Starting Strength

Starting Strength was written by Mark Rippetoe and is built around one idea: the fastest way for an untrained person to get strong is to add weight to the bar every single workout on a small number of highly effective compound lifts. It's aimed squarely at true beginners — people who have never trained with a barbell, or who stalled out on a hypertrophy-style split and need a program that forces measurable progress every session. Compared to StrongLifts, it trades some volume for heavier loading, using triples of five instead of quintuples of five.

The program alternates two workouts, A and B, three times a week with a rest day between — Monday, Wednesday, Friday works well. Workout A is Squat 3x5, Press 3x5, Deadlift 1x5. Workout B is Squat 3x5, Bench Press 3x5, Power Clean 3x5. You alternate every session: week one runs A, B, A; week two runs B, A, B. Squat appears in literally every workout, which is what makes this program so effective at building a strength base quickly — everything else is secondary to getting the squat up.

A session starts with an empty-bar warm-up — squats to rehearse the low-bar position, plus a hip flexor stretch on A days or a hip hinge drill on B days to prime the deadlift or power clean pattern — before you work up to your top weight for three sets of five (one set of five for the deadlift, since it's too taxing to do for multiple sets at a beginner's rate of progress). Rest a full three minutes between squat sets especially; this program depends on you being fresh enough to hit five reps with correct low-bar mechanics on the last set, not just five reps of any kind. A full session runs 45 to 60 minutes once the warm-up ramp gets longer.

Progression is dead simple: hit all your reps with acceptable form, add weight next session. Squat goes up 5kg per session in the low-bar position; press and bench press each go up 2.5kg per session; deadlift and power clean go up 5kg and 2.5kg respectively per session. Because squat and deadlift both add 5kg every time you touch them, and squat happens three times a week, your squat numbers move faster than almost anything else in the program during the first month — expect the deadlift to overtake your squat's rate of climb early on since it's a fresh, low-fatigue single set each time.

When you fail to hit all your reps on a lift for two to three sessions in a row at the same weight, don't just keep grinding at it — reset that lift by dropping the weight about 10 percent and work back up using the same per-session jumps. Most lifters can run two or three of these resets before true linear progression runs out. Only once resets stop producing new personal records — typically after several months of consistent training — have you graduated the novice program and it's time to move to intermediate programming like the Texas Method or GZCLP.

A few mistakes come up again and again with new Starting Strength lifters.

• •Chasing weight before the low-bar squat position is grooved, which bakes in form errors that get harder to fix as the bar gets heavier
• •Failing to reset after two or three stalled sessions and instead missing reps week after week
• •Treating the power clean as a strength exercise to grind out rather than a technical, explosive lift that needs to stay crisp
• •Skipping the warm-up drills, which are there specifically to rehearse the movement pattern before it gets loaded
• •Not eating or sleeping enough to support 5kg squat jumps three times a week, then blaming the program for stalling

In the first three to six months, expect large, consistent jumps in your squat, press, bench, and deadlift numbers — this is the fastest strength gain most lifters will ever experience. A beginner following the program properly should be squatting around bodyweight to 1.3 times bodyweight and deadlifting close to 1.5 times bodyweight by the end of a well-run novice cycle, with upper body lifts progressing more slowly. Once resets no longer restore progress, it's time to graduate to an intermediate program.