/ss/ general

Can someone pls confirm if this user is being truthful? I don't know if I'm being meme'd or not.
>I've been lifting since April 2016. (for the record I didn't know what the fuck I was doing).
>Did a bro split until August in which I went from 134 lbs to 170 lbs because I was told to just eat as much as I can.
>Went on a cut to until last January (cut down to 145 lb)
>Clean bulking now at 500 cal surplus and did pplpplx to regain my lost muscle until mid march
>since mid march I decided to do SS to squeeze out the last of my linear gains before doing an intermediate program. (currently 155 lb)

As for my form its fine
My sleep is all over the place since I'm an EE major at a top tier uni, so some nights I might only sleep 1 or 2 hours if I have an 8 am class but I'll come back and take a 4 hour nap to try and get enough sleep. I try to shoot for 8 hours of sleep a day and on days I don't have 8 ams I get it. On days I do have 8 ams I'll take a 4-5 hour nap.

So an EE major guy at a top tier uni can't even read the damn book?

he's right on SS your signs of plateauing week to week signal that you're probably more suited to an intermediate program. you need more volume now to build strength than before.

I read the sticky.
And since I've already gotten most of my beginner gains I figured I'd just do SS to squeeze out the last bits of it

I see. Thanks for the reply user

stats?

also IEEE represent.

When I go ATG, am I supposed to lean forward like the picture, or stay mostly upright?
I feel like I'm throwing the weight onto my toes if I lean forward at all, so I try to stay upright.

Don't go ATG, just reach proper depth

different user, but I've started to go ATG because I want to get into oly more. Is this unadvisable? opinions?

I don't know my 1rm so here is the weight I use for reps
Oh and btw my squats I'm increasing weekly, its bench, OHP, diddies, and rows I'm increasing every 2 weeks.
3x5 squat (200 lb)
3x5 bench press (165 lb)
1x5 deadlift (255 lb)
3x5 ohp (105 lb)
3x5 pendlay rows (115 lb)
I missed the deadline to sign up for IEEE this year. I'm going to try to join next year

Do ATG on your oly movements like cleans/front squats, and go to slightly below parallel on back squats

I don't know your height, but you should gain a minimum of 30 pounds of bodyweight and get your squat to 315, bench at least to 200, dead in the high 300s and press around 140
What this means is read the book do the program and eat more, you can easily progress daily

Height I'm 5'8" or 5'9"
>you should gain a minimum of 30 pounds of bodyweight
on SS? I don't want to get fat. Also since I want to cut in the summer bulk in the winter I was going to start cutting in June for 2 or 3 months since I can only make the outline of my abs right now. I also read on the sticky once my 1rm for bench is 185 I should be good for an intermediate program.
>squat to 315, bench at least to 200, dead in the high 300s and press around 140
This is possible by increasing weight every session on SS?
>eat more
I don't want to dirty bulk again and gain a bunch of fat I'll have to lose.
But I will look for the book and take a look at it anyways. Can't hurt I guess

Does sleeping too much have a negative impact on recovery or gains? I sleep 11 hours a night

If you don't want to gain weight ditch SS and do something else, I don't know about cutting routines but i can tell you that doing SS without a big caloric surplus won't get very far, especially at your level.
Also 155 lbs at 5'9" is skinny as fuck, maybe put aside your aesthetics concerns for a while and build some muscle

Hmm thanks for the advice. I'll try and find a pdf of SS then and read up on it when I get the time.

Why are squats so hard. Rather deadlift

Fatbro here. I wanna get strong, never really lifted before. Despise cardio. I'm 5'11" and totally accept the fact I'll never be skinny again as I'm 27 and lethargic as fuck. Hoping to maybe get to 225 and just be strong as fuck. Suggestions?

Do you actually sleep consistently and do you need that sleep or do you stay in bed for 11 hours?

I find it hard to believe you sleep 11 hours straight

Consistent. If I happen to wake up to take a piss I fall back a sleep immediately after without even thinking of staying awake. If I sleep less than 11 hours I feel like shit all day. If I had less self control I'd easily sleep 12+ hours but I need to get shit done. I dont know what's wrong with me but I fucking love sleeping thats for sure.

Read SS, do the program as written

You will make great gains then, just remember to eat and lift

I'm 280 now.

Whats the point of stuffing your face if once you're over the 500 cal surplus all the extra calories will just be turning into fat?

