Mark Rippetoe is the author of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, Practical Programming for Strength Training, Strong Enough?, Mean Ol' Mr. Gravity, and numerous journal, magazine and internet articles. He has worked in the fitness industry since 1978, and has been the owner of the Wichita Falls Athletic Club since 1984. He graduated from Midwestern State University in 1983 with a Bachelor of Science in geology and a minor in anthropology. He was in the first group certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association as a CSCS in 1985, and the first to formally relinquish that credential in 2009. Rip was a competitive powerlifter for ten years. He won the 198-pound weight class at the Greater Texas Classic in 1982, and placed in state- and regional-level meets for the next 6 years, retiring from competition in 1988. For the next 10 years Rip announced most of the powerlifting meets in North Texas, including the 1995 APF Nationals in Dallas. He retired from powerlifting altogether in 1997, to focus more on Olympic weightlifting.

Rip acquired a solid background in coaching the Olympic lifts as a result of his coach, Bill Starr, using them in his powerlifting training. Further experience with the Olympic lifts came with exposure to the coaching of Tommy Suggs, Jim Moser, Dr. Lon Kilgore, Angel Spassov, Istvan Javorek, Harvey Newton, Mike Conroy, John Thrush, and many fellow lifters. Rip obtained his USWF Level III certification in 1988 at the USOC’s Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs with Mike Stone, Harvey Newton, and Angel Spassov on faculty. His USAW Senior Coach certification was achieved in 1999 at the OTC with Lyn Jones, John Thrush, and Mike Conroy. He was invited, as an Olympic weightlifting coach, to the Olympic Solidarity course at the OTC in 2000. He taught both the USAW Club Coach course and the Sports Performance Coach course with Dr. Kilgore from 1999 through 2005. Rip served as the president of the North Texas Local Weightlifting Committee of USAW from 2004-2011. He coached and participated in the coaching of James Moser, Glenn Pendlay, Dr. Kilgore, Josh Wells (Junior World Team 2004) most of the national and international-level athletes on the Wichita Falls Weightlifting team, which was hosted and coached at WFAC from 1999 through 2006, as well as the collegiate weightlifting team from Midwestern State University through 2010. Rip still actively coaches the sport on a daily basis at WFAC, and the power clean and power snatch at our seminars around the country every month.

The Starting Strength method of training novices is a distillation of Rip’s experiences over three and a half decades as a competitive powerlifter, Olympic weightlifting coach, and gym owner. From its inception in 1984, every new member at WFAC was taught the basic barbell lifts as a part of their membership at the gym, and the application of the basics of powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting to efficiently meet the needs of the general public form the basis of the Starting Strength method, as detailed in Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training and Practical Programming for Strength Training.

Very few academics can lay claim to such a varied and deep background relative to science, exercise, and the fitness industry. But before he earned a BSc in Biology from Lincoln University, an MSc in Physical Education from Kansas State University, and a PhD from the Department of Anatomy & Physiology from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University, and had been awarded multiple research prizes along the way, he had previously won a Governor’s Art Award (pencil media) and sold paintings to galleries … and dropped out of art school.

During his scientific tenure in higher academia, he earned the rank of professor (full) at three universities (US, IRL, UK) and published many dozens of academic papers. His students have been from over sixty countries and have come from massively diverse backgrounds and interests. Olympians, World champions, the Fittest on Earth, national champions, conference champions, state champions, local athletes, non-athletes, international coaches, national coaches, soon to be national coaches, beginning coaches, physicians, allied health professionals of all types, scientists of all types, have taken courses under him.

He is highly sought as a teacher as he talks to his students, not at or over them, he is one of them, a life-long student during a long life that has seen him work as a pre-school arts & crafts instructor, a roofer, a department store assistant manager, a restaurant manager, a provider of security services, and as an autopsy assistant. Between his bachelors degree and entry into graduate school, he was a Sergeant in the US Army, earning multiple commendations for his work in chemical weapons disarmament and disposal. He believes the Ivory Tower cannot be singular and self-informing, those within it have to have the abilities and real-world experiences to frame knowledge for wider understanding, and they must actually do so.

Athletically, he has appeared on many national and international event podiums in weightlifting and powerlifting over his half century of competition. He has competed, less successfully to be polite, abysmally to be accurate, in wrestling, rowing, volleyball, track & field, and golf. He has a coaching portfolio that includes tutelage from old guard elite coaches such as Carl Miller, Russ Knipp, Tommy Kono, Bill Clark, Marty Cypher, and even Bob Hoffman. His coaching delivery background includes providing long term coaching to many top US weightlifters, provision of short term consultancy to several international level athletes in a variety of sports, years as a NCAA head strength coach, and more than a decade of experience teaching USA Weightlifting coach certifications on the road and at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. He was the first external scientist to be awarded a USOC Performance Enhancement Team Project, co-authored with Professor Mike Stone (a USOC Scientist at the time).

Academia is not a highly visible domain, so Lon may be best known for his industry changing work with Mark Rippetoe, as concept originator, co-author, illustrator, and book designer for Starting Strength and for Practical Programming (first and second editions of both books). He also conceived and co-created the Basic Barbell Training and Exercise Science specialty certifications offered through CrossFit in the mid-2000s. Lon was also a regular contributing author to the CrossFit Journal and main Crossfit website, with more than 150 articles appearing there since 2005, a large percentage of which form a significant portion of the study materials within the CrossFit trainer and coach education pathways. He also has provided a number of volunteer services to a variety of academic and corporate education committees. He has been a small business owner and business consultant within the fitness industry.

With all that said, he currently spends his days thinking, reading, writing, illustrating, doing e-mails, and a bunch of other work stuff in his remote backwoods hilltop home office, studio, and gym. He just recently (after leaving university life) seems to have arrived at a decent work-life balance where he trains for powerlifting, weightlifting, the occasional CrossFit event (when they don’t conflict with lifting competitions), or does some other weird experimental training stuff as it occurs to him.

Experimentation is still important as he considers his life in training, and out of training, a potentially useful and informative longitudinal case study that currently has substantial data points across six decades. He plans on training, competing, taking breaks intentionally or unintentionally, training more, competing more, and so forth for decades to come. His thoughts on aging, and his experience in actually getting old may one day, supported by his lifetime of data, be written up as a case study for a science journal.

He really doesn’t go out of his way to be visible or build a high profile. And he actually likes being the guy you know but never see. In fact, if you know him through his work, He is truly happy; "My work is more important and better to know than me".