Starting Strength is another excellent program to follow and if you pick up the book it features an exhaustive description of the bio-mechanics involved in each lift (which you can skip if you just want the charts).

Starting Strength is an excellent book for getting started with lifting.

https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-Basic-Barbell-Train...

"Rip" was my trainer 25 years ago, before he became internet famous. Great guy, great no-bs instruction.

Anyone who wants to lift well should read the Starting Strength book.

Agreed. The reason I would recommend Starting Strength for beginners is the tremendous detail in written instruction, forums with free feedback on form, and zero ambiguity about training program, which act together to remove the barriers to entry for many beginners.

Alternatively you could just read Starting Strength. The only exercise that's difficult in technique is the Power Clean, and you can replace it with Chin-ups. Even Rip does it in his Practical Programming book.

Seriously though, your stabilizers are important and machines do nothing for them.

Starting Strength - because this time I actually started lifting instead of just reading it :)

The Pragmatic Programmer - It has been recommended to me by a good developer that is self-taught like me. So far so good. Some things are a bit dated though.

If you want to lift free weights, a great place to start is Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe.

Mark Ripptoe - Starting Strength ;) https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-Mark-Rippetoe-ebook...

The Starting Strength book is fantastic when it comes to showing a lift's mechanics

Have you looked into Starting Strength (the book and the program)? It goes ridiculously anatomical in order to address the most common injuries uncoached weightlifters experience.

You can improve your technique a lot by carefully watching Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength DVD. Ask someone to record video of you lifting every now and then and get a feel for your body in space or upload it to youtube for advice if you're unsure.

Starting Strength is such a great book. Simple no nonsense. The diagrams are extremely helpful. I never knew you could fill that many pages on performing a proper squat.

I've read through Starting Strength (thanks to some HN thread IIRC). Quite motivational (and almost too detailed).

I'm currently looking for a correctly equipped gym near my apartment in Paris, France. Looks like free weights are not fashionable at all here ...

You need to exercise. I specifically recommend Mark Rippetoe's "Starting Strength," but any exercise will be good for you.

I find a meditative activity to be of some help. I enjoy rifle marksmanship, gardening, and washing dishes.

Yeah... I hurt my knees doing squats. I suspect it was due to tight hamstrings but can't be sure. (I tried doing it right - following the Starting Strength book, not going to heavy, etc).

I'm fine now, but anytime I try to do squats again, my knees (patellar tendon) hurt.

Strong people would be healthier than weak ones. As Mark Rippetoe (author of Starting Strength says):

“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.”

Currently reading Little Brother by Cory Doctorow - an OK book - and keeping Starting Strength by my side as a reference.

Starting Strength is a great introduction to weightlifting and getting stronger, I highly recommend it.

To add to the barbell exercise theory, I've found Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength to be a great mathematical based source of strength training, focusing on full body barbell exercises.

I second Mr. Rippetoe's work. Starting Strength is a great book for those learning to lift. The technical detail he goes into is lost on a lot of people, but I really enjoyed how thorough he was.

If you are serious about it, there's a book by Mark Rippetoe called Starting Strength that explains this in more detail.

"The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle and "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe (applicable to men mostly) contain lifetime lessons on mind and body management. "Principles" is very useful for mental models and just critical thinking (or, rather, structured self-doubting).

I also found it difficult to learn the lifts from the Starting Strength book, so I bought the DVD and it was very helpful.

Didn't the author of Starting Strength have extreme back injury issues?

Buying a book like Starting Strength by Rippetoe and starting with low weights goes a long way to getting your form good enough that you won't seriously injure yourself.

The squat and deadlift are great for the back, as long as you use proper technique. See Starting Strength by Rippetoe. You should be able to sit on any chair without back pain. An ergonomic chair is no answer --- it is a crutch that helps the problem grow.

There's probably people more qualified than I am that can respond, but I have heard a lot of recommendations for and enjoyed https://stronglifts.com/5x5/

Note: I see Starting Strength recommended here too, which I've also heard good things about from my experienced weightlifting friends. I think they're very similar programs, and that book has a lot of good detail on technique.