I'm 280 now. What is SS? What is a good site?

read the sticky, there are links to a decent SS variation, and plenty of straightforward info on dieting, mindset, etc.

Holy fuck you are me. Minus the despising cardio, I've actually grown to love it. Started basic about 4 weeks ago, grabbed a friend who was power lifting when he was a kid and a teen/mid 20s to show me form and get me used to program and gym life.

My advice is legit get a mentor to help with form, use a diary to help keep track of how much you eat (despite you being fat, get ready to eat more and better than you ever had), and remember to listen to your body.

It's a process and a life changing movement you are thinking of undertaking but one that I, being in a similar physical state and of similar goals, love and am thankful I took this path.

You don't have your fact straight, on SS you are not supposed to do one of those bullshit "lean bullk", you are supposed to eat big, if you are a beginner you will put on a lot of mass, of course some will be fat but most will be muscle, that's the price to pay for such growth. On a lean bulk with a small surplus you won't even get near the gains ss can give you, and that's fine, if you want to keep your visible abs.
And no you won't look like pic related, if you get too fat for your liking just stop eating

starting strength, it's a book, you will find the program in there, if you want more info a good site will be the starting strength forums

Did ss for 3 months and hit 20% bf, then did 4 day TM for 5 months at 2300 cal/day but my bf & weight stayed the same and my lifts are only up 5-15lbs. What do I do?

On TM you should gain at least 1lb a week to drive progress, eat more

That's good to hear. What made you like cardio?

It will sound corny, but I imagine I am running from my past self and into the arms of what I am becoming. The stronger, healthier, more controlled me.

I'm 5'8 and 119 lbs at 3.4% bf as measured by an electronic impedance machine. I know they're not that accurate but my doctor didn't have a caliper. Anyway if i'm going to be doing SS, should i just say fuck anything related to clean eating because it's not like my body could do without some adipose tissue or what? Also for those curious as to why I am dangerously thin, I fast when i'm stressed and have had a lot of mental issues come up recently.

What weights are you stalling on? 155lbs is quite light if you're really trying to get strength up.

Jesus. You're weak like a kitten.

1. Buy the book
2. Eat hard
3. Lift Heavy.

You shouldn't have to stop SS until you're squatting around 300lbs.

what are your accessories?

just because you're thin does not mean you have low BF%. lots of thin people come to the clinic I work with hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. unless veins are popping everywhere on your body, you are not 3%.

as to your question, yes. eat more unless you have a valid health concern. you will never progress at 119lbs BW

The only thing I'm slightly stalling on is bench, but even there I'm still making progression.
And I don't want to get fat because when I did that the first time I get stretch marks, and I learned that the fatter you get the more fat cells your body builds, and you can't get rid of those fat cells without surgery.
I found a pdf of the book online, and as for eating hard I'm doing a clean bulk of 500 cal surplus like the sticky says, but I'm not going to dirty bulk again. I'm happy with making slower gains if it means preventing more stretch marks, and going on a big cut again which will come with a dirty bulk can fuck up my hormones and metabolism.

That isn't such a bad thought.

Pull up, LTE, lat pulls

/fat/ here looking to fix it. I've been doing some reading and obviously decided to start with starting strength.
So naturally I have a few retarded questions pls no too much bully.
Since I'm fat and would like to loose weight is there a recommended strategy? Everything I've read says the you typically have to eat extra in order to take advantage of ss. Is this still true for a fatty?
Also I've never really done any lifting before and I don't want to look too stupid so how do I know approximately how much weight to start out with for each lift? And how do I ensure that I didn't choose a weight too high to complete all of my sets other than doing it and potentially failing.
Finally this feels like the dumbest of all of them....I've read many places that at the start it's just best to do exactly the routine as its written without anything else. But when I think about that I'm having a hard time believing I should go into the gym do 3 exercises a few times and just leave. Is there anything else recommended for the start or literally just do the 3 ss exercises and leave?
I've also read or maybe misinterpreted that on the off days you should give your body a chance to take a break and not work out. Does that mean not lift? I started running with the c25k program last week and planned on running on the off days.
I'm 6'1" 260lbs. My main goal is eventually get down into the 210-220 range.

Sorry about the book. I'm going to the gym regardless tomorrow just hoping I can minimize the spaghetti and actually do this the right way.

what's a good intermediate program for strength?

My bodyfat being LOW wasn't a question. It's a fact that was told to me by multiple doctors. Exact percentage was the only thing in question there. It's around 3-4 percent.

