So You Want to Get Strong: Where to Begin?
A tried-and-true roadmap to successfully start your strength journey
Intro: A Bit of Personal History
Way back in the ancient early days of social media (2013), in what seems like the wild west compared to today, I wrote an article on behalf of Starting Strength/The Aasgaard Co. for a company called Fitocracy. Though Fitocracy is now defunct as far as I can tell, as recently as late 2017, it was a popular fitness tracking company with over 12 million active users and over 2 million paid subscribers, so the outreach to their community made sense.
As I mentioned in my introductory post, I was in the Starting Strength (SS) inner circle from 2012-2019, and did a lot of work side by side with and for Rippetoe in that capacity. Unlike some of his past associates, I don’t have a giant chip on my shoulder about Rippetoe and don’t feel a need to constantly try to prove him wrong, or show how bad his system is and engineer a whole new one to build my brand upon in order to create separation. As I’ve coached barbells and strength for about 15 years now, some of my own opinions and analyses do diverge from the SS party line on specific points (you’ll notice I leave out the power clean here, for example), but I still think the basic framework set up by the SS model is the best way to start out learning/teaching the lifts, and the linear progression (LP) is the best way for a new lifter to begin his journey of getting stronger.
That being the case, the piece I wrote in 2013 is still very useful a decade later, in terms of outlining how to get started from a programming perspective. Which exercises to do, and how to organize them into a coherent weekly plan that adjusts as you progress, to reap great benefits from your first months of training. I will reproduce that article here, with some edits that are the benefit of an additional 10 years’ experience coaching, for my new audience.
Though most of my current audience is beyond the beginner phase and has already done an LP, some of you haven’t. For those who have, I encourage you to share this article so that people who want to know what to do can begin their lifting careers on the right foot, and avoid many of the common mistakes and pitfalls that beginners - myself included - made.
One final note before I begin: Strength programming is predicated on the assumption that the lifts are being performed in both a consistent and efficient manner. This article is only discussing the programming aspect. Technique is its own topic, a worthy one, but not the one we are discussing here today.
Program Background
Required Skill Level: Novice
Training Days per Week: 3
Description: The linear progression (LP) is the best program I’ve found to date for a new lifter to develop the strength that will serve as the basis for all future training as well as increase performance in life and sports. This program allows lifters to make rapid strength gains during their first serious period of training
This LP is an appropriate place to start for nearly all trainees new to serious strength training. Whether the long term goal is powerlifting, general health and fitness, or training for sport, it will provide the training base necessary to succeed and excel at any and all of those endeavors.
The program’s beauty is its simplicity. You need only perform and master 4 basic barbell exercises, plus chin-ups or lat pulldowns, along with possibly some rows, to complete. It is cost effective for those who prefer to purchase their own equipment and work out at home, and time efficient since you don’t need to perform a lot of isolation or assistance work or go to the gym 5 or 6 days per week.
Program Description
The first phase of the LP can be broken down into two workout days, Day A and Day B. The entire body is worked each session. As the lifter progresses through the program, it is slightly modified to take into account the adaptations in the body of the lifter.
General Notes
The goal of this program is to add weight each and every time you lift, taking advantage of The Novice Effect that allows you to do so. Perform the program on a 3 day per week schedule, on non-consecutive days, i.e. Mon/Wed/Fri, Tues/Thurs/Sat or similar, so you have a day to recover between sessions, and then 2 days at the end of the full week of training.
Unlike exercise where you are just trying to do something active, this is a TRAINING program - so the choice of exercises, and adding weight each time, is not optional. It is, indeed, the whole point of the program, and it works just about every time it’s correctly applied.
Where to Start
On your very first workout, your goal is not to test your current max, but to learn the basic lifting technique, and find a good starting place for your lifts, using sets of 5 reps.
Generally a good starting point is when you find a lift where the 5th rep just barely starts to feel the slightest bit hard, but is still very doable. This is admittedly a subjective point, but it’s better to start a little too light than too heavy, with the caveat that you need to be honest and not start absurdly light just to avoid work.
However, having a ramp-up phase of a week or two to learn technique, let your body adjust to the new demands you’re placing upon it, and gain confidence in your ability to succeed in doing the program is a great “running start” and helps avoid early failure and burnout. After the first few weeks, it SHOULD get hard. That’s part of what makes you stronger, after all. But the first phase is more of a learning and adjustment period.
Weight Jumps
Most healthy men between the ages of 18 and 35 -40 can add 10 lbs to the squat the first 2-3 times it’s performed, 15-20 lbs to the deadlift the first couple times, and 10lbs the next several times it’s performed. After that, jumps become 5 lbs per workout. For the press, bench press, and power clean, you may get one 10 lb jump, but you may need to start with 5 lb jumps. Later on, you’ll move to 2.5 lb or smaller jumps for these lifts when 5 lbs becomes too much to add every workout. This may require you to buy specialized equipment, but unlike 2013 when I first wrote this article, microplates are now widely and easily available for purchase.
Once you’re at the stage where you’re doing chin-ups as part of the program, some of you will progress to weighted chin-ups. You can alternate chin-up workouts between weighted for lower reps, and bodyweight chins done to fatigue.
