Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, 3rd edition Paperback – November 11, 2011

Excellent resource that has had an enormous impact on my quality of life. Combine this with the free Starting Strength podcast and instructional YouTube vids and you have your self a worthwhile education and practical application class. I put a rack and barbell in my garage and have been applying what I have been learning over the past 6 months.

Bench was 195lbs for 5 reps and is now 245lbs
OHP was 115lbs for 5 and is now 155lbs
DL was 315lbs for 5 and is now 455lbs
BS was 285 for 5 and is now 365lbs
and all still climbing..

As an added benefit, I am not constantly hurting myself with bad form and having to take time to heal and thus lose gains. Also, I don't hurt when I get up in the morning. All this with previous C-Spine, knee and nerve damage injuries from three combat tours to Iraq.

After reading numerous weightlifting books over the last 20 years, I truly wish my journey started with this one. Each exercise is explained with such detail and a whole lot of physics that it simply blows away anything else I've read....including the NSCA Textbook. The program is simple and extremely effective. It includes all the basic exercises that any halfway decent program would include, and if you're doing a program that doesn't include these exercises you are seriously wasting your time. I would not consider myself a novice and have years of lifting experience but I've been on this program for 3 months, and have made steady gains. Started squatting 355 for 5 and am now up to 470 for 5 (1RM when I started was 475). And that's just squats. You will not be disappointed. I highly recommend this book as well as "Practical Programming for Strength Training" to everyone I talk to about lifting. Practical Programming has assured me that I will not be bored for years to come!

So if you're a natural lifter and/or just starting out and are looking for one of the best programs out there, look no further than "Starting Strength"

-Mark I want to thank you for this and all your contributions. Your hard work and years of experience is greatly appreciated. I only wish I started following you sooner.-

I heard Mark Rippetoe talk about Starting Strength on a podcast last fall. For the previous year or so I'd been cycling and running to get back in shape. But, being in my late 50s, it was much harder to do than in years past. When I heard Rippetoe I realized that I needed to gain strength not just work on stamina/cardio. I've never done any kind of weight training before and was cautious to do so because I didn't want to injure myself. Starting Strength is 5 basic lifts with in depth explanations of each lift. That I can do!

I found a Starting Strength coach and started the program. I've been on it for about 5 months (albeit with a very irregular schedule) and have had excellent results. I started with squatting with an 11 lbs. bar and last workout I squatted 210 (3x5) - (see the attached picture). My deadlift started around 65 lbs. and I'm now at 220 (1x5). The other lifts are coming along well too. In real life this translates into a better overall appearance and physical stability. I'm making progress to being much healthier and stronger.

The book is packed with useful information. For a beginner like me it's too much to take in at first. But I read, do the lifts, then read some more and it all begins to sink in. The book describes in detail the correct way to do each lift and progressively increase the weight. Following these techniques (maybe with a coach) it's possible to gain strength without injury.

This is the only weight training book I've read. While there may be other good books I'm glad that Starting Strength was the first one I've read.

Excellent book that I believe everyone interested in the lifting of weights should read, even if powerlifting is not you're thing.

I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before but in case you haven't been convinced by the time you get to me...

This book describes, in great detail, the squat, the deadlift, the bench press, the power clean, and the overhead press.

Each of these compound lifts are incredibly important to anyone who wants to gain strength and size. In this book Rippetoe outlines the benefits of strength in your everyday life, how to perform each of these lifts, offers a beginner's programme, and why what you do outside of the gym is just as important as what you do inside.

The book is full of useful diagrams and fancy charts if that's your kind of thing. I personally found them to be very good at putting the author's words into practical terms.

The book also has quite an extensive section of useful assistance exercises that you might run in conjunction with the novice program provided.

Now there are several, constant, "criticisms" of this program that should be addressed. I get annoyed every time I see them because these complaints wouldn't exist if the person could read and do the program like it was written.

"SS+GOMAD made me fat, wtf Rip?!"

In a section on diet Rippetoe recommends that the 180cm, 55kg, kids out there drastically increase their caloric intake by drinking a gallon of milk a day (GOMAD) This seems a bit drastic but, speaking from experience here, you'll hit a wall much faster if you're dying to keep that "skinny pack" while attempting a program such as this.

So the advice makes sense, the author recommends this right up until the previously underweight athlete has gained enough mass, then they can ease off.

However there exists a proportion of society with very poor reading comprehension. In that same diet section Rippetoe says that a gallon of milk is not for those of you who already have the weight to begin with. However a million screaming idiots have since littered message boards bitching about not looking like Klokov because they tried GOMAD while being 20 kilos overweight. I want to seize every one of them by the collar and make them read the damn book next time before they loudly inform the internet that they can't read properly.

The other criticism I hear a lot is

"T-Rex mode! Rippletits said squats would make my arms grow but now my physique is imbalanced"

Again, poor reading comprehension strikes. Rippetoe does say that you'll add muscle mass everywhere doing anything if you're an untrained individual. He did not, however, say that you'll have arms like Arnie after a few squats.

SS is also a program with lots of leg work, very true. However the author also states that assistance exercises such as chin ups and dips are very useful. So much so that he included chin ups on the base program already. He even includes a few pages on how to do a barbell curl. So if you'd read the book you would have known maybe a few dips after your main session would have been a good idea.

So basically, read the book properly and stop complaining about the program when you didn't even do it.