Practical Programming for Strength Training Quotes

“Humans are built to move. We evolved under conditions that required daily intense physical activity, and even among individuals with lower physical potential, that hard-earned genotype is still ours today. The modern sedentary lifestyle leads to the inactivation of the genes related to physical performance, attributes that were once critical for survival and which are still critical for the correct, healthy expression of the genotype. The genes are still there, they just aren't doing anything because the body is not stressed enough to cause a physiological adaptation requiring their activation. The sedentary person's heart, lungs, muscles, bones, nerves and brain all operate far below the level at which they evolved to function, and at which they still function best.”
― Mark Rippetoe, Practical Programming for Strength Training

“myofibrillar hypertrophy, more actin, myosin, and other associated proteins are added to those already existing in the cell. More contractile elements within the cell mean more actin/myosin interactions and more force production. This type of hypertrophy is typical of low-repetition, high-intensity training. It adds less mass but produces greater increases in the force generated per unit area of muscle than the second type of hypertrophy, sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.”
― Mark Rippetoe, Practical Programming for Strength Training

“The key to successful training in this stage of development is to balance these two important and opposing phenomena – the increased need for stress and the corresponding requisite increase in recovery time.”
― Mark Rippetoe, Practical Programming for Strength Training

“The differences between these two types of adaptation are profoundly important for applied physical performance in a non-sport-specific situation. For example, a deployed soldier in a battlefield scenario must often depend on his physical preparedness to stay alive. Strength has been universally reported to be a more valuable capacity than the ability to run 5 miles in 30 minutes, because at the time of this writing our combat troops are mechanized. They don’t have to walk or run into combat, since we have machines for that now. If a limited endurance capacity is necessary – and some could successfully argue that it is – that capacity can be readily developed in a few weeks prior to deployment, while a much more valuable strength adaptation takes many months or years to acquire, is more important to combat readiness than endurance, and is a much more persistent adaptation in the face of forced detraining than the ability to run, which you’re not going to use on the battlefield anyway. The stubborn insistence on an endurance-based preparation for combat readiness is an unfortunate anachronism that should be reevaluated soon.”
― Mark Rippetoe, Practical Programming for Strength Training