Waymore, No duh that the evangelical and his/her followers believe that what is espoused is speaking “truth.” As do the acolytes of another guru. The epistemological question is how do the rest of us decide what truth is?
Assume the goal is to max out on the three specific lifts of powerlifting, whose truth do you follow and why? The Russian approach? The Bulgarian? The two a day work outs that many elites use? As Shodan points out, lots that one particular guru says is “wrong” has turned out many with amazing results.
Practically speaking most decide based on the sales package presented to them. Fortunately that’s is not such a bad thing as one critical part of a successful sales package is presenting the product as part of a social network of others who are likeminded and that support and built in competition probably becomes a major part of sticking with any program and geting the most out it. I am serious that deep faith shared with a group of others is a powerful tool that can often get results.
But those of us not wanting to join a group may want to use some other metric.
Mind you I appreciate that on many things the evidence is not of high enough quality to definitively decide which approach works best. Not every question has a 140 study meta-analysis addressing it. Sometimes “expert opinion” is the best we’ve got … but at least one should be aware of the range of that expert opinion and that anecdotal data exists to support all of them.
Next item is your statement “if my goal were to get strong on the powerlifts” … a big assumption to impose on the op. Martin’s interest may be only in maxxing out on 1 RM for those three lifts, and maybe yours, but many others who include strength as one of their fitness goals may instead see powerlifts as one possible tool to achieving strength, not performance on them as the definition of strength. (Again, nothing wrong with powerlifting as a sport and wanting to do your best at it, anymore than with anyone who is fixated on beating a marathon or a 5K PR or winning their age group in the tri.) Even if one believes that learning one of Martin’s preferred programs (by a specially trained coach) is the superior approach over all others to rapid progression in those three lifts, assuming that such is the goal of another fitness enthusiast who has merely stated that he wants to get stronger and more defined, is … presumptuous.
Runners were stretching before runs for decades and drinking X amount every so many minutes keeping pee not yellow (not by thirst) for decades … because coaches told them to … but they were wrong. They are mostly out of favor now because the science has showed that they were more harm than good. Something being done for decades is a poor reason to assume it works best.
Doctor Jackson, I honestly did not understand what you meant. But you may have a point.
Shodan “almost any regimen will allow an untrained or relatively untrained subject to make gains”? You do realize (see post 21) that Martin’s truth is that that fact is “stupid”? 
Of course he also believes that the statement “A beginner is less likely to get injured doing 8-12 reps with lower weights than 5/3/1 with high weights” is “simply incorrect.” It isn’t. Bodybuilders have lower injury rates than powerlifters. Bodybuilders spend less time doing low reps high weight sets and do more volume. (Of course he later said that of course doing low weight at first makes sense and that my saying he said otherwise was lying.)
Ultrafilter, do you find anything to object to in my post 37?