Actually, the stronglifts 5x5 workout is pretty much the same as Mark Rippetoe's program in Starting Strength (squat, deadlift, press one day, squat, bench, clean, back extension the next)

I'm about halfway through the book and I would highly recommend it.

When sitting all day in front of a computer, I like to take breaks and use a jump rope. It helps get the blood flowing, and I'm able to think better and concentrate more easily afterwards.

Also, many people have said it before, but squats are absolutely amazing at getting in shape. Yes, if you do them incorrectly, you will hurt your knees. Starting Strength by Rippetoe tells you how to do them correctly.

This is a good point I hadn't really thought about. For most tech stuff I've always got my head in a book, but when it came time to learn how to lift, my copy of Starting Strength only got me so far. It wasn't until I watched videos of others' lifting technique that I could really grasp some of the concepts.

I'd recommend Starting Strength as well for a novice - it's incredibly simple to start out.

https://startingstrength.com/get-started/programs

Starting Strength is one of the best books on building strength, written by Mark Rippetoe and Jason Kelly. they propagate (among others exercises): squats, which is a single exercise that trains about 60% of your body.

Mark Ripptoe's Starting Strength is one of the best books out there for Strength Training.

Read Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe (http://aasgaardco.com/store/books) and follow the program in that. It starts slow and progresses as you do.

> Body by Science

It's interesting - Body by Science apparently advocates the use of Nautilus machines. This is the polar opposite of that recommended in Starting Strength, which several others in this thread have recommended.

“A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.”

― Mark Rippetoe, Starting Strength

I have found kettlebells to be very useful also. There is a sub-reddit on them: http://reddit.com/r/kettlebell . I will have to look into the Starting Strength book, I always had problems when trying to do squats before - perhaps bad technique.

For women reading this - beware, it's not that easy. I've followed Starting Strength a couple of times and I plateau at 1.3x my weight in deadlift and .75x my weight in squats. Sticking to the program doesn't get me past it. I have to shake it up a lot with more reps, smaller weight intervals, and nearly doubling my food intake.

It was a great way to get started though, and I'm really happy about the changes my body went through in six months or so. After that, you have to find a different program or a trainer.

Absolutely. In fact, Starting Strength was the next book I picked up after the 4-Hour Body, and it was immensely useful and motivating. If I could still edit my comment to mention Starting Strength, I would.

Starting Strength is a fanastic resource about learning about the lifts. Personally, I think Mark Rippetoe's training programs are pretty crap but the information about the technical aspects of the lifts in the book are great.

Alan Thrall also has some videos on Youtube on the bench press that are fantastic too.

Starting Strength is a great program, but I can't understand how beginners are doing power cleans without any kind of guidance from a trainer. Power cleans are really hard to learn - it took me months of going to Olympic weightlifting classes to get even close to good form on them. How did you manage to learn this from a book?

Also, you need to be doing them on a lifting platform for the end of the lift, when you have to drop the weight all the way to the floor. Not too many gyms (in the UK, at least) seem to have these.

Totally agree with this. Getting a trainer is key if you are new - they take all the brain work out of it for you: so you just have to show up. They will also ensure your form is good, so you don’t get injured 2 months in (which happens when people lurch off the couch and into a 5x/week CrossFit regimen). If that’s cost prohibitive, read Starting Strength or check out 5x5 (five by five) for workout programming.

Regarding self-esteem: in addition to improving your physical appearance and general feeling of well-being, exercise also teaches you intimately how to use your will to push through problems/adversity, which builds self-confidence immensely.

Building yourself is also more rewarding than building any work project: nobody can take from you what you build for yourself, and you get out of it directly what you put in. How often can you say that about work?

If you are interested in free weights, Starting Strength is the best book out there. In free weights you have to be extremely careful about your form otherwise you could seriously injure yourself. This book goes deep in the human anatomy and mechanics to teach you how to approach free weights.

http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-3rd-Mark-Rippetoe/dp...