All that background info now covered, let’s get to what you’re really here for: what to do!
The Program: Phase 1
(Usually 1-3 weeks)
Day A Day B
Squat 3x5 Squat 3x5
Press/Bench Press 3x5 Press/Bench Press 3x5
Deadlift 1x5 Deadlift 1x5
*3x5 refers to three sets of 5 repetitions, and includes only work-sets, not warm-up sets, which we will cover later. 1x5, similarly, refers to 1 work set of 5 reps.
Phase 1 Notes
In this initial phase, workouts A & B are the same, except that the press and bench press alternate. So if you began the program on Monday and pressed, you’ll bench press Wednesday and press again Friday. The second week, you’ll bench press Monday and Friday and press on Wednesday.
When your deadlifts start getting hard enough that you still feel a little tired from your last deadlift session 2-3 days later at your next, it’s time to move to phase 2. This is usually about 2-3 weeks from when you started.
At the end of this phase, if you’re in that 18-35 healthy male demographic, your squat should be about 40-50 lbs higher than it started, your deadlift 50-70 lbs higher, and your press and bench press each 15-25 lbs higher than they started, using the weight jumps mentioned above.
Phase 2: S—t Gets Real
(Length highly variable - see below)
Day A Day B
Squat 3x5 Squat 3x5
Press/Bench Press 3x5 Press/Bench Press 3x5
Deadlift 1x5 Chins 3x BW/Weighted
Phase 2 Notes
In this phase, things start to feel hard and heavy. Not so hard that you’re worried about missing any lifts, but legitimately challenging. In some ways it’s the honeymoon period. You’re going in, working hard, feel and see the tangible, objective results - you’re not trying to figure out if your abs are now 1% more chiseled, you’re objectively doing more work and lifting more weight and thus, you know you’re making progress.
In this phase we also introduce the chin-up. Your deadlift is now heavy enough that doing it 3 days per week, adding weight each session, is difficult to recover from. You’ll do deadlifts on Day A as before, and do 3 sets of chin-ups on Day B. Bodyweight chins for most, weighted chins if you can already do sets of 8-10 or more BW chins off the bat. For those who can’t do chins or can only do 1-2, access to a lat pulldown machine is useful here. Do 3 sets of 8-10 reps at a weight that is highly challenging for that rep range. Try to increase something each time, just like you would the chins, i.e. if you use 150 for 3x8, try 3x9 the next time. When you can do 3x10, move up to the next weight increment on the machine and go back down to 3x8. And so on.
Chin-ups fill in the one major gap in the 4 main lifts - upper body pulling. Though the deadlift does work the lats and other upper body pulling muscles quite a bit, it does so isometrically. The chin-up completes the total body training of the program. Though advanced lifters almost always do some supplemental, assistance, and accessory work, these 5 lifts alone do cover the entire body in terms of work.
Phase 2’s length is variable, from several weeks to a couple months, depending on the individual trainee. If you’re highly responsive to training, you’ll be able to run this for quite a while, perhaps 2-3 months. For most people it’s typically about 3-6 weeks. There’s no way to know for certain in advance, so just keep going and keep adding weight to the bar. Yes, it’s hard. It’s supposed to be. That’s what makes it effective.
Phase 2 is over when you still feel fatigue from both squat and deadlift, at your next squat and deadlift session, and when you sense your ability to keep adding 5 lbs to bench and press each time is about to crash. But you probably haven’t actually failed any lifts yet, or if you have, it was an isolated one-off on a bad day, and you were able to do it again the next time.
Phase 3: The Homestretch
(Variable length)
We introduce a Day C here:
Day A Day B Day C
Squat 3x5 Squat 2x5 @ 80% Squat 3x5
PR/BP 3x5 - microloaded PR/PR 3x5 - microloaded PR/BP 3x5 - microloaded
Deadlift 1x5 Chin-ups Barbell Rows 3x5
Phase 3 Notes
At this point you’ve become strong enough to pull enough weight that we limit deadlift frequency to once a week, and introduce the barbell row on Day C to train a similar movement pattern with a lighter load that facilitates learning and recovery, and also touches the one movement pattern left out of the main lifts (upper body pulling) So if you deadlift on Monday, you’ll do chins on Wednesday, and barbell rows on Friday. This facilitates adequate recovery for the next heavy deadlift workout on Monday, while giving the lifter practice with the same set-up and basic movement pattern twice a week.
Phase 3 is also where most people need to begin micro-load their pressing movements and cleans, adding weight in 2.5lb or smaller increments to continue linear progress. Females and lifters over 50 or 60 should consider using increments as low as 0.5-1 lb for the press, and 1-2 lbs for the bench, if your equipment permits it. But at the very least, a pair of 1.25 plates is strongly recommended so you can make jumps in 2.5 lb increments.
Finally, Phase 3 is also often where we implement the “Advanced Novice” stage of squatting, and add weight to their squats only twice per week (i.e. Monday and Friday), while using Wednesday as a lighter recovery day for squats doing 2 sets of 5 instead of 3 sets, and using 70-80% of the previous heavy day’s workload to allow practice of the movement, but to facilitate recovery for the next heavy session.