Also, you have failed to even answer the question I asked, which was whether i should bother eating clean or throw that shit out the window.

watch this: your answer is there in the first 20-30 mins!
youtube.com/watch?v=Y3KtElTUObc

It's difficult to balance right. You need to keep squatting.

It's take me over 2 months of squatting 3 times a week to finally get some acceptable form.

How do I know when to cut? DYEL skellyman/slightly skinnyfat.

DL 240
SQ 215
BP 135
OHP 80

How do I stop my knees from sliding forward while I approach the bottom of the squat?

I can't keep increasing my Press. I'm at 3x5 95 and I can barely do that. What do?

Is it ok to add weight every 2nd workout?
Been doing it for like 4 months

Put 100 lbs on all your lifts and then you'll be ready

THANK YOU. I've been asking all over Veeky Forums and you're the first person to respond.

Core and wrist/hand strength are the most important for functional strength. Great strength in those fields is strength itself.

"functional strength" is a meaningless buzzword

Do you use your arms a lot? If yes, then bis and tris are important

I'm reading through Practical Programming and It is telling me that at my now that I'm slowing down on my squats and deadlifts that I should do back extensions on my chin up days, however, it does not tell me how many reps or sets of back extensions to do.

Is 3x10 an acceptable number to do while increasing weights every other workout, much like for chin-ups?

Back Ext.: do 3x10. But I do 5x10 TM-style, with pyramid weight.

For Chinups, do strict form and do 3xF.
When you can do 10-12 reps , start adding weight and aim for failure at 5 reps.

I would add tri pulldowns. Its easy to progress with good carryovers. Tricep dips were too hard for me

Cool, thanks a bunch.

theyre useless.

do dips instead, a great compound exercise that carries over Press and Bench.
Crack your head until you master proper form and depth. And follow same progression as chinups here.

Starting to stall on my lifts

ohp 135
bench 195
squat 225
dead 335

Should i keep going or switch to a ppl?

Fatty here, whats the pros and cons of SS vs SL? Also should I accept the stall while eating at a cal deficit because I don't want to put anymore weight on?

I stall on OHP (47.5kg), Bench (55kg) and squat (85kg) since 2 weeks - been on the program for 3 months with the first month learning to do the lifts correctly. Should I put in some volume training or go on and eat more? BW is 93kg.

Did you already try deloading 10% and working back up?

I'm weak to the point I can't even handle the bar alone, what should I do

Is this true for all of the following exercises or some of them?

Overhead Press
Bench Press
Squats
Deadlifts

Do SS. Memes aside, it's the superior routine if you are willing to take the time to learn the power cleans later (not as scary or as complicated as they seem). Plus if you're really fat the doing barbell rows will be extra difficult and painful on your lower back (Source: former fatty that started with SL and swapped to SS). Buy the book and read it.

Also, buy and read Practical Programming, they have a section on doing SS for overweight people.

well it worked for me. initially tried tri dips but they hurt like hell

i think any additional tri/chest accessory will help if you havent had any, but I dont know the exact weightage of the different accessories in improving the bench.

5x5 will cause you to plateau fast, take longer time to finish, and SS is better written. if you want a greater upper body emphasis GSLP is a great alternative which was derived from SS.

does you gym have kids/women's barbell? use those. otherwise, maybe try BB/machines/smith. or if you want to save money, just practice body weight routines first (pushups, squat, planks etc)

not really, tried some volume training, but I'll deload, good thought

Ok. Well if you end up stalling on the same weight again after deloading I have some suggestions for you in the future.

Option A: swap the 3x5 for a 3x3.

Option B: do your first working set of 1x5 at the normal weight, then do the next 2x5 sets at 90%.

Both have pros and cons, but they will help if you are genuinely stalled on an exercise. You can also combine them later on, but be sure to exhaust all the gains you can out of one these methods before you add the other on top of it.

Thanks, great advice. I've been looking at Wendler 5/3/1 as well. Do you think this would be a better choice than staying on SS - or should go for 3x3 etc. until I stall again?

Is it good idea to do additional back off set 1x8 in upper body presses?

Telling people to dirty bulk is fucking retarded

I'd say milk SS for the gains you can possibly get out of it through the "advanced novice" stage. Most people are usually on SS for about a year and a half when using all the proper methods to get all they can out of it.

That's not to say 5/3/1 sucks (quite the opposite, it's an excellent intermediate program), it's just you want to get as much novice gains as you can out of a novice program, as intermediate gains are abysmally slower by their very nature.

