One thing that should be mentioned about beginners training is a large part of it is getting them to master the lifts. This is one part of 5/3/1 that I feel isn’t ideal. You see in Starting strength you do the same lift every 2nd workout. Plus you do 3 work sets at same weight. Repeating a lift in this manner gets you very good at it.
Compare that to 5/3/1 where you might do bench press on Tuesday for 1 all out set then you don’t bench again for 7 whole days.
Now for a more experienced lifter that may be fine but for a beginner I’m not sure they need 7 whole days before they do a lift again.
The other factor would be a beginner can’t recruit enough motor units to utilise one work set. That’s why starting strength has 3 work sets.
I agree that 5 years down the track all this may not make any difference but for a beginner I can see the benefit in having a program where you just do a handful of lifts with a high frequency. It gets them started on basic lifts and gets them making gains in the first 6 months of there training life. You aren’t meant to stay on the program for life. It’s just to get beginners started and it does that pretty well.
I think SS is great for making newbies develop a lot of lower body strength quickly and teaching them how to push themselves, but it does a very poor job of developing people’s upper body. That was the problem I had with it, and a problem I’ve seen on forums with a lot of other people. I stalled on the bench press at like 175 lbs for a long time yet my squat and deadlift skyrocketed. Seeing as there is literally only one upper body lift per day (not even the same lift all 3 times), 3x a week that doesn’t surprise me. I would like to see slightly more upper body volume on SS.
If I ran it now (as a non-newb with a lot more understanding of all of this) I would do a little more upper body work. Thus, even though I haven’t ran it yet I would likely recommend Greyskull because it appears to address my concerns with SS.
[quote]Angus1 wrote:
One thing that should be mentioned about beginners training is a large part of it is getting them to master the lifts. This is one part of 5/3/1 that I feel isn’t ideal. You see in Starting strength you do the same lift every 2nd workout. Plus you do 3 work sets at same weight. Repeating a lift in this manner gets you very good at it.
Compare that to 5/3/1 where you might do bench press on Tuesday for 1 all out set then you don’t bench again for 7 whole days.
Now for a more experienced lifter that may be fine but for a beginner I’m not sure they need 7 whole days before they do a lift again.
The other factor would be a beginner can’t recruit enough motor units to utilise one work set. That’s why starting strength has 3 work sets.
I agree that 5 years down the track all this may not make any difference
but for a beginner I can see the benefit in having a program where you just do a handful of lifts with a high frequency. It gets them started on basic lifts and gets them making gains in the first 6 months of there training life. You aren’t meant to stay on the program for life. It’s just to get beginners started and it does that pretty well.[/quote]
Why would it matter what program a beginner etarts with then?
I find the ‘5 years’ argument pretty unconvincing, myself. Yes, diminishing returns set in and everyone has a genetic limit. Why that means one should be content to progress more slowly than they could in their first 6 months of training – which are arguably the most important months for a new lifter – I don’t see. Would you tell that to a training client? “It doesn’t matter that much how fast you progress right now because in 5 years it will all level out.” People want results and they want them right away, and I’d argue there is a distinct psychological benefit to making as rapid progress as possible in both strength and muscle gain right out of the gate. How many new lifters are going to quit long before the 5 year mark?
As far as upper body volume, SS is designed as a strength program, not a bodybuilding plan. The goal is to get the OHP and Bench Press up as quickly as possible. I think it does that pretty well, and don’t necessarily think more volume does it better. I guess it’s fine to add volume and additional assistance work if the goal is mass, but the issue is to what degree adding more volume is going to affect the progress on the heavy sets.
If you stalled at 175 lbs on bench “for a long time”, Staystrong, I’d say you made some mistakes in programming. Not trying to be a dick, just saying that the idea behind SS is to add weight to the bar every workout – once you stop being able to do that, you need to change some variables and move on. Rippetoe doesn’t recommend multiple resets. My friend stalled early on OHP and BP so I reset him with 5x5 instead of 3x5, worked back up, switched back to 3x5 when the sets got hard, microloading, and when the 3x5 gets hard he’ll switch to 3x3, maybe w/ a back-off set or two or an additional assistance exercise for some higher-rep volume. (EDIT: and when the 3x3 stalls, he’s done w/ Starting Strength.)
I’m not saying it’s a magic program; on the contrary, it’s very simple – add weight to the bar – but I would choose it every time for a rank novice rather than calculating percentages and deloading w/ 5/3/1.
I don’t disagree with using Starting Strength as a beginner program. I’m only worried at the mindset it leads to in the long term when you give a person an arbitary set of rules and structure, including the “reset” as a backup plan.
[quote]dt79 wrote:
I don’t disagree with using Starting Strength as a beginner program. I’m only worried at the mindset it leads to in the long term when you give a person an arbitary set of rules and structure, including the “reset” as a backup plan.[/quote]
I’ve noticed way more emphasis on programming versus intensity as a trend, and I feel it speaks to this.
