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.

To answer the most basic questions, I’m going to direct everyone to this forum thread found on the Bodybuilding.com forums (member kethnaab). I have included some of the top questions on my site for archival purposes. Most of these answers should be credited to him.

The solution was simple: use chalk. As a famous strength training coach once wrote in his book, “[Chalk] increases traction between the bar and the hand, reducing the likelihood of lost bars and grip accidents. It reduces callus formation, since stress against the skin of the palm and the fingers is a function of the movement of the bar against it, and callus forms in response to this stress.” (p. 211) Putting this little experiment to the test, I had a wonderful workout with the chalk. Well, except the first time I actually put it on my hands, it made a bit of a mess around me. One trainee looked at me and smirked at my novice attempt (there was a cloud of chalk around me). I quickly apologized for the mess. I understood to use minimal amounts of the substance upon the next time I applied it. Luckily, my local gym (the Monster Gym in Montreal) allows the usage of chalk (I made sure to ask one of the staff members about this). This is a great thing as many gyms do not permit such a commodity. Of course, every real gym should allow it, as the coach goes as far to mention that “A gym without chalk is a health spa.”

When starting a strength training routine, there are two workout schedules to follow, and I have listed them below. You will pretty much alternate workouts every other day. Take a look at the schedule below to get an understanding of what to do when:

• Monday: Workout A
• Wednesday: Workout B
• Friday: Workout A

The following week, your schedule will look like this:

• Monday: Workout B
• Wednesday: Workout A
• Friday: Workout B

As you can see, we are alternating workouts every other training day. Now, you don’t have to train only on Monday/Wednesday/Friday; you can, for example, train Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday instead. The key thing to remember here is that you should train 3 times a week non-consecutively as to let your body recover for a full day after your training day. After one week of training is over, you take two days off and then start the next week of training.

If you’re new to weight lifting, stick to this workout routine and don’t change anything. Training more often per week does not mean more results (in fact, you can hinder your progress if you over-train).

The Exercises / Lifts

Here’s a list of the exercises associated for every workout along with their appropriate Sets and Repetitions. These exercises are placed in order, so always follow them accordingly and never do one before the other just because you feel like it or else you will be ruining the whole point of this routine. The numbers next to the exercises are Sets X Reps. If you don’t know any of these exercises or how to execute them properly, look into getting a copy a strength training book for your own sake.

Workout A

• Squats: 3 x 5
• Bench Press: 3 x 5
• Deadlift: 1 x 5
• Dips (weighted): 2 x 5-8

Workout B

• Squats: 3 x 5
• Press: 3 x 5
• Power Clean: 3 x 5
• Chin-ups: 3 x 8

Every Workout / Assistance Work / OPTIONAL

• Weighted Sit-ups at a 45 degree angle on decline bench: 3 x 5
• Weighted Hyper-extensions: 3 x 8

Do not add, remove or substitute ANY of these exercises or else you will be wasting your time. These are key exercises to increasing strength in any individual in the shortest amount of time. No other exercises out there come close to the efficacy of the ones listed above. Adding more exercises to this list is considered over-training. Removing any of these exercises just because you don’t like them means you have already handicapped yourself for gaining the most amount of strength. Please do not mess with this routine or else you are seriously wasting your time. You might as well quit now if you don’t believe in strength training.

As you can see, there is no “bicep curls” or any direct arm work involved because your arms will be indirectly trained over time. I have seen my arms personally grow at their peak just by following this strength training routine and I haven’t done any direct bicep work. Why? Sometimes indirect work to a muscle is the best way to train it as opposed to targeting it directly. A lot of people don’t seem to understand that these days and they choose to ignore it. Just give this program a month of work and you will see your arms get sore without you doing a bicep curl.

Lastly, the weighted sit-ups and hyper-extensions are optional. If it gets in the way of progressing on the five core lifts (squats, deads, power cleans, shoulder presses, bench presses) then stop doing them.

What You Need to Know

Proper warm-ups are always required for proper strength training. You should do a minimum of 3 warm-up sets before you start your heavy sets. If you are unsure how to warm up, take a look at my warming up page.

Never increase (or “ramp”) your working/heavy sets. If you start doing 150 lbs of squats, then you do it 3 times for the remainder of your exercise workout (this is called “sets across”). Do not increase in weight once you have started your heavy set. Leave the increase for the next time you do squats. This goes for any exercise: proper technique is always more important than the amount of weight on the bar.

Somewhat Acceptable Substitutions

Honestly, you should stick to the above exercises, but you can substitute a few of the exercises with the following options. You should know that you’re much better off doing power cleans than barbell rows. As a famous strength training coach has said many times, “My opinion about barbell rows is as follows: f*** barbell rows. Really. F*** them. Stop wasting time worrying about barbell rows and get your deadlift up to 500. By then you’ll have your own opinion and you won’t have to worry about mine.”

• Replacing Power Cleans: you can do Pendlay Rows (3 x 5) and Chin-ups ( 2 x 8 ) as a replacement.
• Replacing Dips: Decline Dumbbell Bench press with your hands’ palms facing each other.

Additions to the Workouts

I’m quite confident to say that these additions will never come handy on this program, but should the need arise, you can add the following exercises to your weekly routine on Fridays only (or the last training day of the week). If you are just starting out new on this program, do not do these until 3 weeks into the routine. Trust me, these are really unnecessary and only here for the few people with exceptions.

• Parallel Bar Dips or Inline Skullcrushers (2 x 8-12)
• Barbell / Dumbell / EZ-Curls: (2 x 8-12)

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.