An Alternative Way to Transition Squats from Novice LP to Early Intermediate

The standard progression using the Starting Strength framework to categorize Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced lifters is to start with a squat PR every workout, three days a week. This is done for most of the Novice Linear Progression. Towards the end, you take a lighter day mid-week, but still PR on the two bookend days. When that process runs itself out, you’re now an early Intermediate and you move to a program that produces a PR once a week.

This progression works well for many, probably even most. But if you're feeling ground to dust from squats at the end of the Novice LP, try moving to a 1.5 week squat PR cycle instead of one week:

Mon 1 - heavy volume

Fri 1- light volume

Mon 2- intensity PR

Repeat:

Fri 2 - heavy volume

Mon 3 - light volume

Fri 3 - intensity PR

This progression produces two PRs in 3 weeks, instead of one every week, but is still within the scope of the relatively rapid and predictable progress that characterizes the early intermediate stage.

Using this framework, I like to start "heavy volume" (after a light week and a ramping week or two to recover and ramp back up from LP), at 3x5 with about 88-90% of your best 5RM on LP, and "light volume" at another 10-15% offset from that.

Intensity work here is usually a short run of PR triples, followed by longer runs of PR doubles then PR singles to finish the first cycle, but this can vary quite a bit so don’t set that in stone, rather go with the flow of how training goes.

While moving from 3 (early LP) to 2 (late LP) to 1 (early intermediate) weekly squat PRs is the normal way, it's not like your body understands a weekly calendar. If you pushed your LP really hard and you have a busy life with work, family, etc…then spreading the stress out a little bit more could work better for you than trying to jam it all into one week.