Good point. I found that changing what I was doing was a massive help. For instance, I don't enjoy running, so I started reading up on Stronglifts / Starting Strength and got into weight training. I log what I do on Fitocracy to track personal bests as I tend to get addicted to quantified life type stuff.

Replace weights with sports (especially group sports where you are accountable to others), cycling, running or whatever you enjoy.

To start: Starting Strength book - having a plan and goals.

> It is very easy to get injured doing squats or power cleans with any kind of sizable weight. For example the injury rates in CrossFit are estimated to be between 20-75% [1,2] of participants which means you're more likely to get hurt than to get fit. Personally I don't think this is due to the exercises being more dangerous but rather that the excellent group motivation of CrossFit working a little too well and people overreaching in their lifts.

One of the primary reasons I recommended Starting Strength is because it's not crossfit. Crossfit != squats and power cleans, and those injuries are not for squats and power cleans. Starting strength has built in regulation so you don't need to worry about going too fast or too slow. It also tells you when and when not to use power cleans. Just read the book.

5/3/1 is primarily a strength program, but it will definitely benefit general wellness and resting metabolic burn.

In terms of barbell-oriented strength programs, 5/3/1 is a good program to do after you've mastered the basics and started to plateau with something like Starting Strength [0] or Stronglifts 5x5 [1]. Those two programs take advantage of the linear gains that are possible for people in their first year of training, and 5/3/1 is a methodical approach to continuing to improve strength when simply adding 5lbs to the bar every workout stops working.

Starting Strength is a great book for understanding the principles and benefits of barbell lifting (and the videos from the old DVD are very good). The introductory essay is considered to be one of the best summations of strength training and its benefits. A lot of people believe that they aren't interested in strength training because they don't feel attracted to the extreme manifestations of the sport, but then discover that it delivers mental health and brain sharpening benefits in ways that they didn't expect.

All of the programs I mentioned are built around the core barbell lifts, which are squat, deadlift, shoulder press, bench press, cleans, and rows.

[0] https://startingstrength.com/about

[1] https://stronglifts.com/5x5/

Wow, two recommendations for Starting Strength on HN in one week. I have already taken started incorporating the advice at the gym and it seems barbells might be my friend after all.

The Easy Way to Stop Smoking worked for me 7 years ago and I can't recommend it enough. I'll never forget scanning the table of contents and flipping to chapter 21, it sold me on the book.

I've started Drawing on the right Side of the Brain, which is basically self paced training. Really insightful so far.

Looks like a promising book list.

You can get a really excellent ROI with things like kettlebells. I'd recommend the book Simple & Sinister and finding a Strongfirst coach in your area (the organization associated with the book).

If you can find a way to manage your time more effectively, barbell work is even better. Rippetoe's Starting Strength and a Starting Strength coach in your area would be your best introduction.

Not that I think you were being literal, but you don't have to ride your bike 2-3 hours per day to get the benefits of exercise. The biggest problem most people face is not knowing what to do and how to do it. The above suggestions should be sufficient to overcome that IMO.

Yes. I started out with Starting Strength then adjusted after reading the Greyskull LP book.

I recently started strength training as a software developer and it’s been a huge boon on my mental health, my confidence and for sticking with decent eating habits.

For people looking to get started, I would suggest Starting Strength, which is a book on Amazon (pretty lengthy, but extremely thorough) or Strong Lifts 5x5 (google it to find the program it’s free on the web).

The basic gist is to do full body barbell movements for 5 sets of 3 or 5 and increase the weight by 5 pounds (2.5 pound plates on each side of the barbell) per session.

The basic barbell movements are

  Squat
  Deadlift
  Overhead press
  Bench
  Bent over row
  (I don’t do power cleans)

Do YouTube proper form, benching especially can rip up your shoulder when done incorrectly.