I'd also recommend you buy Practical Programming as it has all the tips I gave you and more for milking the hell out of SS as well as when and what to move on to for intermediate workouts.

>2017
>still doing SS

kek

No one should be doing SS that long unless you are lifting for nothing but pure strength. You would be fat as fuck by the end of that.

Of course not. You need them for a lot of things. But it's important to think of them in the context of the whole body. There's no movement in barbell training or real life where either your biceps or triceps are the only - or even the major - force producer. Even curls use the shoulders.

Make them stronger because they need to be strong to act as support/stabilisers for other muscle groups.

>unless you are lifting for nothing but pure strength
That's the point of the program.

>you would be fat as fuck by the end of that.
You probably would be if you did it exactly as Rippetoe suggests you do it by eating 4000-6000 calories a day while doing the program, but most don't. Most don't read the book either for that matter.

What are your lifts, and what's your height? You're almost certainly not eating enough to run SS unless you're like five two, and as it stands YNDTP anyway.

The problem is that everyone tells people to do SS no matter what their goal is. The main guy posting throughout this entire thread has said he wants to cut through the summer but all anyone is recommending him is SS. If you want lift for aesthetics + strength I would recommend doing SS for at most 4-6 months (if you are eating, sleeping, and lifting right).

I fucked up - did PPL only 3 times a week for 6 months (before realizing it was supposed to be 6 times a week).

I'm now doing SL 5x5, feel much better now!

Anybody have any anecdotes or before/after with doing StrongLifts for a long time? How do I avoid T-REX mode?

see and

It really depends on your body. I look great doing SL, have dont it for half a year but was athletic beforehand. Some people look like utter shit. My upper body really grew, neck, shoulders, traps, my arms are juicy. Bench is kinda shit with 5x5, might wanna change that up as soon as you stall. More volume and incline bench.

Also, do chinups, core exercises, farmer's walks, neck training, biceps if you feel the need to.

>pure strength

I'm here for any noobs that feel SS might not work. Spoiler it does.
I started out with the 20kg bar for bench and ohp and 40kg for squat and deadlift.

I was cutting because I was around 25% bf before. My stats after 6 months of very slow cutting were
OHP 5x57.5kg
Bench 5x87.5kg
Squat 5x115kg
Deadlift 5x140kg

There is only a single problem with SS, your arms get neglected hard, even if you do chinups, which I did weighted and got to a 3x5x100kg chinup including my bodyweight.

My standard addition would be adding 3x10 biceps work twice a week and 3x10 triceps works once a week. I noticed my triceps were my limiting factor in my presses and added lying triceps extensions during my bulk now on the TM. I feel like I've already seen improvements in stability and strength in my arms during my presses.

even under practical programming rip delineates novice phase to last from 3-9 months depending on trainee background. 18 months for linear programming is insane and unrealistic

Oh also facepulls 1-3x20 at the end of every training session.

Nice, I always do push ups, dips, or pull ups till failure after my SL routine.

Do you recommend I get a belt?

I alreayd use wrist straps for deadlifts coz after 1 rep of 3 plates my grip turns to shit and the barbell slips. Should I get rid of them?

Why are you giving advice?
Without being your coach it's hard to say when someone in particular is supposed to move on to the intermediate programs like TM or similar, with weekly increases. 5/3/1 though, is not an intermediate program. With monthly increases it's very much an advanced program and it's very low volume. You need to add the volume yourself through frist-set-last, joker sets and assistance exercises or templates like BBB.

not him but, it depends on what you want

I would rather use chalk/straps than go for alternate grip or hook grip. I am not competing for anything, so who cares. grip strength can be easily amended by less demanding exercises anyway. belt is unnecessary for BBing, but it will definitely improve stat.

That guy's problem is that he isn't going to look decent at all if he only weighs 155 and wants to 'lean down.' What the fuck is there to lean down to? People only look good at low body fat if they have some muscular weight to begin with.

Fatass here, 270lbs, formerly 300lbs. Been doing jogging and biking to drop the pounds, as well as eating 500kcals below my need.

Started reading SS in order to start lifting, and noticed it recommends eating a surplus for muscle gains. I don't mind gains, but I'm afraid it'll slow down my weight loss process. I'm trying to lose the weight in order to be accepted in the military, and the sooner the better. Should I keep my deficit, or eat the surplus?