The Pros & Cons Of Starting Strength

Just do SS until it stops working and switch to 5-3-1. Its STARTING STRENGTH! When it stops working it's not starting strength anymore.

It's worth it. Made the most progress I've ever made in only about 7 months. I still don't know if I'm supposed to stretch or "cool down" when I'm done with a session.???

I think SS is more adaptable than many think it is. I added chin ups on OHP days, rows on BP days and dips on Power Clean days. These are all gone over in the book and are encouraged as optional enhancements to the program. They build strength in the opposite direction of the lifts I paired them with. It's good to also strengthen the hip flexors to counter balance the squat, though I don't remember seeing that in the book. Hanging from the chin up bar and folding at the hips to bring the feet up to the bar does this really well.

Grant ... your disappointing me. You piggy back your entire brand off SS than start covering cons? You know as well as anyone you probably need to put on weight to keep progressing. Very very confusing mixed messaging. This is strength training!!! Not what your abs look like.

This program can't be run without a rack, but its principles can be adapted to run an effective close facsimile. Clean and press, clean and squat (front squat) and floor press are all good exercises. My brother and I lifted in the basement with our Dad in the early 70s. We used iron plates from a concrete floor, so everything started with a clean and had to be finished under control. This is also good strength to start with. The principles are the same. Our manual was our Dad's manual from the 1940s, likely written in the 30s. It used sets of 6, not 5. Big difference, I know ; ). What works works. Over 50 years later I still enjoy lifting and am amazed that it keeps helping me more and more for so long. Go for it Everybody!

It's supposed to be boring n hard. This is no con.

Another Con is that it is too easy to get injured if you are not being watched over by a coach or experienced lifter. Learning from videos alone can only go so far.

Idk about others, but there's nothing more exciting to me than doing the same lifts over and over, lifting more and more and more, and the weight doesnt seem to ever get much heavier

The hardness doesn’t change. It doesn’t get harder. It doesn’t get easier. It stays the same.

If you could run SS without getting fat Mark Rippetoe would do it.

I've never understood "boring" -- as long as progress is being made it ain't boring. Scary, maybe, but boring? Nahh.

I love doing SS, and my family and friends are doing it too. everyone has a different experience with how hard it seems from workout to workout so i won't mention that. As far as "an hour in the gym" for novices's, I have just never seen or heard of that. Rest is 15 minutes per lift, warmup takes about 10. 30 minutes per exercise is about right. I've tried warming up during my rest and it saves a few minutes, but not that much. I would love to be in and out in an hour, but it does not seem possible.

Actually, higher fat (saturated animal fats) and low to no carbs is the best way to go. See the work of Drs. Shawn Baker, Anthony Chaffee, Zoe Harcombe, Paul Mason, Ben Bikman, Robert Kiltz, Steve Phinney, Jeff Volek and Tim Noakes for starters. For added benefit, check out the content of Prof. Bart Kay. Also, I love and follow the Starting Strength program and recommend it to everyone who will listen - and a few who won't.

“People get so addicted to the number on the bar going up they don’t care what they look like.” Yeah, because SS doesn’t allow you to adjust any other training variables.

I want to go to the gym and grab some random cables ... 🙂

Starting Strength is fantastic. I got my squat to 405 in 6 months. The idiotic comments about getting fat has to to with the end user eating like shit. The GOMAD is for 18 year old 140 lb skinny kids. Anyone else needs 500-1000 CLEAN calories above maintenance. Any more, if you’re not a hard gainer, you will get fat. I’ve seen guys get fat because they lie to themselves about their metabolism and they over eat thinking it will all go to muscle. It won’t.

Good review of SS, liked your video!

I’m just not in favor training without any metabolic component. Your heart is the most important muscle in your body. It needs to be in the game.

I have found from experience you can do your fahve’s (with hip drahve) and still, finish up with something that gets you huffing and puffing inside of 15 minutes.

