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Some good recs in here:

Starting Strength

How to be a supple leopard

Two ideas that are much better together than apart



Starting Strength, now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. It used to be a go-to recommendation in fitness communities for beginners about 10 years ago, but you won't see it recommended much anymore. It's not a great program and it wastes a lot of your time and effort for results that aren't great. Over the last 10 years I've tried a lot of different LP programs with beginner level lifters and something like GZCLP is a MUCH better program for beginners.


Interesting! I’ve about six weeks into StrongLifts, based on the Starting Strength program (which I am reading concurrently). What about the Supple Leopard book do you think makes it pair well with SS?


Mobility is pretty important for compound lifts for both good form and injury prevention.

You'll regret getting strong and moving heavy-weight with bad mobility - you get those long term injuries you can't shake because now your own musculature is pulling things out of alignment too. The wrong muscles get activated in movements to overcome mobility flaws and they only get stronger and more dominant so it's like compounding interest on a debt.


Nothing Supple-Leopard specific; just being flexible.

I find that if I don't stretch frequently, squatting and deadlifting makes me tighter and tighter over time until I get injured.

You can't really get into the right positions, especially at the bottom of those lifts, if you have tight muscles from the waist down.


Any flexibility/mobility routine will help new strength come faster, and will help prevent injury.

A major source of injury is not completely movements to full range of motion - not squatting below parallel, not locking out at the top of a deadlift, not touching your chest with the bar on a bench press or overhead press, etc. Not everyone has the flexibility/mobility to do that, but you're more prone to injury if you don't. So if you work a mobility program congruently with strength you will gradually get the mobility you need to complete the entire movement and not just part of it.


Starting strength + GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) is responsible for a bunch of memes on 4chans /fit/. Do SS with caution.


Any reason to say you should do starting strength "with caution" other than it's mentioned on 4chan (and a million other places)?


It's popular because it works. Though it's not like you really have to drink a gallon of milk a day, the idea is that you eat way more than you would as a skinny person.


It’s a fine beginner program, and as the original article inadvertently shows, one common failure mode is not getting enough calories. GOMAD is tough to mess up.


It’s fine, if you don’t take it as dogma, understand that Rippetoe isn’t a particularly great coach or lifter, and it should only be run 6 to 12 weeks - maximum. I think most folks would be better off doing 5/3/1 with cardio and/or a sport or doing any number of programs from John McCallum’s classic, “The Complete Keys to Progress”.




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