Trinitrotolulene Edition

Starting Strength Weekly Report

February 10, 2025

On Starting Strength

What is a Lifter? – Rip talks about what types of people go to gyms and the differences between them - lifters, gym bros, personal training clients and so on.
The Basics of a Performance Diet by Mark Rippetoe – Eating for strength training is just not that complicated. Most of the time, people who tell you it is are trying to sell you something. There are just a few basic principles to keep in mind...
Using the Leg Press to Build Strength to Squat – Rip explains how the leg press can be used to incrementally load a new trainee to develop the leg strength needed to squat.
Yinyang: Technique and Strength in the Martial Arts by Dave Longley – You do not have to be strong to do Martial Arts. There. It has been written. Without a shadow of a doubt, my opening sentence is true, and true in all cases. As you continue reading, you may feel your fury rising...
The First Rep by Daniel Raimondi – The novice progression begins by finding a weight that can be performed with good technique, which slows the lift down slightly. This represents enough of a stress on day 1 to begin...
Weekend Archives: What Not to Do: Observations of Powerlifters Coaching Novices by Kyle Mask – After training for nearly a decade at a commercial gym in one of Nashville’s poshest neighborhoods, I firmly believed I had seen every possible iteration of tomfoolery and Silly Bullshit applied to the training of novices...
Weekend Archives: Tactile Cues and Coaching by Mark Rippetoe – I've noticed a problem recently. I don't know if it's been there all along, or if something has changed within popular culture that has severely encumbered an already difficult task. Either way, it must be addressed...

In the Trenches

John spends some time pondering the meaning of life while pause squatting early on Wednesday morning at Testify Strength & Conditioning. [photo courtesy of Phil Meggers]

13 year old Sarah Eshelman readies for her deadlift workset under the supervision of SSC Jarret Beck. She and her mom have been training at Starting Strength Columbus for just over one month. [photo courtesy of Jarret Beck]

adam uses a tactile cue to help a lifter shrug into his press lockout

Adam Martin, SSC, tactile cues Hariharan Yellamgari to shrug his press into lockout at his introductory session at Starting Strength Atlanta. Pressing against the rack is a short term temporary option for trainees where balance or deconditioning are problems to solve. [photo courtesy of John Klein]

Starting Strength Cincinnati member Jim recently joined the 4 plate club with a 405 pound deadlift PR. [photo courtesy of Luke Schroeder]

boston members share photos between sets

What’s the proper way to spend time between work sets while strength training? Here’s Jacquie (far left) sharing photos of her grandchildren with Sarah and Teresa at Starting Strength Boston. [photo courtesy of Stephen Babbitt]

The ladies of Starting Strength Austin have another get together to leisurely reconnect and chat gym complaints. [photo courtesy of Leah McCary]

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Best of the Week

The US Army Stole Your Line!

TommyGun

Rip, Just saw an ad for the US Army of a soldier deadlifting (gasp), putting the bar down, then looking into the camera saying “Stronger soldiers are harder to kill.”

I love it. A return to warfighters understanding the importance of strength.

Mark Rippetoe

I saw that. Point that out to them.

VNV

Completed it for them with “and more useful in general.”

Best of the Forum

Halting / Rack Pull Programming

andybiggs90

Hello all, this is my first time posting in the forums so please forgive me if I fuck something up in how I attempt to illicit advice from all of you fine champions of strength.

I've been lifting sporadically for about 20 years , but I only really started training in late 2020 when I discovered the Starting Strength program.

I'm a 32 y/o, 6'3", 305# male and my current lifts are:
DL- 550x5, 600x1
Squat - 480x5, 530x1
Press- 282x5, 300x1
Bench- 375x5, 415x1
Clean- too much of a pussy to Clean because every time I try to program them, I always end up getting back tweaks and I'm currently too broke to seek out a SSC to get hands on coaching.

Anyway, for deadlifts, I've just been going up 5# a workout for a whole lot of workouts and I've reached the point where I've stalled out and been unable to get 555x5 on numerous occasions, so I'd like to replace my heavy deadlift day by alternating between Rack Pull and Halting Deadlifts each week to power through my plateau and eventually pull 600x5 for no other reason than that I think it would be really neat.

I have a 2 questions-

Q1) For my warmups, should I be doing full ROM Deadlifts before my Haltings and Rack Pulls (respectively), or just warmup by doing Haltings and Rack Pulls?

Q2) For my work set programming, should I just do one heavy set of 5 as I've been doing for my standard deadlifts, or should I do 3 heavy sets of 5 because these variations should be causing less stress than their full ROM counterpart.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Mark Rippetoe

Q1: I would do 135, 225 as deadlifts, then 315 as haltings or rack pulls.

Q2: Do not do sets across with either of these pulls. That defeats the purpose of using a less-stressful movement.

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