Starting Strength

Preface
     
    Damned if things haven’t changed in the four years since the 2nd edition of Starting Strength was written. The Aasgaard Company has changed personnel, I have met lots of people who have taught me many things, and we have had enormous success with what I thought was going to be a book ignored by the industry, academe, and the exercising public. I was right about the fitness industry and the folks with tenured positions, but I was wrong about you. Since 2007 we have taught several thousand people how to do these five lifts in our weekend seminars, and the 2nd edition has sold more than 80,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling books about weight training in publishing history. Thanks.
    Now that we’ve learned some things from you guys – the ones we’ve been busy teaching for four years – the previous material in the 2nd edition is screaming for an update. Some of it is stale, incomplete, or just plain wrong, and it can’t just lay there like a bureaucrat, badly needing something useful to do but making money anyway. This effort is not just the culmination of a top-to-bottom, year-long rewrite. It is the product of an intensive four-year testing program with many of you serving as the experimental population, one which has improved the teaching method for the five lifts, with an extra one thrown in.
    It has also been a four-year school for me, as I have tried to find better ways to explain what I know to be true in terms that are understandable, logical, and, most importantly, correct. Much of this material is not in print anywhere else; hopefully, that doesn’t make it wrong. But you’re pretty bright, so you can decide for yourself.
    The book needed a new look, too. Our hope is that you enjoy the illustrations by Jason Kelly, in a different style than usually found in a fat messy textbook, and that you appreciate Stef’s Herculean efforts to make this a better-looking example of the bookmaker’s art than the previous edition.
     
    Many people deserve thanks for their contributions. In no particular order (certainly not alphabetical):
     
    Dustin Laurence, Dr. Dennis Carter, Dr. Philip Colee, Dr. Matt Lorig, Stephen Hill, Juli Peterson, Mary Conover, Catherine Oliver, Bill Starr, Tommy Suggs, Mark Tucker, Thomas Campitelli, Ryan Huseman, Maj. Ryan Long, Maj. Damon Wells, Andrea Wells, John Welbourn, Brian Davis, Justin Ball, Nathan Davey, Travis Shepard, Paul and Becca Steinman, Mike and Donna Manning, Gregg Arsenuk, Michael Street and Carrie Klumpar, Skip and Jodi Miller, Ahmik Jones, Heidi Ziegele, Lynne Pitts, Kelly Moore, Eva Twardokens, Tara Muccilli, Dan Duane, Shane Hamman, Jim Wendler, Dan John, Jim Steel, Matt Reynolds, Charles Staley, Maj. Ryan Whittemore, John Sheaffer, Will Morris, Andy Baker, T.J. Cooper, Doug Lane, Simma Park, Myles Kantor, Phil Hammarberg, Barry Vinson, Gant Grimes, Josh Wells, Shelley Hancock, Terry Young, Ronnie Hamilton, Anil Koganti, MD, Rufus-dog, Ursa-dog, and Mr. Biggles.
     
—Rip

Chapter 1: Strength - Why and How
     
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    Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not. As humanity has developed throughout history, physical strength has become less critical to our daily existence, but no less important to our lives. Our strength, more than any other thing we possess, still determines the quality and the quantity of our time here in these bodies. Whereas previously our physical strength determined how much food we ate and how warm and dry we stayed, it now merely determines how well we function in these new surroundings we have crafted for ourselves as our culture has accumulated. But we are still animals – our physical existence is, in the final analysis, the only one that actually matters. A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.
    As the nature of our culture has changed, our relationship with physical activity has changed along with it. We previously were physically strong as a function of our continued existence in a simple physical world. We were adapted to this existence well, since we had no other choice. Those whose strength was adequate to the task of staying alive continued doing so. This shaped our basic physiology, and that of all our vertebrate