YouTube channels I watch to keep motivated and to learn stuff like form and nutrition (they limit the bro science as far as my untrained eye can tell):

  Alan Thrall
  Jujimufu
  Eric Buggenhaggen
  Jeff Nippard
  Scooby1961
  Omarlsuf

Remember the following:

-no one is looking at at the gym

-lift only what you can lift, start slow, you will progress very quickly

-Commit to going every week three days a week, except for illness and injury

-Carefully watch form videos on YouTube for the lifts (Alan Thrall and The Art of Manliness are the best)

-If you do sustain an injury, let it heal for a weak or two, but continue lifting around the injury

-strength training is not body building, but it is the ideal place for creating a foundation of strength and overall health, you will lose weight, you will gain muscle and you will be out of the gym in under an hour with the basic barbell movements.

I’ve been lifting for 7 months now and I love it. I suggest everyone do it.

This thread has so much misinformation that it's painful to read. I'd advise anyone offering advice to read "Starting Strength" (Mark Rippetoe), and if you are >40 (or >30 but in very bad physical shape), "The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40". That second book is actually a good read even if you are not over 40, because a) you will be, b) it contains excellent information on our physiology and biochemistry and a great rationale for doing strength training rather than just cardio.

Don't base your decisions on what has been written in this thread. Most information here is anecdotal, garbage, or both.

Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe.

Both of these are excellent. Even if you don't want to follow these programs exactly at least grab Rippetoe's book "Starting Strength" (3rd edition). It is a great reference for all the big lifts - very well illustrated with detailed explanations. Getting stronger (especially as you get older) is critical to good quality of life.

Once you have hit your limits on those two programs move to Wendler's 5/3/1 :) I've done SS and now 5/3/1 for the last 4-5 years and I'm the strongest I've been in my life in my early 40s!

EDIT: Also another great thing about Starting Strength or Stronglifts 5x5 is that it doesn't require much of a time commitment. You can easily be in/out of the gym in an hour or less - if you are not goofing off, 40-45 minutes is pretty typical.

I'm an ex-crossfitter and thought this and the Rippetoe article mentioned were excellent. They have the ring of truth. I loved Crossfit, miss it, and yet probably won't go back.

It wasn't the suffering - that was a positive. It wasn't the injuries - I had chronic shoulder pain that ultimately led to a torn bicep tendon during a set of high-rep cleans for time (of course). The problem was one that Rippetoe mentioned - I just wasn't improving. I suffered extravagantly. Most days I was prostrate on the floor. Many days took me hours till I wasn't nauseous. But I just wasn't getting better. I actually switched to Rippetoe's Starting Strength program and now Wenders 531 and have made steady progress (on strength, at least).

So Crossfit was super fun, but didn't work for me. But the weird thing is that there were many INCREDIBLE athletes in my gym. They were SUPER fit. And they got that way doing Crossfit. So somehow this random variation of high-effort work does work for some people.

Another challenge is what to do if you want to improve but not do Crossfit? There are 3-5 CF gyms within 15 minutes of my house. There are a couple of lame normal gyms. My old CF gym had world-class knowledgeable instructors. I have not been able to find a replacement. And while learning from a book like Starting Strength is ok at the beginning, eventually you need expert help. CF is easy to find. World class strength coaches for the recreational athlete are not.

"When it comes to weight loss, creating a caloric deficit is the most important thing that matters; eating less, not moving more, is the most realistic way to do so."

What? Please read Gary Taubes "Good Calories, Bad Calories" or "Why we get fat". He is one of the leading thinkers in nutrition and is worshipped by other gurus like Tim Noakes (who wrote the runners bible Lore of Running). Taubes spends the first third of "Why we get fat" rebuking this "first law of thermodynamics" approach to dieting.

I'd also argue that nutrition today is evolving from an anecdotal approach to what works e.g. Dr Atkins discovering that if he eats meat-only he gets thin, to a science based approach where we are beginning to understand the profound effect insulin has on fat storage and why dietary fat does not make you fat.

Reddit is a great resource for new data, but not a source. It does however have some amazing pointers. Another case in point is the cult of Mark Rippetoe fans on Reddit and the AMA that Rip did on Reddit a while ago which was awesome. [Rippetoe is pretty much God in strength training circles and his book "Starting Strength" is the strength training bible.]

