Starting Strength

bodyfat and underweight if you’re less than 10%. Bodyfat under about 10% is not usually the level that a performance athlete carries, and growing a significant amount of muscle mass will entail an increase in bodyfat. A bodyfat level over about 20% means that you’re headed in the direction of carrying around more than is required for an anabolic environment and more than is efficient for moving either the bar or an opponent.
    It is potentially slipshod to assign an underweight or overweight designation on the basis of bodyfat, but it usually works pretty well, and in the absence of currently non-existent height/weight/bodyfat tables that take all three variables into account, it’s about the best we can do. It is true that many people who want or need to gain bodyweight are also in love with their visible abs, and will not appreciate the advice to increase bodyfat if they are below 10%. The fact is that the dietary habits necessary to sustain about 10% or lower for most people is too low to sustain the metabolic environment required for a novice to gain muscle mass. And 10% bodyfat – if you do not have genetically low bodyfat (you know who you are) – is not healthy; the conditions that are required to produce and maintain it are not compatible with high strength and power performance levels; and those levels are necessary to get big and strong. Or rather, strong and thus big.
    This probably means you. Make up your mind that at least for the first year or two, you’re not going to worry about bodyfat levels if you’re already lean, because lean is easier to reacquire than strong is to build. This current emphasis on being lean at the expense of all other things is the direct result of Joe Weider’s having done his job very well. You have seen pictures of big bodybuilders at 6% bodyfat in contest shape so often that you think it’s normal, desirable, and always possible. Don’t forget that there are drugs involved, along with enough other odd dietary behavior that Mr. Weider should be flogged for forgetting to mention that part. It would be much better to become realistic about these things and to stop letting the physique magazine and supplement industries make you stupid.
    On the other hand, if you’re a little fluffy around the belly, you have obviously already created the conditions necessary for growth. You’ll usually start out stronger than the skinny guy, and because your body hasn’t got the problems with growing that skinny guys do, strength gains can come more easily for you if you eat correctly. You’ll still eat a lot, but don’t drink the milk, and cut your carb intake if you don’t see bodyfat levels drop during these first couple of weeks. You’ll first notice that your pants fit looser in the waist.
    So, if you correctly chose the work-set weight for your first workout and your squat didn’t go up 40–50 pounds between the first and sixth workouts, either you’re not in that demographic (a novice male between the ages of 18 and 35 with a starting bodyweight of 160–175) or you’re not doing the program. If you’re one of these guys who thinks you gained a lot of strength because your squat went up 30 pounds in three months, you’re not doing the program (which I shall henceforth abbreviate as YNDTP). If you think the program is hard because your bodyweight at 5' 8" went from 148 down to 146 and you got stuck on the third workout, with your squat having gone up 15 pounds, YNDTP. If you’re a fat guy who has decided to go on the Atkins diet at the same time you started the novice progression, is continually sore, and is stuck at 30 pounds of squat increase, YNDTP.
    After the first couple of weeks, the increase of 10 pounds per workout becomes unsustainable and 5-pound jumps become the rule. This jump provides for a long, steady linear increase in strength that has the potential to go on for months. It translates to a 15-pound-per-week increase in squat strength, half as fast as the first two weeks but still very significant at about 60 pounds per month. This progression adds up to a 205–225 x 5 x 3 squat workout after six or seven weeks of training for our novice male, if he has been eating correctly. And eating correctly is part of the program. If he started the program at a bodyweight of 165, he should probably weigh 185 at this point, more if he’s taller. If you’re squatting 30 pounds more than you started, at six weeks into the program, YNDTP. If you started at