Starting Strength

YNDTP.
    Training drives strength acquisition, the strength increase drives mass gain, and the mass gain facilitates the strength increase. They are all intimately related, and they approach a limit asymptotically. The younger you are, the steeper the curve. You need a caloric and protein surplus, which will produce some bodyfat accumulation that you can deal with later. The training stress has to constantly increase by as much as you can tolerate every workout. The variable is the load, not the number of exercises, sets, or reps. The ability to tolerate a rapid increase in load and to continue to quickly adapt slows after a few months. But during this period, don’t waste your opportunity to grow quickly. After this, the program and diet must change to reflect the reality of slower progress.
     
    Equipment
     
    A lot of money has been wasted on weight rooms and gyms since the 1970s. Commercial exercise machines, as a general rule, are expensive, single-purpose devices, delivering one exercise per footprint on the floor at a very high price per square foot of training space. Home gym equipment is usually multi-station, using various elastic media to provide adjustable resistance for a variety of silly exercises. Barbells, on the other hand, are cheap. They can be used for lots of different exercises. The upright support bench for the bench press, a single-purpose device, is not an absolutely necessary piece of equipment, since the exercise we use it for can be done with a flat bench and a power rack. All of the exercises in this program can be done with a minimum of equipment, which allows for the better use of resources. Instead of the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on an average 15-station circuit of machines, a third of that amount could be spent on the best barbell room in the world, with bumper plates, good bars, and platform space to accommodate lots of lifters, all in the same space. At home, a good free-weight gym can be built in the garage with brand new equipment for the price of three years’ gym dues. You may decide to build your own gym, and the following guidelines can apply to your garage or to any gym you might decide to join.
    The power rack and platform
     
    The training facility should be organized around the power rack. The rack should have a floor built into it, and a platform attached to it, so that the inside floor of the rack is perfectly flush with the surface of the platform. An 8' x 8' platform works well, providing plenty of room for every purpose it will serve. The rack and platform unit will use about 96 square feet, and in this space, all the exercises in this program can be performed. A bench press and bar assembly uses about 36 square feet if this equipment is available separately. The layout of the room around this equipment accommodate the amount of space needed for loading and spotting the bars used on the stations.

    Figure 8-6. A simple and functional platform/rack/flat-bench station. All basic barbell exercises can be done using this equipment.

    The power rack is the most important piece of equipment in the room, second only to the plate-loaded barbell as the most useful piece of gym equipment ever invented. All five primary exercises can be done with a correctly designed rack, barbell, and flat bench. The rack should be wide enough between the uprights to just safely accommodate the bar without a lot of extra room between the sleeves and the uprights (about 48 inches). The wider the rack, within safe limits, the more easily it can be safely used by taller, bigger lifters, thus accommodating everyone. A 7½- to 8-foot-tall rack allows the crossbar at the top to be used for chin-ups and pull-ups by tall trainees. The depth of the rack may need to accommodate squatting inside it occasionally; for most people, an inside dimension of 22 inches works well and allows them to do dips inside the rack. The base depth should be greater (about 36 inches) for tipping stability. The optimum setup is to have the rack bolted to the floor at the corners so that pull-ups and chin-ups can be done without tipping the rack if they happen to swing.
    The rack should be fitted with a heavy plywood floor, reinforced with a welded crossmember under the wood. The floor will extend all the way to the front and rear edges of the rack base so that it can be made flush and continuous with the platform surface.

    Figure 8-7. The rack should have a floor flush with the surface of the