The next step in the series of books I recommend is called “Practical Programming for Strength Training” by an infamous coach. It’s available on Amazon or the book’s website.

Please note that the above is an opinion and a recommendation/review on a book I have read. This site and its content has nothing to do with Mark Rippetoe, Lon Kilgore or The Aasgard Company.

Before I give you my suggestions on how to deal with laziness and tiredness, I’ll tell you my personal experience first. Since I’m a computer programmer, I sit on my ass all day writing code. This is mentally exhaustive to begin with and coupled with the caffeine crash, it really drains you down. When I get home, all I want to do is veg out and not socialize with anyone. Thanks to all this, I really don’t feel like training at all.

So here’s what I do: I think back to my previous training experiences, especially at the end of every workout session. Anyone who remembers their training days will recall the period of relaxation after a good workout. In case you’re wondering, it’s when your hormones (dopamine and serotonin, among others) get released. Don’t you feel happy after pumping some weights? This is what I focus on. This alone gets me motivated to hit the weights again and give it all I got. Once you prepare your mind for it, the rest will flow naturally. Just doing the first exercise alone (e.g. squats) really gets my blood pumping. I am then happy that I did not ditch the scheduled workout for the day.

Now, what if you’re physically tired? This is up to the trainee to figure out and organize their schedule accordingly. If you’re constantly doing physical activities (job-related, sports, etc) it’s best to train on your off days or times where your body isn’t under constant stress. At this point, athletes should talk to their personal trainer/coach for scheduling, and people working physical jobs need to find some time to let their bodies relax before pounding it with some weights.

A forgotten tip, one that I always have to remind myself to do, is taking a quick nap (1.5-3hrs) before your workout to let your mind & body rest a bit. Coming home after a hard day’s work and sleeping for a bit is quite possibly the best thing you can do for yourself. You’ll feel so much more refreshed upon waking up, and a lot more motivated to train.

One last thing I recommend is a cup of coffee or tea before your workout. This is only useful for people who don’t already load their bodies with caffeine throughout the whole day. I find that a cup of tea or a can of Red Bull can really do wonders before exercising, almost magical-like. There are other supplements out there in the wild that are really potent in terms of energy, but I will withhold myself from listing them as getting used to them is a waste of cash and sometimes can be harmful if abused. You’re better off with my above suggestions for now. Happy training!

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.

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.

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.”

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.

One of my weakest areas of training is the bench press I have to admit. As of this post, I am going up in weight on the squat and deadlift on a weekly basis, while the power clean and shoulder press are progressing slowly. This is to be expected according to a professional strength training coach as the squat and deaf-lift use more muscles than the other exercises, so you will go up in weight much quicker on them as opposed to the shoulder press, power clean and bench press.

If you are interested in breaking a bench press plateau, take a look at the following suggestions.

1. Eat well and check your diet: most rookies who start training will go up in weight and strength quite quickly without eating properly, but will end up plateauing eventually. Nutrition is probably the biggest cause of plateaus. If you want your muscles to recover and get stronger, proper nutrition is required during this phase. Remember, muscle is not made in the gym; it’s when you go home and recover after your workouts with good, clean food that allows your muscles to grow. Double check your diet; take in more protein and (clean) carbohydrates during the day. After your workout, have more protein (shakes are good) and eat well. Sometimes, people don’t eat enough and hence plateau since the muscles don’t have enough (or any) food to recover.
2. Make sure your triceps and shoulders are good: weak triceps and shoulders will definitely stall your bench press, so make sure they’re up to par with the rest of your body. Are you doing the shoulder presses properly? Perhaps you may need additional triceps work (weighted dips are great!) to help with the load. This is usually overlooked by a lot of people.
3. Switch to dumbbells: some people have better results with dumbbells than barbells. Rippetoe even says that dumbbells are a great (actually, better) alternative to barbells when it comes to the bench press, as it allows greater range of motion. Of course, you should definitely master the barbell bench press first before you switch to dumbbells.
4. Take a break if you are over-training: if you have been training for months without taking a break, you should really consider laying off the weights for a week to let your fatigued body heal completely. Chances are you will come back stronger than when you left the weights. I have personally seen my strength shoot up quite a bit when I did this once, so I recommend this to anyone who has been training non-stop for months. Of course, if you’re a newcomer to weight training, taking a week off during the first 6 months to a year (in my opinion) is useless. Rookies should train as much and not miss a workout for a year (at least) as over-training their bodies during this stage is almost non-existent. For a rookie, there is no such thing as over-training. No such thing.

A lot of people will also recommend doing high repetitions for a month or two. I personally think this “recommendation” isn’t that great since it defeats the whole purpose of a strength training routine. Just my opinion, anyway.

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.