Starting Strength

so the illustration above represents a sliding scale of continually increasing intensity of activity.

    It is essential to understand that the 1RM work does not produce the conditioning stress that the 20RM work does, and that the long set of 20 reps is not heavy in the same way that the 1RM is. They are both hard, but for different reasons. Because they are so completely different, they cause the body to adapt in two completely different ways. These extremes represent a continuum, with a heavy set of 3 more closely resembling 1RM in its adaptation, and a set of 10 sharing more of the characteristics of a 20RM. Sets of five reps are a very effective compromise for the novice, and even for the advanced lifter more interested in strength than in muscular endurance. They allow enough weight to be used that force production must increase, but they are not so heavy that the cardiovascular component is completely absent from the exercise. Sets of five may be the most useful rep range you will use over your entire training career, and as long as you lift weights, sets of five will be important.
     
    Progression
     
    The effective training of novices takes advantage of the fact that untrained people get strong very quickly at first, and this effect tapers off over time until advanced trainees, who are already strong, gain more strength only by carefully manipulating all training variables. Novices can and should increase the weight of the work sets every workout until this is no longer possible. In fact, novices get strong as fast as the workout makes them, and what was hard last time is not hard today. They can adapt so quickly that the concept of “maximum intensity” is hard to define. If a kid gets strong as fast as his work sets increase, a 10-pound jump is not really heavier relative to his improved strength. The key to maintaining this rate of improvement is the careful selection of the amount of weight that you increase each time.
    Work-set weight increases will vary with the exercise, your age and sex, your experience, and the consistency of your adherence to the program. For most male trainees with good technique, the squat can be increased 10 pounds per workout, assuming three workouts per week for two to three weeks. When you miss the last rep or two of your last work set, the easy gains are beginning to wane, and you can take 5-pound jumps for several months; back up 5 pounds and start with 5-pound jumps. For very young kids, older trainees, and most women, 5-pound jumps are sufficient to start with, and then smaller jumps will be required, as will the lighter barbell plates (lighter than the standard 2½ lb plates) that make smaller jumps possible.
    If it is important for women and kids to make progress – and why would it not be? – it is important to have the right equipment to train them correctly. You might need to make the plates out of 2-inch flat washers, or have some 2½ lb plates milled down, but it is obviously necessary, so get it done. Small plates are available from various sources on the Web, and baseball bat weights will usually fit the bar quite well. It will be useful at some point for everybody to have access to light plates, since progress on the lifts will eventually slow to the point where they will be useful even for advanced men. Don’t be afraid to take small jumps – instead, do be afraid to stop improving.
    Some very genetically gifted, heavier men can take bigger jumps of 15 or 20 pounds for the first two weeks. Anything more than this is usually excessive, even for the most gifted athlete, since an increase of 60 pounds per week in the squat is not going to be realistically sustainable for very long. Don’t be in a big hurry to find your sticking point early in your training progression. It is always preferable to take smaller jumps and sustain the progress than to take bigger jumps and get stuck early. Getting stuck means missing any of the reps of the prescribed work sets, since the weight cannot be increased until all of the reps have been done as prescribed. It is easier to not get stuck than it is to get unstuck.
    In the bench press, the muscles used are smaller, so the increases will be smaller. If the first workout has properly determined their initial strength level, most men can do 5-pound jumps for a while, perhaps three to four weeks, if they are alternating bench presses and presses. Some talented, heavier men can make a few 10-pound jumps, but not many. Older