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The End of the Beginning


A common complaint among those who know sweet f**k all about strength is that there isn't enough volume or some such nonsense in the starting strength method. Indeed the beginning stages are somewhat cruisey, but this doesn't last very long.

I can still recall the end stages of my linear progression, the horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach twice a week when you know you've got set a new 5RM on the squat, then repeat it twice more, and then back it up on your other lifts. You try distraction - self-talk and stuffing your face with even more food, but the feeling won't go away. It still haunts me.

All told, I progressed from 50kg squats on day 1, to 157.5kg(347lbs) x 5 in about 4 months. At this point, my squats were killing me, deadlifts were crap due to bad technique, and both presses were still moving albeit slowly. Squats came abruptly to a halt at this weight, 5-4-3 instead of 3x5 on the first day, and ending up at 4-3-3 three attempts later.

Here is where the mistakes were made. I would now advise my slightly younger self to move onto intermediate programming. Instead I reset everything by 10% and started again.


This reset yielded a paltry 5kg in 2 months on the squat, and I was once again right on the edge of overtraining territory. Deadlifts had stalled again without exceeding my previous PR. Bench and overhead had moved a little, 5kg each on my 5 rep max.

From a few months after this period - this is the ass of somebody who's really done starting strength


Had I moved to intermediate programming at the first major squat failure, the bench, overhead press and squat would likely have progressed at much the same rate as they did on linear progression, and I would have been far less tired and mentally fatigued two months into intermediate programming. I might have made better choices about intermediate programming, and might have set myself up for a lot less messing about over the next year and a half or so.

Of course for the truly committed, another way to deal with the reset would have been to massively up regulate my calorie intake and gained another 5 to 10kg of bodyweight. This would certainly have yielded results, and maybe I should have gone down that road. I have been at 115kg (254lbs) in the intervening years, and it wasn't such a big weight for my frame.

In conclusion, like most other trainees who really give starting strength a go, my results were incredible during the time in which I was gaining bodyweight. I got strong and packed on a huge amount of muscle. My mistake was to stick with the program once the bodyweight leveled off at 105kg (231lbs). At this point I should have transitioned to the texas method and enjoyed another period of predictable gains - but I didn't.


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