What makes the novice phase disappear?

[usmctom]

Rip,

I have the unfortunate situation of being in the military, well only unfortunate because of the PT dilemma, but in any event, I would love to be able to do a 6 month or longer stint of Starting Strength and gain strength and weight, but with a healthy dose of month long field ops, schools, and now in Dec deploying for 7 months, the window for steady training and the required diet is never long enough. I would love your thoughts on how to deal with this. Does the ability to make the novice gains your program is famous for disappear with stop and go training? I guess what I'm asking is if in an ideal world I did SS for 12 months, and went from #95 to #335 on the squat (just making random numbers up for this example), and increased my bodyweight by#60 pounds, without any interruptions to training or diet, would I be able to achieve the same results with stop and go training obviously over a longer period of time, grudging it out slower, possibly even 2x week under the bar? For example on squats could I do #95-#135 first cycle, insert break for field school other reason, pick back up at #115 possibly because of lay off and go up to #165, repeat break for deployment/field/etc, next cycle so on and so far, always having the heavy diet when i am on training. Would this stop and go method affect when my novice adaptation goes away or is that based purely on the weight i am lifting?

[Mark Rippetoe]

There is a certain "momentum" that is generated by a dedicated 6-month uninterrupted novice phase. Hormonal accumulation, the inertia of habit with diet and training, etc., that a piecemeal approach doesn't provide. But there is nothing you can do about this, so just put the training periods together as best you can. Let's say you get 90% of the effect cumulatively that you would uninterrupted; that's a pretty good deal for you, and you're a lot better soldier, which is your primary objective anyway. You'll be fine. Good luck.

[Ian Kovtunovich]

In my own experience with a novice phase that has been fractured and slowed for various reasons, it is quite possible to keep it up. I have had at least two layoffs of a month or two, and a couple of deloads on most lifts, and am currently down to about 2 days a week of training. However, I'm eating, and doing my damnedest not to go below 2x per week, and I'm still making gains on my lifts. I think I've been at the shit for like a year and a half now, although for a good 6 months or more at the beginning, I wasn't really doing the program. All the same, I like to think that this is proof positive that a suboptimal schedule can still yield solid results.

[gzt]

I essentially did this. I got to 400x3x5 on the squat (so close to 405, yet so far), so I think I ended up going higher on the squat in linear progression by having these forced breaks than I would have just doing straight linear progression without weeks or months off. However, the tradeoff is that it took 1.5 years to do. With unbroken training and switching to the Texas Method and/or other intermediate programs when necessary, I don't doubt that, in those 18 months, I would have ended up a lot stronger, even if I didn't make it to 400x3x5 on straight linear progression.