I've read the book many times, looked at reputable youtube videos, had people with perfect form try to correct mine and still have trouble understanding how to do the lifts perfectly. My brain just turns off during the workout and takes a while to come back. Starting Strength's 30 pages per lift are also overwhelming. I really only need a checklist of 30 things per lift and have to figure out which to emphasize for my crap posture, knees out, chest up, etc.

My numbers should be better, 2.7 years, 185 BW, 400 lb deadlift, 275 bench, 275x5 squat, 150 OHP. All thanks to crappy form, not understanding how to do the exercise properly. People with hunchback posture have a lot more to think about than those with good posture. I got to 375x5 deadlift within 1.5 years. But my form was already crap at 245 and I had no idea because I only checked with video at 225. Also filmed myself and couldn't tell what I was doing wrong, looked ok as far as I could tell at the time. But it was wrong. My idea of how to deadlift/squat/OHP was fundamentally wrong at 1.5 year mark. Bench needed major corrections.

You might be doing it wrong too, you can get away with it for a long time.

A trainer at some globo gym like Planet Fitness, Bally etc. won't promise correct form for 300 lb deadlifters, even if they pull 500 lb themselves. They're just there to make total novices feel comfortable.

If you want proper training you need to find a freeweight focused place like a powerlifting gym, maybe crossfit and pay whatever obnoxious price they charge for personal attention. Train a few months there to get started. Or hope you're not as dumb as me and rely on youtube and books.

As a bible for starting fitness training, might I add that Starting Strength [1], by Mark Rippetoe, is a must read.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287803

Recommended reading:

Starting strength
http://books.google.com/books?id=hq4kAAAACAAJ

Practical Programming for Strength Training
http://books.google.com/books?id=A5iWRAAACAAJ

Both are by Mark Rippetoe.

Starting Strength is a great book and program. While this post isn't necessarily indicative of the quality of the book, he does bring up some interesting points. His reasoning on the proliferation of corporate gyms using specialized equipment is intuitive but I wonder if there is any actual evidence versus marketing which I always assumed was the answer.

It does suck that it's such a pain in the ass to get basic barbell training equipment at a gym. I'd love to have my own rack or share one, but it would never work in apartment life.

Again, you seem to think the book is about this claim that TF has invented some new kind of workout routine. Its not.

At a novice level there is a minimum amount of work that can be done to get the desired outcome. Further, an intermediate or professional athlete also has a minimum amount of work that can be done to get their desired outcome. In every goal, no matter what your experience or skill level, there is a minimum amount of work for the desired outcome.

How do you quantify this minimum amount of work is? The 4 hour body prescribes a methodology of continual trial and measurement. That is what the book is about.. applying this principle to your goals for your own body. And, he has sections in the book for both beginners and more experienced athletes.

Occams Protocol, as the book refers to it, is really a brilliant principle if you can just remove yourself from your expertise in this subject for one minute.

Starting Strength looks great. I started lifting about 15 years ago - my first read was Arnold's 'Encyclopedia of Body Building'. Either of those books would take me a few weeks to really absorb. The Four hour body took me about 6 hours to read, it encouraged me to cut back my workouts from 6 hours per week to 3 hours per week - so far with solid results. That is significant, that is important to me - that is something that I would like to share with other people.

btw, I would not take your bet, however, if that challenge was to happen, I would not bet against Tim Ferriss.

The site recommends crunches and leg extensions... crunches are not a great exercise for functional ab muscles, and leg extensions are generally verboten due to stress on the knees from the open chain loading.

It's good to be thinking of this stuff though. I highly recommend Athlean-X(his free youtube videos, can't say anything about his programs) and Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength program. Between these two, I've gotten into a little weightlifting and I'm loving it. My posture is better than it's been in 40 years.

Just do yourself a favor and go slow. Muscles adapt quickly but joints take time. Lay off the creatine until you have some experience. The 2 best supplements you can take are protein and sleep. Don't forget to hydrate and don't overtrain.

If you get a trainer, get a good one. I got a bro who encouraged me to go too far too fast and now I've got a messed up shoulder. Done properly, weightlifting is one of the safest sports.

