YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED: BEGINNERS

I’ve always opened the floor to my readers to ask me any questions they want addressed, and SeanR has taken me up on the offer, having left a question in the comment section of my most recent post.  In order to try to stay on point and not go off on too much of a tirade, I will be addressing his question in parts.  Here is the question in its entirety.

I was hoping for your next blog if you could touch on what a beginners first year of training should look like. Lets say they have played some sports and have messed around in the weight room, but now they are starting from ground zero. Also what weight range in the major lifts do you think a person should have after 1 year of training hard if they started as a beginner. 

And now to break it down a little bit

I was hoping for your next blog if you could touch on what a beginners first year of training should look like. Lets say they have played some sports and have messed around in the weight room, but now they are starting from ground zero.

You can tell Sean is an avid reader of mine already because he’s already addressed one of the primary things I advocate ALL trainees do before lifting: play some sports and perform some basic bodyweight training.  I’ll still harp on it here while on the topic of beginner trainees though.  If I were to craft the perfect strength super soldier, I’d want them to spend at least 2-3 seasons playing some sort of athletic competitive sport.  Something with a lot of full body movement, resisting opposing forces, and some contact.  American football, wrestling, basketball, rugby, the basics/classics. 

No

You gain a lot of skills and experience from this that carries over very well into the weight room (tenacity, body awareness, coordination, flexibility, mobility, etc etc).  Additionally, one of the other huge benefits of this is you learn the difference between being sore and being injured, which is something a LOT of beginners seem to struggle with, having never actually BEEN injured before.  I remember after my first day of football practice as a high school freshmen I was so sore I couldn’t even get out of bed, but I also knew at that point that I wasn’t injured, and I just limped onto the field, warmed up, and was good to go again.  Getting all of this knocked out ahead of time means that time spent in the weight room isn’t wasted trying to figure out your body.  So many beginner trainees spend the first few years spinning their wheels because they don’t even know the very basics about ANY sort of training, and at least with sports you’ll get SOMETHING out of that time, while spending 3 years resetting on Starting Strength is far less valuable.

Alright, let’s actually talk about the question.  It’s true I’ve written my own beginner programs in the past, and advocated for a few as well, but these days, were I to start all over, I’d honestly just run 5/3/1.  I’ve been a pretty vocal proponent of 5/3/1 recently, and it’s not because there is some sort of magic formula in the percentages or anything like that, but more that Jim Wendler really figured out some great principles to base ANY training program around and put them all together.  Starting light, focusing on PRs, building strength in sub maximal ranges, using assistance work without obsessing over it, basing training around 4 big movements, valuing conditioning, scheduled deloads, all that stuff is just gold. 

I’ve had a fair series of blog posts recently addressing my issues with the current market of “beginner programs”, and basically the obsession with always adding weight to the bar is just building a bunch of kids who know how to peak their strength but have zero idea how to actually build it.  It makes sense that Bill Starr used these programs for off-season football players, because it was a quick way to get them back to their old strength numbers before the season started again, but for an athlete who is more focused on weights versus football, there are better ways forward.  Additionally, there is a LOT to learn from something like 5/3/1, with all the exploration and experimentation available, and as long as one puts in the effort in the main sets, they’ll grow.

And this crap will stop happening

As for WHAT version of 5/3/1 to run, I’d honestly just plain have them do the 4 day vanilla 5/3/1 to start, with the BBB assistance work.  I’d swap out BBB deads with another type of squat (so have them doing squats and SSB squats as an example), and I’d have them do the alternate exercise for assistance (so do BBB press on 5/3/1 bench day, BBB squat on 5/3/1 dead day, etc), but otherwise keep it simple.  After a little while, they could do first set last, 5s Pro, full body, etc etc, but the original recipe works just fine.  Throw in some loaded carries somewhere as a finisher or on a non-lifting day if they want to be a strongman some day too, but for just building the basics, this will do just fine.

Onto the second part.

Also what weight range in the major lifts do you think a person should have after 1 year of training hard if they started as a beginner. 

This is a mentality I think a beginner needs to get away from in all honesty.  So many new trainees screw up because they’re so fixated on the 1rms that they can’t grasp the idea of building strength in various rep ranges.  It’s why there is this bizarre critique of 5/3/1 progressing “too slowly”, because all they see is the increase to the training max and not the actually increase of their STRENGTH.

 
I mean, who cares that this guy used 5/3/1 to bench 600lbs in multiple weight classes...TOO SLOW!

The longer I train, the more I realize that how much weight one lifts isn’t necessarily the best indication of how strong one is.  I realize that sounds crazy, but hear me out.  Let’s take the bench press.  Say you got a kid who is 150lbs and benches 135lbs with their back flat on the bench.  Now, let’s say that I force feed that same kid a gallon of water on the spot.  Suddenly, he’s got a bloated belly, and the ROM of the bench just decreased, so he can move more weight.  Now let’s say I slap some tacky onto his traps and butt and then stick him onto the bench with the craziest arch I can manage.  I just increased his bench again.  Say I teach him how to touch on the highest part of his arch.  Another increase.  How about tucking his shoulder blades as hard as possible?  More gains.  What about teaching him to squeeze the crap out of the bar and pull it apart?  More gains.  Etc etc, you can witness the insanity here, but this an everyday thing on the net.  Anytime a beginner says that they’re stalling, one of the first solution is “your form is probably bad”.  Yeah, probably, but that doesn’t fix the strength issue, just the “weight being moved” issue.

GETTING...SO...STRONG

Instead of focusing on hitting certain lifts within a certain amount of time, I feel it’s more beneficial for a beginner within 1 year’s span to have gained enough principles to know how to train effectively with a great amount of intensity of effort, along with the knowledge of what assistance movements work for them and what techniques improve their strength the most.  Strength builds slowly, and 1 year is still scratching the surface, but if that 1 year is spent training intelligently with violent intensity, that trainee will be MUCH further ahead than some guy with a 300lb squat who got that way by running Smolov and peaking to a max, eating whole pizzas every meal, wearing a belt, weightlifting shoes and wraps out of a monlift after huffing some ammonia and blasting some metal.  One has learned how to get stronger, the other how to move more weight.

Thank you for your question, and if I can clarify anything, please let me know.  If anyone else has any topics they’d like covered, leave a comment.