novice routine

[daperkins]

I'm a very inexperienced lifter with what I would consider weak lifts but I have a decent bench press. My current bench press is 260 for 3 sets of 3 reps with a 2 second pause on all reps. My best squat is 195 for 5 reps. As you can see my lifts are very disproportionate. I would like to do your novice routine but I'm not sure because of my bench press. What would you recommend?

[Mark Rippetoe]

I recommend you do the novice routine. What would be your other options? the bench will not respond like the squat will, and that's fine because you don't want it to. You may be using intermediate programming for the bench, but if you don't do a novice progression for the squat and pulls, they'll never catch up.

[daperkins]

Thanks for the reply. I'm gonna try this novice program:

A
squat 3x5
bench 5x5
deadlift 1x5

B
squat 3x5
press 3x5
power clean 3x5

I've changed the bench part of the workout to more of an intermediate stage. Will it be alright to run a novice program for lower body along with a more advanced upper body program for bench? What would you recommend for the upper body part of it?

[Mark Rippetoe]

You'll need to add chins/pullups to this. But if you're really intermediate on the pressing, just going up to 5 x 5 won't be an intermediate program. Read PPST for the why part.