The Lifetime Novice
The only thing more inevitable than Thanos is that if you train hard, you will eventually fail a lift. If you use the Linear Progression (LP) outline that I wrote about previously, failure at the very end is baked into the cake. You have to fail - not think you’re probably going to fail, but actually fail multiple times - to know that you actually went as far as you could go. This is normally fine because a) you’re not yet so strong that a couple failed reps puts you into a huge fatigue state, and b) you need to learn what pushing through feels like in order to get good at lifting heavy weights, and the vast majority of untrained people horribly underestimate their ability to push through.
That said, a common mistake is failing over and over again, re-setting 10%, working back up in 5 lb increments and then failing again around where you failed last time, re-setting 10%, working back up in 5 lb increments, then failing again around where you failed last time. Rinse, repeat, and Reddit - where you can apparently find legions of people who “Did Starting Strength for a couple years.” Needless to say, if you did a program that is meant to last a few months, for a couple years, you’re doing something wrong. So let’s talk about how to do it better, which involves both some practical advice as well as a slight attitude shift.
The Confusion
As Robert Santana recently discussed on his podcast, a lot of people think that they somehow can and should remain Novices - able to make progress on a lift (especially the squat but often all main lifts) 2-3 times every week, forever in perpetuity. They think this despite the obvious dearth of 2500 lb squatters and 1400 lb benchers. Now if pressed (pun intended), of course they’d say eventually you need to move on, but that understanding is somehow not applied to their own actual training program.
The reasons for this are probably myriad, but there are some quotes from Rip about trying to stay a Novice for a long as possible, and not mucking things up with needless complexity too soon, that were perhaps tossed out a little too causally and are misunderstood by many Novices to mean that you can make multiple weekly jumps in weight for a long period of time.
So let’s get that out of the way now: A well run LP with no unexpected interruptions typically lasts a few months. Maybe as short as 2, maybe as long as 6, but rarely more. It gets you reasonably strong very quickly, and sets you up very well for future programming - but is not intended to be a long term training plan, and is unsustainable as such.
The Re-Set: The Mechanism of Confusion
The way this typically happens is what I described above. The lifter fails his next planned weight increase, tries again the next time and fails again, tries again and fails - then re-sets 10%, works back up. Whenever he fails again - which often is barely higher than or the same place that he failed the previous time - he does the same thing again. And again. And again.
This is somewhat understandable, because the basic advice in the book is to re-set to dissipate the lingering fatigue that is stopping you from hitting the next weight increase.
But the suggestion is not to do it over and over again like that. It’s been a while since I looked, but I think the book says 2 re-sets per lift. After years of coaching hundreds or perhaps thousands of lifters through an LP, I settled on lowering that to 1 re-set per lift, barring unusual circumstances. This worked better in practice, as the prolonging of the LP for marginal gains at best, usually becomes so taxing, both mentally and physically, that it leads to frustration and quitting more often than extra success.
But even if you do two re-sets instead of just one - at least part of this problem can be fixed by just following the advice instead of your own harebrained ideas of being on LP forever. Reframing the LP as a short term temporary tactic, rather than a long term sustainable strategy does a decent part of the work. It’s a wonderful tactic, an incredible way to get strong quickly - but it’s not meant to last more than 3-5 months for most people.
Fixing the Re-Set
In addition to reducing re-sets per lift from two to one, and thinking of the LP as a short term tactic rather than a long term strategy, I also came through long experience to do the re-set a little differently than it’s described in the book.
Instead of a 10% re-set, I prefer a bigger offset of 20 or even 25%. This gives the body a true break, dissipates fatigue better, and gives the lifter more of a mental break before he’s going to have to face the grueling end-of-LP grind again.
The big mistake I see a lot of people make is working back up in small increments. Bro, you just worked so hard to get those weights up the first time, there’s no need to revisit them. Your body isn’t adapting further at this early point by re-covering old ground. Do a big re-set, but take big jumps back up until you’re close to the old weight you failed on. This will both shorten the process, which helps mentally, and also avoid a long, slow slog back up in which you rebuild all that fatigue that you re-set to dissipate, and end up failing again barely higher than you did last time. Sometimes even at or before where you failed last time.
Examples
Say you fail at 300, getting 5,4,3 across your planned 3 sets of 5 instead of 5,5,5. Maybe it was just a bad day, so you try again next time and get the same or similar result. Don’t try again a 3rd time and prolong the inevitable. I’ve rarely seen someone fail twice in a row and succeed the third - it happens, but it’s too rare to bother with. Re-set now. But don’t re-set down to only 270. That’s still pretty heavy for you right now, and won’t dissipate that much fatigue. Further, by doing 270, 275, 280, 285, 290, 295, 300 - that’s so many hard workouts, that by the time you get back to 300 again, you’ll have regained most or all of the fatigue you did the re-set to dissipate.
Instead, back way off down to 240 or even 225. Make it a truly light day. Practice the lift, but at a weight that is essentially recovery.
Then work back up in larger increments: 225, 250, 275, 290, 300 - not only do you work back up in fewer workouts, but only the last one or two are really re-introducing any fatigue. The earlier ones are practice and avoiding de-training, but not hard enough to re-introduce any real fatigue.
The same idea can be applied at any number. Say you failed the press at 115. Don’t back off to 102.5, then do 105, 107.5, 110, 112.5, 115. Drop down to 95, then do 105, 110, 115.
Say you failed the DL at 405. Don’t drop to 365, then take 2 months to get back to 405 using 5 lb increments. Drop to 315, and then do 345, 375, 390, 405 or something like that.
Do this ONCE per lift. After you’ve failed, re-set once using the above outline, then failed again - your LP is officially done for that lift. That’s it. No more re-sets. No endless cycles of frustration and lack of progress. Move on.
Uneven Progress
The last issue that comes up here is what to do during the time when one or two lifts have gone through this process, but the others are still in LP. Do you move those lifts to more slowly progressing Intermediate programming? Do you wait and move everything together? And if the latter, what do you do for the stalled lifts while you wait?
I’ve seen both tactics work well, but I personally prefer to move the stalled lifts into a holding pattern, and move the lifter as a whole over to Intermediate training at the same time, rather than piecemeal lift by lift. You can make an argument either way, and this isn’t an absolute rule, but I’ve found that people generally respond better this way. Your own mileage may vary.
Good article. Hopefully your next one will discuss strategies once LP no longer works. (Increase volume, increase intensity, other ideas?)
Great, looking forward to it.