who are your top 3 and bottom 3 T Nation writers and why? These can be current and former writers and should be people who have written here at least 4 or 5 times
my favorite
Bret Contreras- Mostly everything he says is backed by evidence. Also, isn’t afraid to rip on gurus which I love.
Tony Gentilcore- Witty, makes good instructional videos and is often self deprecating which is very admirable IMO. Him and Eric Cressey seem to find a good balance between keeping their lifters/athletes healthy while still getting them stronger.
Chris Shugart- like and agree with his diet advice and lets you know when he doesn’t like something (e.g. cross fit, IF, fat people lol)
least favorite
Charles Poliquin- very dogmatic and nothing he says seems to be backed by anything. His made-up story about the Dominican fruit making him gain 11lbs of muscle and lose fat in five days gave me quite the laugh.
Michael Boyle- seems almost too careful in his training approach and changes his views way too often. He also said himself that he doesn’t like to train which is very of-putting.
Mark Rippietoe- He, like Poliquin, is way too dogmatic for me. I’m sure even “hardcore” powerlifters say there is a time and place for a rotator cuff exercises, single leg work and some tricep isolation work. Also, not everything can be fixed with a barbell. I’m not even sure he believes some of the things he says. I get the feeling he likes to get peoples’ panties in a bunch.
Charles Poliquin: "A guy I knew once, who worked for a national ski team, would do 23 single-arm pull-ups off the end of a diving board in an empty swimming pool.
I also knew a bodyguard who could do a controlled, one-arm, one-finger pull-up, 30 seconds up, 30 seconds down. That guy was, not surprisingly, also a great mountain climber."
Charles Poliquin: "I realize how anabolic food is every time I go teach in the Dominican Republic. Last time I taught a Biosignature Modulation course in the DR, the students took my body fat Monday morning. I was at 8% and weighed 198 pounds.
Now, there’s no such thing as grain-fed in the DR; they can’t afford it, so cows eat grass. And if you eat a mango over there you have to eat it over a sink because it’s so juicy. The eggs too are far more anabolic. They’re orange and full of omega-3s, like all eggs naturally were thousands of years ago.
Anyway, five days later, after eating only Dominican Republic foods, I weighed 209 at 6% body fat. My business partner came to finish the seminar, took one look at me and said, “What happened to you?!”
Charles Poliquin: “Any time you have a brain disorder (dyslexia, down syndrome, ADD, ADHD) you need to take omega-3 and carnitine. I’ve had at least three students who had autisticchildren who were in special schools and they put their kids on omega-3s and their kids returned to mainstream schools. Two out of three of these autistic kids were measuring IQ at genius levels from high doese omega-3s.”
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
Charles Poliquin: "A guy I knew once, who worked for a national ski team, would do 23 single-arm pull-ups off the end of a diving board in an empty swimming pool.
I also knew a bodyguard who could do a controlled, one-arm, one-finger pull-up, 30 seconds up, 30 seconds down. That guy was, not surprisingly, also a great mountain climber."
Charles Poliquin “No one should be eating gluten–that’s no gluten whatsoever in the diet. Are we clear?”
"There is no such thing as healthy tuna. All tuna has toxic levels of mercury. The French word for tuna is “la poubelle de la mer,” which means “the garbage can of the sea.”
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
Charles Poliquin: “Any time you have a brain disorder (dyslexia, down syndrome, ADD, ADHD) you need to take omega-3 and carnitine. I’ve had at least three students who had autisticchildren who were in special schools and they put their kids on omega-3s and their kids returned to mainstream schools. Two out of three of these autistic kids were measuring IQ at genius levels from high doese omega-3s.”[/quote]
Never saw that one! I wonder if he believes any of what he says…
From Paul Check interview with T Nation: "The average human being should pass about twelve inches of well-formed, not foul smelling, fluffy, easy to pass, light brown, earthy-smelling stool per day, if you’ve got a normal bowel.
You can poop three four-inchers, two six-inchers, or one great big one; it doesn’t really matter."
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
Charles Poliquin “No one should be eating gluten–that’s no gluten whatsoever in the diet. Are we clear?”
"There is no such thing as healthy tuna. All tuna has toxic levels of mercury. The French word for tuna is “la poubelle de la mer,” which means “the garbage can of the sea.” [/quote]
Ah Poliquin, the definition of broscience. I kinda do miss his articles though. At leat they were interesting, and far better then Rippetoe’s rants
those quotes are golden hahaha. The ignorance that gets published and accepted is ridiculous. Each tip is a new way to be OCD and lose focus on lifting weights/eating protein
fellow posters Hedleskey and Thepwnisher have great blogs
I like the reactions to Ben Bruno’s articles. SINGLE LEG WORK??? ARE YOU GAY???
I wish Clay Hyght and Lonnie Lowery would write for this site again
Personally I like authors with very strong biases, even if I disagree with them.
If you know their bias then it is easier to try to understand the process used to arrive at their conclusions. I think figuring out HOW someone reached their conclusion is often more rewarding and revealing than the conclusion itself.
Charles Poliquin: "It makes me cringe to see how pathetic the average gym-goer’s front squat is. (If they only knew that simply adding Bacopa and Holy Basil extract to their supplement regimen would automatically increase their poundages by 35%, but I digress). I used to elitely train an elite member of the Canadian elite bobsled team, who would routinely lift his bobsled to shoulder height and proceed to do 10 sets of 10 ass-to-ice front squats…with all three team members in it! (Did I mention he was elite?).
So one day he’s doing this, right there in the starting area of the bobsled track, and this non-elite luge athlete walks up, and says ‘looking pretty strong, but lets see you PISTOL SQUAT that shit!’. So the bobsledder replies ‘no problem, wimp. And why don’t you jump in the bobsled to increase the load?’. So there he is, easily pistol squatting an entire bobsled filled with three bobsledders and a luger, banging out reps of 10.
Turns out IOC President Jacques Rogge was watching this whole spectacle, and he comes up to me and goes ‘Charles, I’m afraid you’re just too good at elite strength coaching, I’m going to have to disqualify you in the spirit of fairness’, to which I reply ‘Jacquie, this guy ain’t shit, cause I train an elite 17 year old female elite discus thrower who could easily outsquat him!’"