AGAINST NOTHING

I first started writing this in 2017 on the backend of an injury related to front squatting. It was later published in 2021 in Raze: A Fistfight with Human Nature. I’ve cleaned it up since only to make the original idea more clear. This was before I knew about FRC and the internal strength model. It was the foundation for how I was changing my mind on strength and I feel it is valuable for people to see how the concepts that are embedded into the program came to fruition.

If I had a superpower, it would be spite. I have naturally heightened motivation during states of resistance. I’m not proud of this. I don’t think this is the best way to develop an attribute or idea. It’s just one of those things I notice about myself that sometimes makes me cringe—even if it’s a quality that’s helped me thus far. Only being able to do something by activating the contrarian in me is—how the kids might say—“low frequency.” I find this habit of needing opposition bites me when the spite runs dry, especially when venturing into unknown territory of my capability. But this is how I’ve been trained. I’ve learned to wait until something is heavy and in need of resistance to push, and then to go until I hurt it, or myself in the process. There has to be a better way, even if I have to use spite to rid myself of my spite.

To explain what I mean, I’m going to show you my opposition.

I don’t have anything against powerlifting personally, except the sport, the culture, and how preparing for it has influenced and warped what it means to be strong. So in a sense, fuck powerlifting. And because of its imprint, fuck strength training too. To hell with the obsession and war of attrition with an inanimate object. A few obese ogres have altered the concept of human strength and development into something useless and unrecognizable to nature. How can we look at these contrived “feats of strength” and think they have anything to do with real-world strength? How accurate is our perception of strength when the “strongest” in the world are intimidated by a flight of stairs? There’s a dangerous unrealism in prescribing powerlifting to the general population. How many will load an arbitrary amount of weight onto an unconditioned body and an immature mind, squatting or deadlifting their structure into oblivion? How many will try to get “strong” only to find themselves unable to perform basic human movements without pain, all because some high school coach barked that they wouldn’t get respect until they could squat X amount of weight?

I can already feel the barbell devotees seething because they’re wedded to the dogma of iron. What I’m saying isn’t new, and it’s not going anywhere. I remember the Mike Boyle fiasco, where one of the most successful strength and conditioning coaches for pro sports said he didn’t prefer the back squat as a movement, opting instead for single-leg exercises to minimize risk. The Internet Coaching Collective lost its sheep-mind, acting like Boyle had spat in the face of their holiest relic.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying you shouldn’t do a specific movement or use gear tied to your sport. If you’re injury-free, winning competitions, and finding endless progress through traditional means, then carry on. If powerlifting is your thing and you’ve made it this far, I’m not telling you to stop. My target is the concept behind developing these movements. I’m aiming a skeptical glare at the movements themselves and expressing my desire to rewrite what we know about strength. If what I’m arguing holds water, it might even help someone dedicated to powerlifting, whether they still want to wrap themselves in neoprene and canvas and lift spine-crushing loads in Chuck Taylors or not.

I don’t believe powerlifting as a sport is the right way to develop strength for performance and longevity in most people. We can’t ignore strength as a guide to a long, fulfilling life, but the most popular metric—“how much do you squat?”—is contrived from a subset of folks who’ll be crippled by the time they retire from their sport. Using a barbell’s weight as the measuring stick assumes those specific movements transfer to other endeavors, I believe the transferability to be low and the risk high. It’s almost as if—without evidence—we’ve deified the movements themselves. “The back squat is the king of exercises.” If by “king” you mean a maniacal, over-controlling tradition from an age when we didn’t know how to think for ourselves, then yeah, I’m with you. Why a squat? What part of it mimics or transfers to sprinting, efficient running, or jumping—skills that often decide victory in most sports? If someone can be a world-class athlete in many sports without a heavy back squat, why are we so convinced of its transferability?

