Strength training can provide significant functional benefits and improvement in overall health and well-being including increased bone, muscle, tendon and ligament strength and toughness, improved joint function, reduced potential for injury, improved cardiac function and elevated good cholesterol.

My name is Saro and I’m here to help you get stronger the fastest way possible. Welcome to my site.

Most people who want to get in shape don’t know where to begin. They also lack the experience and know-how when it comes to training in general. A lot of it has to do with general lazyness, the overwhelming amount of (bad) information that’s available in magazines, books, friends, on the web, and overall intimidation that stems from the word “strength training”. A lot of training “routines” out there are garbage, inefficient and are a waste of time. I will show you what works to maximize your gains as a newcomer to training and get you up to top speed.

The target audience of this site is for absolute beginners to [weight] training in general. People with a few months, a year or two of experience are also welcome. People who are getting back into shape will benefit highly from this routine. There is nothing complicated about it and is used by athletes, trainers, strongmen, powerlifters, bodybuilders and more worldwide. It is no secret either: it has been buried by the wealth of misinformation and myths out there, toppled over by the ad-ridden “training” magazines that do nothing but waste people’s times.

On this website, I will teach you how to lift weights properly, give you an easy to follow training program and how to manage your overall diet. Before you cringe at the mention of “diet”, it does not necessarily mean that you will be eating less. In fact, with this type of program, eating more is encouraged (of course clean, healthy foods are preferred). I will talk about this further throughout my site.

The information on this site is totally free and I won’t charge you a cent for it. What’s the catch? None; there is no catch. I don’t even want your email address to send you a lame e-book. Everything on this website is the knowledge I have learned from several years of weight training experience and a few key books I have read that I want to share with you. It is my gift to the newcomers to training and people willing to learn something classic. I was once too a beginner in the world of training and have come a long way, but still have years ahead of me in terms of gaining more knowledge. I’m your everyday average guy who wanted to change his life for the better. I wasn’t overweight, but I wasn’t exactly healthy either. My eating habits were a mess (junk food aplenty) and I was very, very weak. Luckily for me, I had friends help me get started in basic weight training, but efficiency was never achieved. Over the years, however, I learned what worked — and more specifically, what didn’t.

I’m not going to lie to you — you definitely need to get a copy of Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength book. If you actually want to learn how to squat, deadlift, bench, power clean and press properly, this book is mandatory. If I were to teach it to you myself, I would have to meet you in person and coach you. Copy/pasting the information from the book onto this website would be copyright infringement and would get me in a lot of trouble.

I promise you one thing: this book is all you need to read to get started. It is totally written for the beginner, and it gets straight to the point with no BS thrown in. Mark Rippetoe has 30+ years of experience under his belt, and this guy knows what he’s doing. Just because his name isn’t “Arnold Schwarzanegger” doesn’t mean he’s not strong and fit. Google his name and see who Mark Rippetoe is.

Do yourself a favour, just purchase a copy of the book. If you don’t like it, just send it back to Amazon and have your money refunded. Chances are, if you do actually read it, you’ll keep it and most likely refer to it as the other bible: the strength training bible.

If you ever get lost, need more information on the book, don’t quite understand how it all works — shoot me an email, or visit the Bodybuilding.com forums for a wealth of information on this subject.

So, what are you waiting for? Get healthy already and become physically stronger. Lose the beer gut and feel good for once: Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength book is all you need to get started.

Buy the book!

After, take a look at your workout routine and what you’ll be training exactly.

So, let’s rewind back a year ago and beyond that. I was training at a local gym for 7 years straight, till I finally decided to plunk down the cash and buy a squat rack for the home. After saving up non-stop, my wish finally came true and I was the proud owner of a Powertec squat rack system. Long story short, I bought the rack, Olympic bar, weights and a tree-stand to organize the weights. Notice in this equation that a hyper-extension bench is not present. See, I didn’t have enough saved up for it, so I thought to myself, “whatever, I’ll pick it up in the future when I have the funds.”

I should have bought the hyper-extension bench and dealt with the weights thrown all over the floor instead.

Within a month or two my lower back weakened tremendously, and one day it just decided to crap out on me while squatting. Luckily for me, I managed to put the bar back safely onto the rack, but my lower back never felt the same after that incident. Doing squats, deadlifts or anything heavy just wasn’t pleasant for my back. I had to take some time off as much as I was against it. Fortunately for me, over the course of the summer, I had other ways of staying active and fit, so taking some time off weight training wasn’t that bad.

Fast forward two months ago from today. After letting my lower back heal and watching everything I do with it (picking up things from the floor, moving stuff, sleeping, etc) I felt ready to lift weights again. I started off slow and always made sure to keep my back “straight” (that is, arced). Today, I am back up to 90% of my strength, but I have a lot of trouble doing rows.

The moral of this story? Don’t skimp out on the hyper-extensions. They may not be fun to do, but they’re damn-sure necessary. Your lower back can’t always be indirectly trained on its own and needs some direct work, especially when you deal with higher weights.

I decided to go ahead and purchase the hyper-extension machine as the funds were available. It should be coming in this week. Lesson learned.

For those who are curious, I am following Bill Starr’s 5×5 program, featured on Madcow’s site.

The second book by Mark Rippetoe is Practical Programming for Strength Training, targeted towards people who are moving onwards from the beginner’s strength training routine (and entering the intermediate stage). It features chapters on periodization and advance techniques on strength training for people who can no longer move up in strength on the original routine. I will be writing a few articles on the intermediate book as soon as I finish reading it and putting it to use.

Please note that the above is a review and is considered an opinion. This site and its reviews and opinions have nothing to do with Mark Rippetoe, Lon Kilgore or The Aasgard Company.