10 EMOMS of 10 kettle swings, or a dynabike 8-round 30/90 HIIT, or an 8 min hard row, (or battle ropes…) or several 2-min heavy bag rounds full out..then you’re gonna be good in all gears.

My experience (62, been at this 45 years) … your mileage may vary.

Does anybody find it feasible to add 5 lb per workout? This would be 260 lb per year added to every lift

Power cleans need subbed out. A high school football player can handle them but for most there are better options

Rip made me fat. I’ve gained 20;pounds in two years of doing Starting Strength. I’ve lost two inches on my waist and put a hundred pounds on my bench, but damm, I’m so fat

I think having a bad ass home gym is a pro. Never need to wait for someone to stop curling in the squat rack.

People getting fat is definitely Rippetoes doing. His recommendations on weight to height ratio will definitely make you too heavy too soon. His recommended weight for somebody 6feet tall is approx 265lbs. You will be fat if you gain that aggressively (since Starting Strength is at most half a year program), unless you have longer working out background. But you will squat some solid weight.

Anything Rip does is ALL PRO

Yeah I got fat as fuck and now it's been really hard to get back as lean as I was. But. THE NUMBERS MASON.

I like Rip. Further, i like how starting strength doesn't allow one to "hide" a lack of progress or effort behind "variety".

It's a good metaphor for life. Master the basics first. Build a foundation. Focus.

The industry is just filled with charlatans and cowards.

It's uncomfortable to have real conversations with clients who are bullshyting themselves.

Much easier to just have them do a bunch of random stuff to keep them coming back.

Yep!

BS. SS is not a good program at all. First off adding 5 pounds a week runs out QUICK. Second it lacks VOLUME. Nothing beats 3x10. Its proven from Professional Athletes to Golden Era Body Builders.

When I started this program I thought it seemed to lack to basic idea of training opposing muscles groups, sure enough three months in developed shoulder issues, had to take a step back and strengthen back and stabilzer muscles in order to continue progression

People seem to forget, the program is called “Starting Strength”, it looks like a good program for someone to start working out or for someone who wants to get back into working out again, and once a person does have the basics of lifting maybe reevaluate their own personal goals and modify from there.

The weight gaining part is a downside. And when it gets hard, 5 reps spikes your blood pressure very hight. I do 8-12 reps now. Better for me. And I split upper/lower now. Full body fives were too taxing at 50 yrs and a 70 hrs a week profession.

Question # 3 when you get stuck: “how much are you eating? Most human males cannot make progress on a strength program with a diet of under 4000 calories a day” this is why people get fat on this program.

The biggest con is their right wing macho image. It means you can't share their content without alienating 80 percent off the bat with the politics and presentation.

i like to think of starting strength is the fat guy program... rippetoe does say to get fat to lift more weight and get over plateaus. eat lots of cheap meat and die of a heart attack at 70 so you can bench 405 for one. i am just half-joking. in reality, the con I see is the absence of variation...there's not enough variation, and along with that, it's not designed for intermediate and advanced lifters.

Recomp, recomp, recomp. Build muscle lose fat get stronger. Tired of being fat and ugly? Just be ugly. Gym.

Lol the made me fat part is still pretty fair point. Done SS and has bettered my life. Thats said of the many podcast i heard from him. Calories are stressed, not lean protein. But maybe hes gotten better in the years i stoped listening.

I loved it, got me on track after many years of wasting time. Now I’m 60, I’ve modified it to suit my needs.

If you can add 300lbs to a deadlift or squat as a Beginner in a year..You Are a GENETIC OUTLIER!
STOP the BS PROMISES!
I been a Competive Powerlifter for years and Winning,It took YEARS to get a 1,500 lb total.

