“While the squat has only been practiced for a few decades, the deadlift was practiced under different names since the days we stopped walking on all fours.” – Pavel Tsatsouline

“The deadlift builds back strength better than any other exercise, bar none.” – Mark Rippetoe

“The considerable stresses involved make the deadlift the most productive exercise of all.” – Mike Mentzer

“Are You Ignorant When It Comes to the Deadlift?” by Mark Rippetoe

It’s not always apparent, and is often poorly understood. Stated succinctly, stupid is not your fault – you were born that way. You’re just dumb. You can’t learn.

Ignorance means you just don’t know. Ignorance probably is your fault, because you’ve failed to inform yourself. This is especially true since the advent of the internet has enabled the most universal and thorough dissemination of information in the history of human communication.

The obvious problem is that 95% of that information is wrong, which follows my popular maxim: 95% of all the shit that occurs everywhere is completely fucked up. The internet is no different.

But you can, with a little diligence, tease out the facts if you want to. If you’re interested in a subject, it eventually falls upon you to distill the truth from the bullshit.

This you’ll do gladly, if you’re interested enough to devote significant amounts of time and effort to it, because an intelligent person realizes that bullshit is a waste of time. A stupid person might not appreciate this, and therefore continue to be ignorant of the truth of a matter.

Take the deadlift, for example. It’s the most basic, obvious movement in barbell training, the one with the most carryover to everyday tasks and the easiest to learn of all the basic exercises.