VI. Routine-Specific Questions, Part 1
Why so few exercises? Don't I need to hit the muscle from every angle?
Why, when you are an infant/toddler, does Mom and Dad teach you how to walk? Why don't they teach you how to do a backflip first? Why not teach you how to tiptoe through the tulips, or do the watusi? Why doesn't Dad teach you how to
breakdance?
We'll assume, for a moment, that Mom and Dad actually know how to teach you to do those things. Why don't they teach you? Don't advanced gymnasts know how to do backflips, can't dancers do the watusi? Why don't they teach you to do those crazy moves that the breakdancer does? Why are they intent on making you take a step first before you start jigging and jiving?
The question seems stupid, doesn't it? Obviously you learn to walk before you can run, and certainly before you backflip or dance.
Yet new trainees want to trick before they can even stand up properly. 12 variations of curls, at least 5 bench presses involving dumbbells, various angles, and even machines, lord knows how many lat exercises with cables...all of these things end up in the novice's training program, each steps on the toes of the other, and the overwhelming complexity of it all frequently renders progress to zero when it should be flourishing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mark Rippetoe, pg. 114, Practical Programming
Since the trainee is both inefficient and unadapted, only a few basic exercises should be used, and they should be repeated frequently to establish the basic motor pathways and basic strength....(the) core strength and power exercises develop the foundation of strength and motor control that will allow for later inclusions of more technically demanding exercises, because they utilize all the muscles in the same coordinated fashion that more advanced exercises do
A novice is, by definition, STILL LEARNING. Once you've learned the basics, then you can progress to the more complex. Until you have learned the basics, progress will be minimal and attempts at such will be borderline worthless.
How will you learn better...by trying to master 20 different new things of varying complexities, and practicing them maybe once per week? Or learning 5 new things of basic complexity, and doing them several times per week? Would a person learning to play the piano learn a super complex song, and practice it once weekly, or would they learn a few notes, and practice them as often as they can? Would a person learning a foreign language try to understand the technical knowledge behind dangling participles and present perfect tenses, or would they learn how to construct simple sentences using a few basic words?
Answer these questions, and you will be able to answer the question which spawned this post.
Why should I stay on the base program as long as possible? Won't I grow better if I get on an advanced pro-type routine, or at least an advanced version of this routine?
Imagine if Wolverine was an avid weight trainee on steroids and 10,000 clean calories per day. He would recover insanely fast, he would have nearly limitless energy, and he would lift weights daily and recover daily, and get stronger daily. That is the ideal (a.k.a. "the dreamworld").
Ideally, you will make "linear progress" on every single weightlifting exercise for your entire weight training career. In other words, you could lift weights everyday, and EVERY time you went into the gym to lift weights, you would be able to use more weight than you did last time, because you would be fully recovered, just like Wolverine on juice. With every single workout, you make consistent progress in strength and size....that is linear progress. Ideally, you would lift weights every single day, the same exercises every single day, and you would be able to make linear progress on these exercises without ending up broken, battered and overtrained. In other words, you be like Wolverine on steriods and a clean 10k calorie diet.
This is the ideal, but it is not something that any human being can maintain for any period of time. The body simply cannot recover that rapidly. On page 189 of
Starting Strength, there is a very simple, but very telling graph that demonstrates the "rate of improvement" and "need for complexity" in training graphed in comparison to each other. Initially, the "need for (training) complexity" is very low as the "rate of improvement" is very high. As you near your "genetic potential", the "need for complexity" increases, as your "rate of improvement" slows. It makes sense. The bigger and stronger you get, and the more experienced you are with weight training, the more challenging and complex your training needs to be. But when you just start out, you don't need a whole lot of fancy stuff, just the basics.
So what does all that mean? It means that this program is ideal for someone who is still in a rapid improvement state. As you get bigger and stronger, you will eventually "outgrow" this program. How long do you use it?
You use it until it stops working. I describe this in detail in Section III. The program is, in Rippetoe's own words, "the () novice workout" (Figure 4, page 193,
Starting Strength). As long as you are adding weight to the bar in your exercises, stick with the program. Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mark Rippetoe
...if progress is being made on these exercises, your trainee is getting stronger and your objective is being accomplished.
Don't fix it if it ain't broke. Your goal now is to milk this program for all its worth.
The ice skater who is stepping on the ice for the first time doesn't need to be taught how to do twirls and flips and jumps and spins, they simply need to learn how to not fall on their tookus. Nothing fancy, just the basics. As long as their skating gets better each time they step on the ice, why introduce fancy stuff? Once they are obviously ready to move on, introduce advanced ideas to their training.
The iron is no different. If you add weight to the bar, and the bar goes up in the proper path, then you keep doing it because it works.
You can use this program for as long as you are adding weigh to the bar, simple as that. Nothing will get you stronger, faster, than linear progress on a simple, high frequency program like this, without some form of chemical assistance.
Question - How long does this workout normally take?
As you progress with your development and you get nearer to your genetic capabilities, your training will, by necessity, become more complex and possibly more lengthy. As a result, your workouts will take longer, because you simply have to do "more stuff"
For a novice who is just starting this program, 20-30 minutes for Workout A and possibly shorter for Workout B, are all that will be needed at first. As you get stronger, you will need longer rest periods. As you add weight to those top 3 work sets, you may need an extra set or 2 per exercise for warmups. As your conditioning improves, you may find it possible and even desirable to add some of the accessory work. As a result, you may end up using a full hour for the meat of the workout in addition to the accessory exercises.
However, for you newbs who do the first few workouts and think "damn, that was easy, I was done in half an hour", don't sweat it, the workout is pretty easy...at first. It WILL catch up to you.
Question - Why does it seem that some people bash this program?
1) HIT Jedi's hate anything that isn't HIT, and several of them have created several accounts that they use to bash anything that isn't HIT.
2) Some people don't know how the hell a newb should train. They freak out when they don't see 2 or 3 variations of "teh bicept curls for teh gunz" and think the training program is garbage, because it "doesn't isolate everything". Many also feel that machines are better for novices, and that creatine is poison. Run, don't walk, away from these people.
and the main reason:
3) Oversaturation - You see Rippetoe workout questions everywhere. Some people who never knew jacksquat about the program in the first place get annoyed when they see the questions all the time, so they irrationally and ridiculously hate the program. It's kinda like hearing a song on the radio all the time that you've never actually listened to, you just have always turned the station within the first 5 seconds of the song starting. After awhile, it gets annoying, especially when some people try to push it on EVERYONE, even if this style of training doesn't suit their goals or experience level. It is a function of both the "know-it-all" mentality that many youths have, as well as the "internet icon" theory of training "expertise", whereby a 15-year old with low self-esteem who is desperate for respect reads some books and declares himself a training expert, despite never having felt 3 wheels across his shoulders. When these internet icons decide to parrot and support a program, those far more knowledgeable get pissed off at him, and come away with a bad taste on their mouths.