Mark Rippetoe Q&A Forum

[EricT]

I guess I'm just playing the devil's advocate but I always find contridictions no matter where I look and this is what leads me to question everything.

The whole rant about power cleans and how they help the deadlift makes me wonder about why squats are the only way to train the squats and the whole handful of exericse comment I was making before.

If you believe that other squat variation besides simply squats with creative modes of resistance or different stance widths are the only way to train squats then you must thing specificity is about appearance. I.E. for something to assist the squat it must be superficially similar in apperarance to the squat. But this is not how specificity works and it is what fuels my argument that people take the term too far. Specificity in this regard is about MECHANICAL specificity. Not how close one exerice looks to another. If something for instance is hip dominant and makes you stronger there that is mechanically something that can lead to a stronger squat.

If you think that specificity is about appearance then you would thing that speed deads would be superior to power cleans because the bottom of a PC is not always the same as the bottom of the deadlift and certainly the too exericses can look different in many ways. But they are both helpful to the deadlfit because they both mechanically specific enough to be helpful.