Admit it: You're a Novice.

[Gary Gibson]

Coach Rippetoe,

Your other books showed up at the doorstep yesterday. Even more excellent stuff. Put to bed a lot of other questions that I might have pestered you with here. This saves you the trouble of having to type "Read the book" again.

I admit that I found myself wondering if I were really a beginner. Hmm... I've been at this a while and trained with lots of volume. In the last year alone I've added 15 lbs to my frame, 100 lbs to my squat and 60 lbs to my deadlift. At 165 or so I've squatted 355 (barely) and pulled 455/425 (sumo/cv). That's pretty good!

But I'm almost 5'10". I'm smaller framed with narrow little bones, but I would still need to weigh closer to 200 lbs to be near my genetic limit in terms of raw strength. I could probably put on another 30 lbs of muscle with a year of proper training and nutrition.

So until I'm in the 180's and my press/bench/squat/dead (cv) look more like 225/315/405/495, I'm going to assume I'm a beginner. I may not get this far with linear progression, but I'm still going to start there. I may be done with linear progression as prescribed in SS pretty quickly, but I"m still going to start there.

At 33 I probably won't grow as fast as an 18-year-old, but I'm still going to get in that gallon of milk/day until my gains slow down. I have prior experience so I probably won't need or be able to stay on the Novice program for as long as a rank beginner. Sound right to you? Anything I need to rethink?

Thanks!

[Mark Rippetoe]

Sounds like you've read the book.

[Chris Puckett]

I am 33 and gained over 10lbs in LBM in 12 weeks of novice SS, this past fall. Just eat and drink milk like a mofo.