Starting Strength

might feel like you’ve had a pretty good workout. The problem is that you have done 6390 pounds of work before getting to the last set at 225, so your chances of ever increasing this last single are slim. By the time you reach what should be a work set, you are all used up, since all of your warm-up sets have essentially been work sets, too. The warm-ups didn’t prepare you to increase your work sets, so you will never lift any more weight than you did the last time you did this workout, and you are therefore quite thoroughly stuck. If the warm-up sets fatigue you instead of prepare you, they are not warm-ups and your strength cannot increase.
    As a general rule, it is best to start with an empty bar (“45” lb/20 kg), determine the work set or sets, and then divide the difference between 45 pounds and the work-set weight into even increments. Some examples are provided in Table 8-1. Most people will need to select three to five warm-up sets, depending on the work-set weight; extremely heavy weights may require more increments for the trainee to get warm so that the jumps are not too big. If additional warm-up is desirable (as with a cold room, older trainees, or injured lifters), multiple sets can be done with the empty bar and the first loaded set. This approach provides the benefits of the warm-up without causing fatigue from doing too much work at heavier weight before the work sets.
    As the warm-ups progress from the empty bar up through heavier weights, the time between the sets should increase a little. As a general rule, the time between sets should be sufficient for you to recover from the previous set, so that fatigue from the prior set does not limit the one you are about to do. The heavier the set, the longer the break should be. This type of training requires that all of the reps of each work set be completed, because the program is based on lifting more weight each workout, not on completing each workout or each exercise faster. A strength training program is designed to make you stronger, i.e., able to exert more force and lift more weight. Some training programs used in bodybuilding rely on the accumulated fatigue produced by short breaks between sets, and these programs specifically increase muscular endurance. Although endurance increases as a function of strength, it is not a parameter specifically targeted by our program at the novice level. You will benefit more by lifting heavier weights, through the efficient timing of sets to allow for recovery, than by trying to decrease the time between the sets and thereby allowing fatigue to limit your ability to exert maximum force.
    The time between sets will vary, in a couple of ways, with the conditioning level of the athlete. Rank novices are not typically strong enough to fatigue themselves very much, and they can go fairly quickly, just a minute or two, between sets, since they are not lifting much weight anyway. The first two or three sets can be done as fast as the bar can be loaded, especially if two or more people are training together. More advanced trainees need more time, perhaps 5 minutes, between the last warm-ups and the work sets. If they’re doing sets across, very strong lifters may need 10 minutes or more between work sets.
     
    Work sets
     
    The number of work sets to be done after the warm-ups will vary with the exercise and the individual. The squat benefits from sets across (three sets for novice trainees), as does the bench press and the press. The deadlift is hard enough, and is usually done after a lot of squatting, and one heavy set is usually sufficient, with more tending to overtrain most people. The power clean can be done with more sets across, since the weight is lighter relative to the squat and deadlift, and the limiting factors are technique and explosive power, not absolute strength.
    Multiple work sets cause the body to adapt to a larger volume of work, an adaptation that comes in handy for those training for sports performance. One school of thought holds that one work set, if done at a high enough intensity, is sufficient to stimulate muscular growth. For novices, several problems with this approach immediately present themselves. First, inexperienced trainees do not yet know how to produce maximum intensity under the bar, and they will not know how for quite some time. Second, if they don’t know how to work at a very high intensity, more than one set will be needed to accumulate sufficient stress to cause