If you're a keyboard jockey like me, chances are you have weak external rotator cuff muscles, weak serratus anterior muscles, and tight pec minors. Look into correcting all of that first, before you start shredding your shoulder joint with bench presses and bicep curls.

As someone who started with Starting Strength about a year ago, and who goes to a gym in Manhattan with lots of trainers around...

Nope. The book is far superior to any of the trainers I've encountered. The book has so much detail on each exercise, it will take you weeks to absorb it, but if you read relevant parts before/after each workout, to make sure you're doing everything right, you'll probably wind up with much better form and technique than a random trainer's personal opinions.

And if you don't already know the correct form/technique, then how on earth are you going to evaluate which trainer you can trust? Answer: you can't. The book is the way to go, if you can be conscientious about reading it thoroughly, constantly reviewing it, and following what it says.

Goals goals goals. The implicit assumption is that your goal is to develop something specific over time. You want to get stronger, you want to get bigger, you want to increase your endurance, for example.

Since those specific goals are so common, they fade into the background. But if your goals are more or less one or more of those goals, then yes, do the same set of exercises 50-100 times (progressing weights/intensity/etc). That will stimulate improvements. Doing a bunch of different things every time is 100% better than sitting on the couch, but won't allow you to progress very much. You'll essentially only be progressing e.g. strength when you happen to overlap some motion with the right amount of increase to cause improvement.

But something that you'll do is better than a perfect thing that you'll get bored of and stop doing. Existence is the primary predicate and all that.

Incidentally, Starting Strength (the book) talks about this somewhat. He distinguishes between 'training' and 'exercising'. Training is about progressive overload. Exercise is about moving your body. If you want to change your body, you'll want to train.

It's your study that gives you new skills, not the books, having said this, the following guided the most valuable learning experiences in my life:

"What is Mathematics?" by Richard Courant taught me to think at a higher level of abstraction. I read it after I realized the parts of SICP (which recommendation here I obviously second) I liked most were the math-related parts and I think it is fair to call it a SICP for mathematics, at least I don't know a book that comes closer. Then I also used Courant's "Differential and Integral Calculus" and Spivaks "Calculus" with his very detailed answer book, and this way I self-taught myself enough material to finally be able to do some reasonably serious math, e.g. proofs.

After reading "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools" I wrote my own implementation of grep with state machines, then a compiler for a simple language and finally understood what a programming language really is. "Programming Language Pragmatics" was a very useful book here, too, thanks to it teaching me a range of different possible semantics for common concepts in programming languages I was able to learn new languages much more easily and easily spot bugs that I would otherwise spent hours on.

"The Mindful Way through Depression" and the accompanying CD with guided meditations taught me to meditate and meditation forever changed the way I react do difficult situations.

"Starting Strength" taught me correct exercise technique that completely changed the outcomes of my strength training.

The usual advice is to do Starting Strength (little bit more technical, is a book) or StrongLifts. (little easier, is a website)

Both are focused on barbell compound lifts. There are many many strong opinions on what type of weight is best in what schedule, with many persuasive arguments backing them up. This is because you will get stronger and gain muscle mass if you eat at a surplus and do basically anything involving picking up a weight.

Meat doesn't actually care about the routine! Your triceps can't tell if you did six reps or seven. Just doing some kind of heavy lift is enough.

I got lucky. I had a friend who had been lifting for years, so I didn't have to go alone when starting out.

If I had to make a recommendation for a beginner who might feel stressed out going while being overweight or skinny, I'd suggest you do some research into a program to follow strictly first, then go with a good plan. I recommend reading through Starting Strength for your first time.

Also like everyone says, no one is going to fault you for trying to get in shape. Most people are actually willing to help out if you talk to them and let them.

Masters Of Doom - The value of an unbalanced life and focused hard work. Also, how to start a startup. A really fun read, to boot.

Fooled By Randomness - a) Survivorship bias. b) If you look at revealed preferences, people choose regular small gains with a rare huge loss over regular small losses and a rare huge gain even though that choice is -ev. c) Much more!

Hackers and Painters - One of the most insightful, subversive, and surprising texts out there.