[quote]dt79 wrote:
I don’t disagree with using Starting Strength as a beginner program. I’m only worried at the mindset it leads to in the long term when you give a person an arbitary set of rules and structure, including the “reset” as a backup plan.[/quote]
I’ve noticed way more emphasis on programming versus intensity as a trend, and I feel it speaks to this.[/quote]
Changing your program is easy and makes you feel like you’ve made progress. Increasing your intensity is difficult and leads to less internet arguments.
[quote]dt79 wrote:
I don’t disagree with using Starting Strength as a beginner program. I’m only worried at the mindset it leads to in the long term when you give a person an arbitary set of rules and structure, including the “reset” as a backup plan.[/quote]
I’ve noticed way more emphasis on programming versus intensity as a trend, and I feel it speaks to this.[/quote]
Changing your program is easy and makes you feel like you’ve made progress. Increasing your intensity is difficult and leads to less internet arguments.
I’m as guilty of this as anyone.[/quote]
I would say changing the programing is just as hard once one has turned something that exists as a basic guideline into dogma. That’s what causes internet arguments.
[quote]dt79 wrote:
Oh yeah? I’ve watched 36 Chambers of Shaolin 20 times. I’ll fuck you up![/quote]
That being said, back on topic. Which I forgot. Hang on.
… BACK ON TOPIC. I think once you’re past the beginner’s stage, focusing on long-term progress in a specific rep range (depending on your goal) is the one thing we should all agree on. Overtraining, Undertraining, underrecovery, yada yada yada… It’s impossible to gauge these things for someone you haven’t seen train in person.
Stronglifts IS a good beginner program to learn the lifts. It is not great for long-term progression, and this is where I think most people on here take the ‘stick to the basics’ bit too far: if someone has honestly tried for several weeks to go beyond 225 on squats, it may not mean that he’s a pussy or not eating enough, it may just mean that he’s not the next Ed Coan (which is OK) and needs a different program now. One that he will stick to for a decent amount of time, mind you. I still think Wendler’s full body template, which I’ve mentioned before, is a good transition program:
I spent nearly a year running some random internet 3x5 program (that I called a 5x5 at the time). It worked pretty well. I got a lot stronger. I learned my way around barbells. I even got a little bit leaner.
My biggest take-away from that program was that I realized I could be a strong person. I realized that I LOVED to lift weights. I realized I had a viable path to improved health, appearance and physical capability. I came out of it with a totally different conception of what I could achieve and what life in my 30’s and beyond should look like.
I’ve spent the last 10 months running 5/3/1. First several cycles were upper/lower 4 day/week. I’ve been running the standard full-body template Nighthawkz outlined for the last 6 cycles now, which puts me in phase 3 of the program (lots of heavy squats every day). I love it. It works great and fits into my life very well.
I no longer BELIEVE that this is a good program that I could run in perpetuity, I KNOW it is a good program I could run in perpetuity. This long-term perspective on lifting is something I simply did not have as a beginner. I would wager that few do.
I looked at 5/3/1 as a beginner and I wrote it off because it looked “too light”. I couldn’t have been more wrong, but I just chalk that up to being a beginner who didn’t know anything about lifting. 3 heavy sets of five on the big lifts each week and adding weight next workout was just a lot easier for me to get my head around. I didn’t know anything about getting stronger, but that sure as hell seemed like a good way to do it. And it was.
If you are a determined person who is ready to commit to the process of getting stronger, I believe that the best beginner program is the one that you do. I am very glad I never posted a “Is my routine OK?” thread on any website, because I would have surely been met with a bunch of people telling me “do this, not that”.
Doubt may have crept into my head. I may have backed off and got stuck in some “deload” rut instead of keeping my weights the same and charging ahead next week if I didn’t hit my 5’s. I may have hopped programs, looking for the One True Program because BeastMode69 on the internet said what I was doing sucked.
I simply didn’t know any better, so I proceeded with full confidence that I was doing something right.
[quote]twojarslave wrote:
If you are a determined person who is ready to commit to the process of getting stronger, I believe that the best beginner program is the one that you do. I am very glad I never posted a “Is my routine OK?” thread on any website, because I would have surely been met with a bunch of people telling me “do this, not that”.
Doubt may have crept into my head. I may have backed off and got stuck in some “deload” rut instead of keeping my weights the same and charging ahead next week if I didn’t hit my 5’s. I may have hopped programs, looking for the One True Program because BeastMode69 on the internet said what I was doing sucked.
I simply didn’t know any better, so I proceeded with full confidence that I was doing something right.
[quote]twojarslave wrote:
If you are a determined person who is ready to commit to the process of getting stronger, I believe that the best beginner program is the one that you do. I am very glad I never posted a “Is my routine OK?” thread on any website, because I would have surely been met with a bunch of people telling me “do this, not that”.
Doubt may have crept into my head. I may have backed off and got stuck in some “deload” rut instead of keeping my weights the same and charging ahead next week if I didn’t hit my 5’s. I may have hopped programs, looking for the One True Program because BeastMode69 on the internet said what I was doing sucked.
I simply didn’t know any better, so I proceeded with full confidence that I was doing something right.
And I was.[/quote]
This absolutely nails it.
[/quote]
Yup.
[quote]nighthawkz wrote:
Just lift the heavy thing and get better at it over time. This shit isn’t nearly as complicated as people think.
[/quote]
