Hi all,

Just wanted to share a Starting Strength success story. I'm a personal trainer and nutrition coach working out of my wife's chiropractic office. I've been doing this for less than a year, started training clients part time back in February, and quit my engineering job and went full time as a trainer this summer. Starting strength has been the basis of my client exercise program from the beginning, and it's working great. Even reluctant clients that are initially intimidated by barbell training quickly become convinced once they start to gain a little strength and physical confidence. I recently attended a powerlifting meet with a female client who has really taken to barbell training. It was the first competition of any kind for her, and it went really well. It was a DL/BP/Curl meet, so we only competed in the DL. At 52 years old, she has gone from never touching a barbell in her life, to winning her age/weight class with a 230lb deadlift. Her confidence is sky high, and we're looking to possibly attend another meet in November.

Starting Strength has helped me immensely as well. Two years ago I was fat, weak, and depressed. A crappy diet had finally caught up with me as my activity level dropped post college, and year by year I packed more fat onto my once athletic body as my muscle and strength slowly disappeared. Finally at age 35, married w/ two kids, stuck in a job I hated, and almost 300 lbs (6'1" tall), I decided I'd had enough, and needed to change my lifestyle. I cleaned up my diet and got back in the gym. It had been years since I had done any serious training, and I fell in love with it again, and couldn't remember why I had stopped in the first place. I also started doing a lot of reading about training methods, which first lead me to crossfit. I did several months of crossfit type workouts on my own, and while they were great for burning fat, I wasn't getting very strong. Luckily reading as much as I could about crossfit also lead me to Starting Strength, and I quickly switched from doing mostly metcons and steady state cardio to a linear progression strength program. Predictably, the program was effective, and I continued to lose fat while adding muscle and gaining strength. After less than a year back into training I had lost about 80lbs, and had gotten stronger than I'd ever been. I still follow a modified linear progression program with some conditioning thrown in and my numbers keep going up. At the above mentioned meet I beat my DL PR by 35 pounds with a 465/495/510, and also won the 35-39 submasters class. The 510 DL actually felt pretty easy, I'll be shooting for around 530-540 if we go to the meet in Nov.

I'd like to thank Mr. Rippetoe for his informative and entertaining books and articles, and also the entire Starting Strength community for all the help and information that is shared for free. This forum is truly a great resource, and I've learned quite a bit while here. When my schedule and budget allows I hope to attend a seminar, and possibly become a SSC as well.

Thanks!
Bill Hannon