C Interfaces and Implementations - Great examples of good API design and how to build clean modular code.

The Paleo Manifesto - Explains how the origin of religion was probably as a set of models for coping with the transition from hunting/gathering to civilized agriculture. The part of the book where he points out that the story of the fall of man in the Bible is probably the story of this transition is super interesting.

The Game - Made me realize that the narrative told by boomer and gen-x parents about how to attract a woman is probably doing young men (and women) more harm than good. I would not try to treat this as a how-to manual, though. A fun yarn.

Starting Strength - After years of fumbling around in the gym this cut through a lot of bad ideas about fitness, exercise, strength, and health. It lead to the first real (and lasting) progress I've ever made physically.

Understanding Comics - Understanding art and visual communication.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Up there with Hackers & Painters in its rate of insight & surprise per page.

Fail Safe Investing - Thought provoking ideas about why we invest and how best to go about doing that. (The ideas stand up, IMO, but some of the concrete advice on how to implement those ideas is very dated.)

Good Calories, Bad Calories - It turns out that even scientists can be dishonest and corrupted by politics.

Good advice to have someone who knows what they're doing show you how to deadlift and back squat. I read Starting Strength before I started, but I'm glad I didn't try to do it on my own.

I'm iffy on the barefoot running advice. If you're going to run barefoot, it's probably best to do it on a soft surface like a grass field. But, that will allow you to continue to heel strike, and worse, because your heel will sink further into the ground, may increase the stress on your achilles. I prefer to advise people to try to land quietly[1], since that usually equates with landing softly. Also, re: heel strike, see this:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/why-we-get-running-...

[1] Part of the reason I no longer run with music. I want to listen, literally, to my body.

People have gotten way too technical with this.

You need to do some sort of a squat, pull, and press at least once a week. Go heavier each workout, or at least each week.

You don't need to read any fancy books about physiology, and although I think that Starting Strength is the best book on the market for learning how to train sensibly, it's no replacement for a good coach. If you go to StartingStrength.com, there is a directory of coaches. Or, just find someone at a gym who is strong, and ask him (or her) to show you a couple of lifts. Start comparing what he tells you to videos you watch online, and go from there.

Jim Wendler (of EliteFts.com) likes to say that he's glad the internet didn't exist when he was learning how to train because it forced him to go out there and just lift instead of wanking around on internet forums and trying to find the perfect 8 week program.

> Again, you seem to think the book is about this claim that TF has invented some new kind of workout routine. Its not.

OK. Admittedly I am attacking my own impression of a book I don't own (and don't plan to). Technically I am beating up a strawman, which is always an uneven fight.

> How do you quantify this minimum amount of work is? The 4 hour body prescribes a methodology of continual trial and measurement. That is what the book is about.. applying this principle to your goals for your own body.

Thank you for the best point made yet. I think it's great to experiment on yourself. I keep a log for more or less this purpose. However, it is problematic to generalise from "this worked awesomely for me" to "this will work awesomely for everyone forever", because novice gains dry up fast.

> Starting Strength looks great. I started lifting about 15 years ago - my first read was Arnold's 'Encyclopedia of Body Building'. Either of those books would take me a few weeks to really absorb

Yeah, I had Arnold's book in high school. Spent hooooours in the gym doing every variation of shoulder exercise known to man. My only really fond memory of the book is that it insisted on squatting and by god I did lots of them. Squats have never let me down.

> The Four hour body took me about 6 hours to read, it encouraged me to cut back my workouts from 6 hours per week to 3 hours per week - so far with solid results.

I am very pleased it is working for you. I note in passing that Starting Strength aims for 3 workouts of 45 minutes duration -- less time than you are spending now.

Edit: a good book to follow Starting Strength is Practical Programming for Strength Training, by Rippetoe et al.

I'll second the suggestion to read Starting Strength if you're going to lift weights. Starting Strength has excellent descriptions of how to perform the lifts correctly. If you're not lifting with correct form you could hurt yourself. If you're not meeting the lifting standards then it's impossible to quantify your progress.

