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The Logical Analysis for Starting Strength

by Mark Rippetoe | December 19, 2023

rippetoe coaching a squat at a seminar

The majority of the world's organized activities are predicated on history. They do it “that way” because “That's the way it's always been done, and it works for me.” The Baptist Church, the treatment of skin rashes, frying chicken, plumbing in the UK, the Marine Corps, building houses, cleaning cast iron pans, and strength training proceed from what has always been done instead of what logic and analysis would require.

We have attempted to make Starting Strength different. I thought I'd take this time to lay out the details of the logic behind the method.

Definitions

Starting Strength is a strength training method – nothing more, nothing less. It is not bodybuilding, it is not about razor abz, or “muscularity” or “separation” or “vascularity” or thin skin or handsomeness. It is about strength, not appearance, and that is all. Muscles get stronger by growing larger, and bigger muscles look better to other people, so Starting Strength makes you look better – accidentally, because its purpose is only strength. And strength is very easy to understand: it is the ability to apply force against an external resistance.

Force is the quantity which causes a physical object to accelerate, to change velocity. Velocity is the rate of change of an object's position in space. It can be quantified as meters per second, miles per hour, or any other units of distance and time. If the object slows down, that is negative acceleration, or deceleration. If a change in an object's motion – in either velocity or direction – is observed, anywhere in the universe, force has been applied to it.

The human body applies force to its external environment through the mechanisms that operate the system of levers that collectively are termed the musculoskeletal system. The muscles get shorter under the coordinated control of the system of motor neurons, and the contracting muscles move the skeletal levers which apply force to the external resistances encountered in the physical environment. Your voluntary physical interaction – your movement within the environment – is a function of musculoskeletal force production under the control of the neuromuscular system.

In other words, your entire physical existence is predicated on strength, whether you like that or not. If you move an object, force was produced. If the object moved is you, force was produced. The fact that you have a physical body means that strength is the critical part of your physical existence. Strength is merely one of the differences between you and your grandmother, but it is the most important physical difference.

Since strength is the ability to produce force, it is measured in units of forcepounds. Kilos are units of mass, and are less useful for this task despite what Europeans believe. So an increase in strength is simply the ability to lift heavier weights. A man with a 200 deadlift is not as strong as a woman with a 400 deadlift.

An improvement in strength – in your ability to produce increased amounts of force – improves your ability to interact with your physical environment. The stronger you are the less likely you are to be unable to produce sufficient force to interact at whatever level of intensity is required by the situation at hand. It is indeed fortunate that billions of years of vertebrate evolution has equipped us to adapt to changes in our environment that challenge our fitness to survive in it. Our DNA enables changes in the proteins we use to stay alive, and thus adaptation to changes in the environment – temperature, moisture, food availability, wound healing, and force production requirements – are variables that must be adapted to for continued physical existence.

And since the weights we lift are part of the environment, they can be adapted to if the approach to that adaptation is taken carefully and correctly. Homeostasis is the condition in which an organism is adapted to the current environmental conditions. Any change in the environment that produces stress sufficient to challenge its ability to continue to operate within that environment will drive an adaptation toward homeostasis, if the change is within the organism's capacity for adaptation. If you put a fish into a volcano, the fish dies instantly, but if you merely warm the water 5 degrees, the fish can adapt to the environmental change.

The Problem

If we are trying to force a strength adaptation, we carefully and correctly change the environment with a loaded barbell. A strength adaptation requires exposure to an increasingly heavy load, since a strength increase means the ability to lift heavier weights in a normal human movement pattern. In this context, carefully means an increase in load that is appropriate to the adaptive capacity of the organism – the human body cannot adapt to a 50-pound increase in load without altering the movement pattern, but it can adapt to 5-pound or 2-pound increases for a long time. This is why barbells work very well for strength training, and big rocks, anvils, medicine balls, kettlebells, squeezy springs, and Nautilus machines do not.

And correctly means that the application of the increased load must consider the musculoskeletal anatomy affected by the load, and must utilize that anatomy efficiently and effectively. The correct approach to increased strength must take into consideration the normal human movement patterns that will be used to apply that force within the environment. The movements must be bilateral, using both feet and both arms at the same time, so that the entire body comprises the kinetic chain of the movement pattern and so that heavy weights can be lifted. (The bench press is bilateral in that the feet are used to evenly brace the chest position, even though technically they are not part of the kinetic chain of the movement.) Chin-ups are the exception to this, and they are treated as an assistance exercise that is added after several weeks of uninterrupted progress on the barbell exercises.