“We downt dew body parts. We downt dew ‘abs’, we downt dew ‘arms’ er ‘legs’: we dew ‘mewvment patterns’! The squat is a hip mewvment.” “Whut is strength? Strength is the ability to produce force against an external resistance. How dew yew get stronger? Ba’ lifting more weight!!!” “Running doesn't make yew strong! Getting stronger helps yew run”. “Who’s stronger: a 150lb guy who deadlifts 475, or the 275lb guy who can deadlift 500? THE GUY WHO CAN LIFT MORE is stronger!! I know thats terribly upsetting the the ‘functional fitness’ people!”

Honestly loved starting strength when I did it back during coving times but lately it's become such a damn cult and every video they do has to drag politics or Rips world views into it for some reason. It's still a damn good book though and I still re-read parts occasionally if I need to brush up on my form.

Why does nobody ever mention that if you're a complete beginner operating extremely heavy barbell weight you're prone to injury

SS just made me bottom heavy and slow.

Pros: Rippetoe
Cons: Rippetoe

Keep it simple lift heavy shit

In my opinion, deadlift and low-bar back squat are not worth the spinal loading and risk of injury. At my high school our strength coach programmed power cleans instead of deadlift and high-bar back squats instead of low-bar. Also, every time I tried listening to Rippetoe he sounded like an immature jackass to me.

I would suggest that there's not a lot of ways to eat. There are three: high carb, low fat; high fat, low carb; mixed fuel. What makes people fat is the mixed fuel diet. That's where carbs and fats are combined in high amounts. Why? Because the Randle Cycle is what determines how energy is used in cells. As you can see from any chart showing the cycle, the choice is glucose OR fatty acids. They cross inhibit each other. Meaning, when cells are burning fat, they're not burning glucose. This is because the oxidization of fatty acids in the mitochondria signals to the Glut 4 transmitter on the outside of the cell wall, which is what is triggered by insulin, to withdraw into the cell, turning the cell locally insulin resistant. Meaning, no glucose can enter the cell. This isn't a pathology, this is how it's supposed to work. The cell does this to prevent damage. This means glucose starts to pool in the blood. The body can't have that. It needs to maintain a normal glucose level, which is 4 grams for your entire blood supply. This glucose is swiftly converted through the process of lipogenesis into body fat.

I know you've messed with the carnivore diet and the reason it works so well is because you're eating high amounts of satiating saturated fat that your body knows just what to do with. Also, fatty acids produce 3.1x as much ATP as glucose does, so you get more energy too. Notice, I haven't mentioned the word "calories" once. That's because that doesn't apply. The body doesn't burn calories, it oxidizes substrate. That substrate being either glucose or fatty acids and the body gets better at whatever diet it's fed... high carb or high fat, but it can't do much with mixed fuel meals because the cells aren't setup to burn that kind of fuel with any regularity without it starting to cause issues.

Great, so we're down to two diets: high carb, or low carb. The problem with a high carb diet is that after 3-5 years, a person on this diet is going to have real vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Or, I suppose they can supplement... but why? All available evidence suggests that the human body is built to be a high fat, and animal protein diet. Look at our guts. They have more in common with a wolf than they do any other primate.

Our cecum, which is the part of the digestive tract that allows plant matter to breakdown and ferment, has shriveled up and it's now called our appendix. We can handle a little fiber but nothing like other primates. Again, it's much more wolf-like. That anatomy agrees with our cellular processes, and that is, it prefers a high fat, low carb, animal protein based diet.

The people getting fat while getting strong are either already showing signs of metabolic syndrome and are doing things to make it worse or they are just consuming a lot of fructose. As fructose is the switch to turn on fat storage. That can come in the form of a few hundred grams of carbs a day and associated vegetable oils that come with highly processed foods such as sandwich and hamburger buns. Toss in some fries and it's practically a recipe for putting on weight. Mixed fuel meals are the best way to gain weight there is. Look around, that's why everybody you see practically has an unhealthy amount of body fat on them.

The comments here bashing Rippetoe are mind boggling. Dude knows more about strength conditioning then anyone here. A "thank you" for sharing your wisdom with us would be far more in order.