Help a Starting Strength beginner

**philip.h** · 09-14-2008, 04:00 AM

Mark,

(I already tried to post this before but not sure what happened to it, so posting it again)

Thanks for writing the Starting Strength book, and for the help your provide on these forums.

I'm male, 26 years old, about 5' 11", currently about 89.5kg. I've been doing weights training for about 5 years. Unfortunately the first half was on crappy bodybuilding routines. The second half I started doing more compound exercises (squat, bench press, pullups, dips, deadlift, etc) but I realise now that I had no idea about programming and that my technique was off on many of the lifts. Even though for over a year now I have purely focused on compound lifts I haven't really progressed much in weight which is very frustrating.

In addition to my weights I also do Brazillian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) twice a week and combatives training (knife & stick) once a week. I have an excessive arch in my lower back (hyperlordosis I think it's called?) and have been seeing a physio about this to get it corrected. I have injured my back many times in the past. I often get a sore back from sitting/standing still for too long and it tends to feel better after exercise.

My current 5 RMs are:
* Squat 130kg (lots of things wrong with technique!)
* Deadlift 150kg
* Bench press 110kg (cheating by lifting my bum off the bench)
* Overhead press 60kg
* Power clean 80kg (doing it wrong!)
(these are all on a good day and I wouldn't say I could pull them off anytime)

I've been reading Starting Strength (2nd edition) in detail and have just started doing the basic program. I've dropped the weight back from my current 5 RMs (if you can call them that due to differences in technique) so that I should be hitting my previous maxes after about 6 weeks. Hopefully with some regular feedback from this forum I can get my technique sorted out pretty quickly. Even though I've only just started on this program I have been eating a lot more for a bit over a month and have gone from 85kg to 89.5kg in that time.

I've recorded some video of two of my first workouts on the program.
Session #2, workout B, 2 Sept 2008: http://vimeo.com/1701475
Session #3, workout A, 5 Sept 2008: http://vimeo.com/1703137

Looking at myself in the videos (cringe!), I can already see lots of things wrong...

1) Squat. In the first video, when I squat I have the bar too high up my back. My upper body stays too upright for the entire lift, my knees come too far forward, and there is some butt-wink at the bottom. I also was using my arms to lift the bar. In the second video I have tried to use a lower bar position for the first time, am trying to sit back rather than down, and get some hip drive happening. I find the low bar position very uncomfortable on my arms/wrists/shoulders but will stick with it. Any tips?

2) Overhead press. I'm using some leg drive to initially get the bar moving. I guess I need to eliminate this?

3) Hang cleans. I previously did power cleans as a fast deadlift followed by an upright row. I am now trying to learn them properly from scratch... In the first video I am trying to do hang cleans for the first time ever, focusing on the jump and shrug from the hang position.

4) Bench press. I previously would have the bar too near my fingers and this would cause my wrists to bend back at quite an angle. I'm now trying to hold the bar closer to the heel of my palm. I can see myself lifting my bum of the seat so I will try to stop that. Maybe I should drop back the weight even more?

5) Deadlifts. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries during the work set. I can't really see anything wrong here???

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

- Phil

**Mark Rippetoe** · 09-15-2008, 07:47 PM

This is not a Q&A board question. This is a request for a free 2-hour personal training consultation. Wish I had the time.

**Ryan Bebbington** · 09-15-2008, 10:13 PM

None of the questions asked here are too specialised to not be answered in detail in the book that was written for you. Do what everyone else has done and read the book, and apply it to your own training. You will learn more thinking about what you are doing right and wrong, and learn how to apply the techniques better than being spoon fed the answer to some simple questions.