Novice / Intermediate Question

[almostfree]

Hi Mark,

After a little over a year of haphazard and foolish upper body only weight training, I have recently read Starting Strength and have done my best to incorporate those concepts into my training. Unfortunately, because of my past ignorance, I am not able to stick to your program and make progress on the bench press or press. I wish I had found Starting Strength much sooner, so that I had not gone so far down the wrong path.

I ordered a copy of Practical Programming today, but it will probably take about 3 to 4 weeks to get up here to Alaska. Will Practical Programming give me the information I need to incorporate an intermediate program for the upper body lifts into a novice program for the squat and deadlift, or are the two mutually exclusive?

I feel like I can make a lot more progress on the squat and deadlift as a novice, and I want to make sure that those lifts have priority. Nonetheless, I would prefer to resume making progress on the bench and press if at all possible.

Thank you for writing the books and giving me a real understanding of how to more effectively train.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Do an intermediate program for the bench and continue your novice progression on the other lifts. The book will help.

[Roman B.]

You might also want to purchase the Kindle edition to get instant and very convenient access (e.g., via the Kindle Cloud Reader). I own both paper and kindle editions of SSBT3 and PPST3 and use the Kindle editions 90% of the time. And they're cheap.