
• Don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing – check
• Don’t understand your body - check
• Don’t do enough negatives – hmm, not sure but OK

So, in principle, I agree with the key points of his article.  I nearly left it there but one statement really made me choke on my coffee.  What I struggled with was his description of pistols.  He made the following statement when he was talking about knowing what you’re doing (ironic, I know).

Tim says:

“…one legged squats (pistols as they are sometimes called) don’t do jack to increase maximal strength or muscle size; if you grow from doing them then you’d probably grow from doing almost any hard leg work. Why do we know this is true?  Because there are lots of people that weigh 135 pounds soaking wet that can do five good pistols, but if you were to ask them to get under the bar with 275 pounds on their back they’d get buried.”

OK.  Let’s back up.  I’m prepared to let the confusion about one-legged squats and pistols slide (they’re not the same thing whatever he thinks) because it’s not really that important.  People confuse these all the time.  Sometimes, they even confuse them with split squats.  But the point is that there is one leg driving the weight and one leg either hanging free or doing a supporting role.

What really gets my goat is that Tim presents the achievement of 5 good pistols as somehow relevant to the goal of building serious lower body strength.  Why 5 unweighted reps?  Why pick on unweighted pistols? 

If I said unweighted back squats were pointless for building leg strength, people would say “well, obviously”.  In fact, they’d probably look at me as if I were a bit daft.  So why is Tim’s statement taken any more seriously?

Athletes use weighted one-leg squats

If you look at Mike Boyle’s writings, he makes it clear that he is loading up his athletes with considerable weight when they’re doing rear-foot-elevated-split-squats and one-legged squats on a bench.

Mike is a big fan of single-leg training and I think he talks a lot of sense (so do some of T-Nation’s editors, by the way).  Mike’s main reason for having his athletes use the single-leg versions of squats is that he can build their leg strength while putting a lot less stress on the spine.  Because, in his considered opinion, the back gets injured a lot more frequently than the legs and you can train the legs more often than the back. 

The bottom line

I realise that there is a lot of noise being made at the moment about whether people should back squat at all.  I am not looking to add to that debate.  What I’m saying is that if you are going to compare apples with apples, then you can’t compare unweighted single-leg squats with weighted back squats.