The question, “How much stronger are you now?” must be answerable – in pounds. If your deadlift goes up 100 pounds, that's a good answer. “Well, I think I'm more comfortable now on this Bosu ball with a 20-pound dumbbell” is not an answer. Force production is measured in pounds, so increases in strength are also measured in pounds.

Solving the problem

The exercises used in Starting Strength are the squat (squatting down and standing back up), the deadlift (picking something up off of the ground), the press (pushing something up overhead), the bench press (pushing something away from you), the power clean (throwing something up and catching it), and chins and barbell rows (pulling something towards you). These cover all the basic bilateral human movement patterns that can be trained incrementally and progressively.

There are obviously various ways to perform each of these basic exercises, but we're trying to lift the most weight possible in each exercise, so correct technique is defined as the movement pattern that 1.) involves the most muscle mass 2.) over the longest efficient range of motion 3.) to enable the use of the heaviest weights 4.) in order to most effectively increase strength. These techniques are analyzable and discoverable, and the Blue Book details the form for each exercise that satisfies these four criteria. `

The bilateral nature of these movements is very important, because if the whole body is strengthened, the increased strength enables subsets of the whole body to function at increased levels of force production too. If my deadlift goes from 200 to 400, my ability to pick up a heavier dumbbell with one hand increases at the same time – without picking up any dumbbells. And dumbbell benches are potentially dangerous because of the instability. If my squat goes from 250 to 475, my ability to apply force unilaterally, like in a dumbbell lunge, increases without doing any lunges. And heavy dumbbell lunges are potentially dangerous due to the instability.

The bilateral nature of barbell training is a feature, not a bug. Stability is generated by the bilateral symmetry, and strength can improve far more quickly and safely if the movement pattern is inherently stable and heavier loads can be progressively applied. If my bench, press, and chins go up in load, everything I can do with one hand goes up too. And if your strength goes up, you'll also be more comfortable in an unstable position with a 20-pound dumbbell without having to embarrass yourself by doing it in public.

The Bottom Line

If I split the body into smaller pieces, I cannot use as much weight as I can when the whole body is used at the same time, and strength is only increased and measured by the increase in the weight you lift. A dumbbell split squat cannot make you stronger, because it is not heavy enough to challenge your current level of strength unless you have just not been training. But if your deadlift goes up, your whole body gets stronger, and we know how to make your deadlift go up – you just add 5 pounds per workout. It really is that simple, and this obvious fact is completely ignored by the current fad known as “functional training.”

All of the barbell exercises use sets of 5 reps because 5s work better for building strength – and therefore size – than any other approach, as decades of experience has shown. Singles are too heavy to accumulate sufficient total tonnage under the bar within a workout, and do not allow for enough technique practice. Higher reps – 8 or more – uses too light a weight to produce the intensity necessary for a strength adaptation, and the fatigue that accompanies high reps predisposes to technique errors at the end of the set. The sweet spot is 5 reps, and entire lifting careers have been built on 5s for decades.

All the exercises are performed for 3 sets of 5 across (using the same weight), with the exception of the deadlift which uses only one heavy set. Again, experience guides these numbers, and if you don't believe them you are hereby invited to sidetrack yourself and rediscover the rules, again.

The programming is also very simple, designed to gradually and incrementally accumulate a force production adaptation. For deadlifts and squats, the first 4-5 workouts increase 10 pounds on the work sets, and then go back to 5-pound jumps for several months of uninterrupted progress. The pressing exercises limited by smaller amounts of muscle mass start with 5-pound increases and then drop back to 2-3 pound jumps. The entire purpose of the first few months of training is to increase the weight on the bar every workout. If the weight goes up, force production has gone up, and therefore strength has improved. And if the weight can go up every workout, anything else is wasting time.

The important thing to understand here is that there is a logical way to approach the problem, just like there is a logical way to approach every problem. First, define the problem: you need to be stronger than you are now. Second, what is Strength? Strength is the production of force against resistance. Third, what does being stronger require? The production of more force, i.e. lifting heavier weights.

Finally, what is the most efficient and effective way to do this? Loaded basic human movement patterns using incrementally progressive loads on a barbell over a long period of time. Execute the movement patterns correctly, take appropriate increases in load on the bar, eat and sleep well enough to manage recovery from the stress, and don't miss workouts.

And that is all: no running, no “assistance exercises,” no extra sets, no sets to failure, no situps, no back extensions, no unnecessary stretching. Calculate your next workout based on the one you just did, follow the pattern, lift the weights you're supposed to lift, and repeat this process until it stops working after several months of steady progress. After that it gets a little more complicated, but not much.

Most problems are not as complicated as some people would like them to be. Complexity sells, and you can usually buy it if you want to. But complexity for its own sake is just a business model, and has very little to do with training, as you can see.


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