Strength question

[sbhikes]

Whatever you did last week +5lbs.

The day I started Starting Strength was the day I became forever weak.

[hector_garza]

Do yourself a favor and lose 80-100 lbs before worrying about your 5rm's. I'm serious.

His body comp will take care of itself if he lifts hard and eats half smart. There's no advantage in putting off getting stronger since getting stringer is the most useful adaptation to be had.

[David Lee]

289.5664 pounds.

Wouldn't 5 be the optimal base set of 5?

[Larry T]

His body comp will take care of itself if he lifts hard and eats half smart. There's no advantage in putting off getting stronger since getting stringer is the most useful adaptation to be had.

Having gone from 340 to 240, I can say with authority that for the OP to drop 80+ lbs is going to take a little more than just some bro-science recomp. He's almost 50 and morbidly obese. Who cares how much he can squat? He needs to strength train to maintain (or even get some novice gains) WHILE systematically losing fat.

I don't recall him saying, but at his age and weight, I bet he's already popping pills every day to keep his vitals in order (cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, etc). If not yet, it's just a matter of time. There's no conflict between having a normal body fat percentage and getting stronger - but let's not be stupid about the priorities.

[hector_garza]

Having gone from 340 to 240, I can say with authority that for the OP to drop 80+ lbs is going to take a little more than just some bro-science recomp.

It's not bro science recomp at all.
It's exploiting the most useful adaptations. Squatting heavy, eating half smart (single ingredient foods would be a good start, but really, however you want to do it), and maybe a small bit of HIIT.
It's simple. Not easy, but certainly simple.

If you want some actual references as to why this works so well, even better than a dedicated "weight loss" program, check out Jordan's video lecture on this site.

[Archangel]

Or you could take a look at this thread:
http://startingstrength.com/resource...ad.php?t=33029

Or this website:
http://lonkilgore.com/freebies/freebies.html

Or do a seach on 'lifting standards' - there are a few out there.

I think have strength standards are nice, but once you start classifying yourself by your rate of adaptation to a lift, I think that gives you a far better representation. Does it take you 2 weeks to add 5 lbs to your Press? Does it take 3 weeks to add 2.5 pounds to your press?

[Automag]

Do yourself a favor and lose 80-100 lbs before worrying about your 5rm's. I'm serious.

I disagree with that advise. I was in pretty awful shape when I started. Started as barbell exercise, turned into training when I started to see results and got actually motivated.

I've lost about 35 pounds doing barbell training. I wanted to both get strong, and lose some weight (started around 325). I figured I'd start by getting a bit stronger, and seeing how that went.

As Rip says in SS, a big guy will lose a belt notch before a pound, and sure enough that happened to me. Then I lost 25 pounds while eating really hearty (albeit much cleaner). Then another belt notch, and another 10 pounds.

I've done no 'cardio' to speak of save 5 mins on the bike before I lift. I lost a fair bit of weight, and improved my body composition a lot.

Still lots of gains to be made in both, but given the choice, very glad I just started lifting, and the weight is magically taking care of itself.

To lose a bunch of weight, best tactic is to both eat better, and get move active. Eating better is a given no matter what. If getting active is required anyway, might as well get active by barbell training, where you come out the other side strong.

[MattJ.D.]

I have to agree. Telling someone overweight to lose weight before doing something else like weight training is basically telling them not to do it. If the OP works hard and eats clean, the fat will take care of itself. Plus, I'm pretty sure that the excess fat may actually help the recovery cycle for novice lifters.

And after say a novice lp and tm lp, that addition muscle mass will make losing weight easier because said person will have an increased work capacity. Plus they'll more than likely look/feel better which is always a plus. Losing weight as a weak fat shit is a lot harder/humiliating than losing weight as a strong fat person

[MattJ.D.]

btw in my last post, I wasn't trying to call the OP and a weak fat shit.

Good luck op, its going to be a challenging road

[Philbert]

I would like to point out that "lose 80-100 lbs before worrying about your maxes" is in no way counter to the rest of the advice on this thread, which is best summed up as "5lbs more than last week". The OP should try to lift 5 lbs more than last week until he can no longer do so. He should then lose the remainder of that 80 lbs. He will then be in a position to set new goals, which could include developing an elite level 5 rep max in the three contested slow lifts. If after lifting 5 lbs more than last week, and losing 80 lbs, he is still uncertain as to what 5rms he should aspire to, he should necromance this thread and ask the question again.