Hey Mr Rippetoe, I recently bought your book and I'm setting up my home gym now to dive in but I was a little curious about something. I'd read elsewhere (it may have been in a book but I think it was a web page) about advanced athletes and periodisation that the first stage often involves an anatomical adaptation phase in which the connective tissues are strengthened and this is important because they get stronger more slowly than muscle and this is responsible for many injuries.
I was wondering at what point something like this may be necessary if you follow the Starting Strength program as it obviously involved extremely quick strength gains. I supposed it'd be a way off since you haven't mentioned it to my knowledge and you would need a stable 1RM, right? I believe you have to train at 40-60% 1RM for training the connective tissue. I was also wondering if you have any specific advice on this when it comes time as far as maintaining strength as much as possible while training with such light weights.
I know training at any weight trains the connective tissue but I had read that your muscle develops faster than the connective tissue and thus leaves you more prone to injury and to combat this you train the CT as efficiently as possible which is 40-60% 1RM. I've tried to recall where I read this so I could share the link or book reference but I haven't come up with anything yet so this could be total nonsense. Thanks for the quick answer.
Internet nonsense, with no logical reason for it to be true. Just do the program in the book.
Muscle development might “outpace” connective tissue development if you are using anabolic steroids to dramatically accelerate your training. So maybe don’t do that.
Under normal circumstances, including a properly executed LP, muscles and connective tissue tend to get along with each other just fine, and injuries or soreness are not due to any “imbalance” between them.
I was hoping you'd say that, I was worried about how much strength I'd lose catching them up. Thanks again.
I had read that from Chris Sommer, the guy that does the Gymnastic Bodies programs.
It's entirely possible that a gymnastics coach is wrong about strength training.
But, but, in a T-Nation interview he claimed:
"Gymnastics training does indeed build incredible strength. For example, I was not a particularly strong gymnast, yet I was able to do a double bodyweight deadlift and weighted chins with almost 50% extra bodyweight on my very first weight training attempts.
One of my student's, JJ Gregory, far exceeded my own modest accomplishments. On his first day of high school weight lifting, JJ pulled a nearly triple bodyweight deadlift with 400 pounds at a bodyweight of 135 and about 5'3" in height. On another day, he also did an easy weighted chin with 75 pounds, and certainly looked as though he could've done quite a bit more. We'll never know for sure because the cheap belt I was using at the time snapped."
He wouldn't make that up, surely? :-)
Does anyone know any studies or medical research on tendon strength adaptation? You hear stuff like this about high rep low weight, you also hear people claim that high load eccentrics build tendon strength. Would be nice if there was some actual research on this instead of just bro science.
Regarding the OPs concern about tendon strength: It is plausible that muscle bellies would strengthen faster than tendons. After all, muscle bellies RE-build a hell of a lot faster than tendons after an injury indicating a much faster rate of tissue restructuring. But even if this is true there's no reason to take time off of heavy squats, deadlifts, etc. In addition to practical experience, we know that these lifts will still be safe because the tendon loads of these lifts are much lower than the shock loading experienced during activities like rebounding after a jump.
So
1) If your tendons can survive running and jumping then they can definitely survive your squat sets of 5.
2) If you think your tendons need more time to catch up it would be more logical to avoid plyometic movements, not heavy barbells.