Starting Strength

Whew, it's been a while since I've updated.

After my first month or so of crossfit, I read that Greg Glassman advocates a background of strength training to maximize what one can get out of crossfit. I then decided that I'd do a strength training program for a while before coming back to CF.

I chose starting strength (SS) because I had a friend who was on it, and was making some pretty good gains. I bought the book and got started at the beginning of April 2011.

The program I chose was the following (Rippetoe, the author of SS, had this as a sample workout. He advocates power cleans but I didn't trust myself to learn it properly):

workout A:

3x5 Squat

3x5 Benchpress

1x5 Deadlift

workout B:

3x5 Squat

3x5 Press

3 to failure on Pullups.

I go to the gym 3x a week, and alternate between A and B essentially.

My starting weights were:

155 squat

155 benchpress (I, like many before me, chose to emphasize this exercise in my previous training)

185 deadlift

85 press

8 pullups

After 4 months of trying to go consistently (and being terrible at it, I estimate that I've gone maybe 50% of the days) I've seen some pretty good gains.

Bodyweight went from 170 to 183 (with no change in BF%, eating like crap but lots of protein).

Current lifts:

265 squat

205 benchpress

300 deadlift

125 press

9 pullups (haha)

I'm positive that my gains would have been much higher had I actually gone 3x a week, and I'm still able to add weight every workout (yay beginner gains). I think I might stall pretty soon though. I've already stalled on the press a couple of times, but Rippetoe advocates staying on the program until squats stall.

After going through this process, I have some observations:

1) Do EXACTLY what Rippetoe suggests. Don't add exercises or change rep schemes for no reason. Extra exercises might do more harm than good. Extra reps/exercises reduce your ability to recover and your ability to do the next workout properly.

2) Eat and rest properly! For the last couple of workouts, I've been trying to press 125 for 3 sets of 5. The first time I tried, I got 5-4-4. The second time, when I should be stronger but with not enough sleep and food, I got 4-3-2.

2) Learn form properly (I had to reset a couple of times after realizing that my form was crap. I also bruised a rib deadlifting incorrectly).

3) Go consistently.

Anyway, that's been my SS experience so far; I'll keep updating on this.