There may be rare cases where a loaded back squat is the best practice, but those are obvious and few. Generally, the reasons to skip it are plenty. Bilateral movements have less transferability to unilateral sports than—shocker—unilateral ones. We don’t move bilaterally in any sport worth watching (potato sack racing, anyone?), yet success in most sports comes from speed and efficiency of locomotion. Being the fastest from point A to B, repeatedly or over time, is key in most sports and completely ignored by the pursuit of lifting a singularly heavy weight from an arbitrary position. Gyms can reduce risk and boost output for athletes in real environments, but we sabotage that by adding unnecessary danger when we apply generic recommendations for specific adaptations. Depending on limb ratios, mobility, and coaching, the pressure of a loaded back squat often creates “tracks” in movement patterns similar to hinging. When stress isn’t diversified, risk compounds. For the inexperienced, the “track” for back squats and deadlifts is basically the same—a hinge—because the low back and core must over-contract to support the load, meaning heavy squats are rarely limited by leg strength but by structural weaknesses higher up.

I’m not opposed to squatting. I’m arguing that back squatting with a barbell is often the most dangerous and least transferable of available squats. It requires the greatest load (risk) for the strength gain (reward), and since everyone’s breaking point differs, universal application is a pipe dream for real-world performance.

Beyond the movements, I’ve got to hit on strength transference through contraction rate. Successful bipedal locomotion doesn’t just rely on the contraction rate of spine-stabilizing muscles (often the limiter in max lifts). Athletic performance depends on dynamic force output in the feet, calves, thighs, hips, and their coordination—think “triple extension.” If barbell squatting and deadlifting massively improved sprinters’ force output, wouldn’t the world’s best sprinters overlap with the best squatters or deadlifters? The strongest correlation for transferability of powerlifting is in Olympic weightlifting and throwing, and even then, throwers often use Olympic lifts as training, not pure powerlifting.

So what? I said I’d show my opposition, and here it is. This isn’t just about squatting, powerlifting, or anyone training in a hoodie with some obscure Norwegian black metal band logo. Whether it’s an idea or a weight, resistance isn’t “creative energy”—it’s just criticism. My real goal isn’t to resist more but to concentrate my ability into production, and that’s power. It’s tough for people to conceptualize force without resistance. Like our Strength Manual asserts: “We need something to push against until we can push ourselves.” When the goal is max weight and that’s the performance metric, transferability is clear. But when it’s a stand-in for performance or a reductionist’s isolation of the problem, it’s far from the real thing; the barbell becomes an abstraction, a limitation. I’ve used a barbell to teach strength because I was—and still am—bad at teaching someone to coordinate maximal contractions and expression without something to push against. I’m getting better, but not good enough to do or write about it without the crutch of spite and hostility toward another’s practice. This is the real resistance training: knowing you’ve got everything inside, ready to produce any force you imagine, but still needing a way to focus it.

If I were the teacher I wish I could be, I’d explain that strength and ideas can transfer without resistance or abstraction. I’m not there yet. My intent isn’t to convince anyone to avoid powerlifting, barbell training, or specific movements. Instead, I’m addressing the need for resistance to trigger decisions or responses, no matter the subject. Most traditional strength and conditioning methods rely on prescriptive to-dos and predictable results, over-simplifying advice to “idiot-proof” it. This turns theory into dogma, advice into authority, and removes authentic teaching—guiding attention to necessary details—from the process. Genuine learning isn’t replication; it’s understanding reliable truths, transferable assets, and universal principles.

So here’s my best stab: strength is derived from the ability to contract and control your body maximally. Learning to do this internally, without resistance or load, makes external projection of strength an original, creative power not contingent on external pushback. This requires attention, which won’t land with a population that wouldn’t read this unless the page loads in under six seconds. It demands self-awareness and a desire to apply intentional force to a task. 

A heavy barbell requires attention, but it’s on the wrong object. The object to control isn’t the bar—it’s the brain and its command over the body. The barbell path teaches us to resist and contract when the weight feels “heavy,” which is why most get hurt with weights that aren’t heavy; attention isn’t compelled by the load. The fundamental skill of strength is to intentionally, maximally contract in relation to the performance, understanding what “performance” means for the task, the form your body must take, and the contraction to hold it together.

I’m still contrarian, fueled by spite and a knee-jerk reaction of dissent. Barbell training taught me to resist pressure and force, even to self-destruction. It reinforced my natural inclination. I don’t think this was a waste, but there’s a better way. I’m in my infancy of understanding a different path, rooted in creative energy and internal self-awareness. Strength is harnessed internally and expressed externally. The most significant transferability comes from training that mimics natural expression and has relevant psychological crossover. This makes a coach of the practitioner, turns movement into an expression of will, and holds true whether you choose spite or not.