Originally Posted by
Dalton Clark
There is very little reason to do it at a slower pace. In my opinion, this is kind of a strange situation in which you are asking advice from the Starting Strength community who are all going to say that you should be improving your squat and deadlift since they have been entirely neglected for too long. In addition, there isn't a reason for you not to do 3x5 on squat since your weights used initially will not be heavy enough to warrant any rep scheme other than that described in Starting Strength. Your best bet, if you are insisting on not testing to see if you are beyond novice levels on the bench and press, would be to do the upper body HLM or 4 day split described in Practical Programming. Quite a few people on here will tell you that your suggested exercises are not going to help you towards your goal. Notable the DB shoulder press, DB rows, facepulls, or DB floor press. Basically you are asking the Starting Strength community for advice on things that we wouldn't program for someone in your shoes.