Starting Strength

Edition (Aasgaard, 2009).
    And all these guidelines apply only to committed trainees who do not miss workouts. Failure to train as scheduled is failure to follow the program, and if the program is not followed, progress cannot predictably occur. If you have to miss a couple of workouts due to severe illness, or possibly the death of a parent, spouse, or good dog, allowances can be made, and the last workout you completed should just be repeated set for set. But if you continually miss workouts, you are not actually training, and your obviously valuable time should be spent more productively elsewhere.
    Likewise, trying to increase the weight faster than prescribed by the program and by common sense is also failure to follow the program. If you insist on attempting unrealistic increases between workouts, it is your fault when progress does not occur. Ambition is useful, greed is not. Most of human history and the science of economics demonstrate that the desire for more than is currently possessed drives improvement, both personally and for societies. But greed is an ugly thing when uncontrolled and untempered with wisdom, and it will result in your program’s progress coming to an ass-grinding halt. The exercises must increase in weight in order for progress to occur, by definition. But if you allow yourself to succumb to the temptation of 10-pound jumps on the bench press, or 50-pound increases on the squat, just because the heavier plates were handy (or the correct plates were inconvenient), you are going to get stuck. Too much weight on the bar is just as bad as no increase in weight at all or, for that matter, missing workouts. Take the time and care necessary to ensure that the right weight gets on the bar and gets lifted the right number of times the right way.
    It is understandable that you want your program to show results. But please understand this, if you miss everything else in this entire book: stronger does not necessarily mean more weight on the bar. Resist the temptation to add weight at the expense of correct technique – you are doing no one any favors when you sacrifice form for weight on the bar. Progress stops, bad habits get formed, injuries accumulate, and no one benefits in the long run.
     

    Figure 8-5. An example of the first few days of a typical beginner’s program.

    Nutrition and Bodyweight
     
    It is common to want what you cannot have. But you must keep in mind that the phenomenon of cause and effect cannot be argued with or circumvented by your wishes and desires. Everyone who has been a kid or has raised kids is familiar with the phenomenon of the “growth spurt,” which happens naturally during all stages of normal development. Growth occurs sporadically as we develop and mature; it is not smooth over the course of the whole infant/child/adolescent/teenager continuum, but within the growth spurt itself, a period of smooth linear increase does occur. We are creating an artificial growth spurt with our training, and if the stress is sufficient and the diet is adequate to facilitate recovery, amazing progress can occur. This is why proximity in age to the normal growth window makes for a more efficient response to this stimulus: the processes by which growth is accomplished are still functioning, and the system is not yet cemented in its final form. The older the trainee, the further the remove from the capacity to generate a growth spurt. But the stimulus/response relationship is axiomatic – you get out of it what you put into it, within the context of your ability to respond. You maximize this ability by training, eating, and resting in the most effective way possible.
    A program of this nature tends to produce the correct bodyweight in an athlete. That is, if you need to be bigger, you will grow, and if you need to lose bodyfat, that happens, too. It is possible, and quite likely, that skinny kids on this program will gain 10–15 pounds of bodyweight in the first two weeks of a good barbell training program, provided they eat well. “Well” means four or so meals per day, based on meat and egg protein sources, with lots of fruit and vegetables and lots of milk. Lots. Most sources within the heavy-training community agree that a good starting place is one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day, with the rest of the diet making up 3500–6000 calories, depending on training requirements and body composition. Although these numbers produce much eyebrow-raising and