When is it Over?
Formally, the process of ending the entire LP looks something like this:
Fail to make your assigned sets and reps
Try again at the same weight the next time you’re supposed to do that lift - making sure your sleep, food, and rest between sets are all in order. We’ll discuss rest periods below.
If you succeed, keep going. If you fail again, back off 10-15% in weight, using the same sets and reps, the next workout.
At some point you WILL fail twice in a row. After you back off 10-15%, work back up but using slightly larger increments than you took the first time, since you’re covering old ground.
For example if your squat fails twice in a row at 295, drop back to about 255, but don’t go up in 5 lb increments all the way back to 295. That would take forever and is pointless. Instead do something like 255, 225 (light day) 275 on week 1. Then 285, 235 (light day), and go for 295 again at the end of the 2nd week back.
This backoff and work-back-up process will usually work once or twice. Once you’ve gone through it twice, your LP is fully done and over, the whole thing usually taking about 3-6 months, depending on the individual, assuming no breaks or interruptions.
HOWEVER, a lot of people don’t do well with an open-ended system. They need a definitive endpoint to shoot for instead of “just keep going til you fail repeatedly.” For you, I suggest a 3 month commitment. Go through the same process, and commit to it for 3 months. When you hit the 3 month mark, just end there wherever you happen to be and move on from the LP to more slowly progressing programming that is less mentally demanding than adding weight every time. If you’ve gotten bit by the lifting bug and want to keep going as long as you can, you can always do that. But this way, you start out with the 3 month timeline, so that you don’t feel you’re toiling endlessly on into obscurity.
FAQs
Warm-up Sets
People get confused here, but it ain’t rocket surgery. Most people can go right to their empty bar sets. Those who are a little more beat up may need to do something else to warm up first, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.
Keep in mind the empty bar is 45 lbs. Take the difference between the empty bar and your working weight, and make four relatively even jumps between the two. i.e. if your work sets will be @ 275lbs:
Empty Bar (45lbs) x 5-10 reps x 2 sets - get the rust off
135x5
195x3
245x2
275 x5 reps x3 sets
Notice the jumps are slightly larger at the beginning and get slightly smaller as we get closer to work weight. This type of organization tends to work better than 100% perfectly even jumps.
If your working weight will be 95lbs:
45x5x2
60x5
75x3
85x2
95x5x3
And so on.
Rest Between Sets
I could write a whole article about this topic, and in fact I have and probably will again. But to be brief: You need to rest more than the people randomly flailing about on various machines at the gym. The central idea is: Rest long enough to be recovered for the next set, but not so long that you cool off between sets.
When you first start and are using easy weights for the first week, 2 minutes between sets is sufficient. As you move beyond week 1, typically 3-4 mins for upper body and 4-5 for heavy squat sets becomes the norm. At the very end of LP, adding another 2-3 minutes onto those numbers is pretty standard.
This seems like a lot of time to stand around resting, but once you’re in the late stage LP, you’ll understand why you need it.
Recovery
Sleep and food are your friends here. Less than 7-8 hours sleep per night will likely negatively affect your recovery. If you are short on sleep on a regular basis, the length of time during which you can add weight to the bar as a Novice will be artificially stunted, but don’t use being tired as an excuse not to add weight to the bar. Stick to the program.
As far as food goes, in short, you need to eat enough to recover. Ample protein, carbohydrates, and fat are required. Trying to do this program while on a restricted diet is not optimal: the point here is to BUILD tissue and get stronger. Unless you’re starting out already overweight, you’ll probably need to eat MORE, rather than less. We don’t recommend getting fat while doing the program, but to optimize your gains, you’ll probably have to eat more than you’re used to, priortizing especially protein.
Exercises in the Program
No, you didn’t miss anything. There are only six exercises in the program. Adding weight to the bar and progressing on these six exercises will do more for your training than anything else, during your first months. Don’t spoil the recipe by adding extra ingredients. A couple sets of arm work at the end of the workout on Friday is probably OK, and you’re probably going to do it anyway, but beyond that, just do the program.
When you have accumulated enough strength and lifting experience to be an Intermediate lifter, you’ll know enough to decide whether or not to work your reverse leaping BOSU axe choppers into the program and if so, how. Until then, just do the program.
Other Questions
I’ve tried to be thorough in this guide, but can’t possibly anticipate every question, nor did I want to make this already long piece any longer or more complicated. Drop your Qs in the comments below, or hit me up on Twitter or Instagram.
Used to enjoy Fitocracy... apparently been up and down intermittently... Reddit group dead though.
I started this program last week. Over the weekend I was very sore but it was manageable. On day 1 of week 2, I was still very sore but I managed to push through and continue the program. On day 2 of week 2, I attempted to push through but could not squat more than 50%. My legs were very sore, especially in my groin. I’m not too sore from the press and deadlift, however.
Is this normal to be so sore 2-3 days later from squats? So much so that I couldn’t even do 50%? Note that the pain is soreness, not aches.