Not enough time: My solution to this problem is to simply organize your day around your training time. It may not work for everybody, but if you prioritize your training above everything else, you’ll manage just fine. Students should excel at organizing their daily schedules, so inserting 3-4 hours of training per week can work. People with day jobs can also manage; just hit the gym before or after your job. I would say from experience that the best time to train would be in the morning right before work or school, or during noon (around 1-2 PM) but your mileage may vary. I have noticed that training beforehand makes your day go by much quicker.

Not enough money for a gym membership: Maybe I’m spoiled with the extremely low membership fees at my local gym, but this shouldn’t be an excuse. Let’s say a yearly gym membership costs 4 to 6 hundred dollars (USD). For teenagers and students, this may seem expensive, but for the working-class people out there, it shouldn’t. Instead of dining out every week, put the money in a jar and save it for the gym membership. Having too many parties? Spending too much on gadgets? You get the drift. Remember, the gym (and training) is an investment for your health: if you much rather sit at home and watch movies on your spiffy new Blu-ray player, then perhaps it’s time to change your ways and get off your ass.

No clue on where to start: this is a valid excuse for most people, but if you’re reading this site, it no longer is. Just do yourself a favor and buy a strength training book and learn from a professional coach with visuals. You’ll thank me later.

More than two months ago, I learned the above the hard way when I was performing the squats incorrectly and this resulted in me experiencing a slight pain in my hamstrings. For the next month and a half, I had a hard time performing the squats because of this pain. Until I realized my form was to blame, I wasted more than a month performing incorrect squatting techniques. To fix my problem, I re-read the squat section in the Starting Strength book and figured out what I was doing wrong (my knees were too inward). Coupled with some key stretching exercises, I was back in the squatting game and have been lifting heavier since with the proper form. Sometimes you need to re-evaluate your exercise techniques to make sure you’re getting the best out of your workouts.

1. Always perform warm ups before your exercises. Warming up allows your muscles to get ready to the exercises’ motions and oncoming weight increases. By getting your muscles warmed up and increasing your heart rate, you are preparing your muscles for activity and letting them know that you’re about to use them. On Rippetoe’s routine, you should always warm up with an empty bar and then gradually increase the weights slowly until your work sets. Take a look at the warming up page for more information on how to properly warm up.
2. Make sure you’re 100% certain you can lift the weight. I’ve seen it too many times and it’s happened to me on one occasion (that resulted in my injury!): people (usually newbies) get too cocky and load up more weight on the bar then they can handle. Besides witnessing weights tumble down onto the floor, the unlucky ones will receive a jolt of pain in specific muscles. My advice: increase your weights slowly and don’t rush anything. Remember, there’s always the next workout to increase in weight!
3. Stretch your muscles after every workout. Usually overlooked and forgotten, stretching after your workouts will help with DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) which is basically next-day soreness and/or pain (a lot of rookies new to training will feel it). Stretching is beneficial for keeping your muscles happy, as it allows your muscles to strengthen, increase the range within a joint, and more blood and oxygen to pass through (thanks to the mechanical means of stretching the muscle). This way, future cramps are prevented and you’ll be ready for your next workout without (much) pain. Sometimes people also tend to stretch before their workouts. I consider this good practice as well and highly recommend it to start off your training on the right foot.
   

While I’m not a doctor or have any sort of certificate in the training field, I do feel confident enough about my knowledge in the world of strength training to give the reader an insight into this fabulous way to transform your body. As of this writing, I have been training at my local gym (Monster Gym) for the past 6 years of my life and have seen all kinds of people train there, of all sizes, without so much knowing what they’re doing. Some of the people I’ve seen really have no idea where or how to start working out. I feel that with this site, I will be able to educate those people for the better and maybe give them a pointer or two on how to effectively train and get stronger.

Right now, this website is still in its primary stages of development, so a lot of content is missing. Hopefully, within the next few weeks, I will have the majority of the sections up and running for everyone to see.

Biography

I’m your typical male living in Montreal, Quebec. I have completed college (referred to as “CEGEP” here in Montreal) in Computer Science. I started lifting weights in my first year of CEGEP (2002). Before that, I was extremely unhealthy in high school and did not really look after myself. I drank numerous amounts of cola, ate junk food regularly and decided to despise fruits and vegetables. Miraculously, I did not gain massive amounts of weight (thanks to my fast metabolism) but I didn’t feel good and that was a problem. So, after consulting a few friends who were into training regularly, they lead me on to the right path and got me lifting weights. I frequented my local gym (Monster Gym) regularly and noticed an increase in my overall mood to the better. My physique started to change and for the first time in my life, I had muscles! (I can hear the laughs out there).

Why I Started This Site

Almost everyone who has lifted weights in their lives claims to know how to do it properly, but the fact of the matter is that serious training is not something everyone truly knows about. I see a lot of people making mistakes at the gym, either by reading a magazine that states lies such as the latest and “quickest ways to get a six pack for the summer” or inquiring a friend who supposedly knows about training the correct way even though they have no idea behind the discipline of weight training. I started this website because I want to inform the rookie (a newcomer to training) who simply wants to train and get strong without all the useless bullshit that stems from the “fitness” magazines. This site is targeted to the trainee who is completely lost when it comes to strength training and has absolutely no clue on where to begin. No prior weight lifting or training experience is needed to begin a strength training routine.

Please note that this site has nothing to do with Mark Rippetoe, Lon Kilgore or The Aasgard Company. The opinions and reviews mentioned on this site are not sponsored or endorsed by said parties. All the content on this site is only a detailed journey of a beginner starting a strength training program.