I'm doing something similar to Starting Strength and I really enjoy it, but it's not the be-all end-all. If bodyweight exercises are your thing, more power to you.

I have to disagree with you on the machines though. From what I've read, they tend to train large muscle groups but fail to build up stabilizer muscles, which can cause some nasty problems if you keep at it for a long time. A good friend of mine worked out exclusively on machines for a while and wound up having to work (as a developer) in wrist braces because the muscles in his arms were all out of whack. He thought he'd gotten carpal tunnel syndrome or something similar, but his physiotherapist did a quick exam and asked him if he worked out on machines X or Y. He answered in the affirmative, and she told him to stop immediately and start stretching and do some bodyweight stuff.

Bodyweight or barbell exercises won't lead you down that path, but machines can and do cause problems. Be careful!

In no particular order:

Politics and philosophy:

Ishmael - Daniel Quinn (even though in the end, it's just a cute, in essence a softies introduction to anarchist communism)

On property - Proudhon (Meta, ye oldist anarchy)
Das Kapital (If you read Marx, also read on Marx, can't stress this enough)

Beyond good and evil (but in his thought in general) - Nietzsche (Mainly for showing there are no absolutes, moral is what we make of it, and in that moral we can excel)

And so, so many others, philosophy really adds up, just keep on reading, there's fundamental books for sure, but every publication adds up in some respect.

Sports and nutrition:

Starting Strength (for making me bad ass strong in the last couple years)

'Paleo' diet (for showing an extreme solution for a more simple problem, that actually worked and made me not fat anymore)

Some random books that made a huge impression the last years:

The Alchemist, for showing how humble you can experience the wonders of life

Siddhartha, same really.

A short summer of anarchy (biography of Durrutti, rise of
anarchism in 30s Spain, out of print)

Crime and Punishment and Karamazov (There's beauty in the darkest corners of the human spirit, and so much more)

The Prince

Butler (For using Nietzsche's deconstruction to argue against 'genetic' discrimination, controversial, but very good)

Metamorphosis - Kafka (I don't have a one liner to summarize this. Just read it, it's < 100 pages)

Funny enough, as far as Tech and Business goes, I skim books to get some details, but at the end of the day most value comes from hacking around. For both.

You don't have to buy the book - the same advice is given on the website you'll see if you search google for it. Or even do Stronglifts, which is the same kind of thing as Starting Strength (some people even consider it a ripoff) and it's free.

But don't go shooting the messenger because he's a bit of a meathead and turn people off to good advice as a result. That's just employing logical fallacy. Really, the benefits of weightlifting and eating properly are so great that if you tried it you wouldn't be surprised I'm so adamant about these programs. They literally prevent you from dying early.

I was diagnosed with ADHD 10 years ago. Tried a few drugs, and while it definitely helped with the ADHD symptoms, the other side effects that affected my daily life were too much.

I switched my diet from a high carb to high protein, high fat. Instead of a bagel for breakfast, I'll eat a couple eggs, a breakfast meat, and every once in a while a piece of toast. Tons of whole fresh fruit all day. Lunch is similar: think a chipotle style meal with a base of protein and rice and some light veggies. More fruit and raw vegetables and nuts for snacks. Dinner is the same thing - protein base but fewer carbs and more veggies. I'll have some candy in the evening from time to time.

I also started lifting weights 3x a week. I love it cause it's the most efficient way for me to exercise - I spend 60-120 minutes in the gym three times and work my whole body. Heavy squats, deadlifts and presses - strengthens the back and hips, makes sitting in a chair much easier, and is a really great vector for activating that hyperfocus we love so much. I read a book called Starting Strength that basically gave me all the info I needed to get started.

Since starting this routine about 8 or 9 years ago, I find I'm sleeping better, my focus is way better, I'm much more pleasant to be around socially, I'm way less impulsive and interruptive, I make fewer stupid rash decisions, and I'm generally in a better, chipper mood a lot more.

Edit: Might add: I drink coffee like it's going out of style and don't find that caffeine really affects my focus all that much - more my energy levels. They're similar but on different axes.

What gets lifting to stick and become a habit will be different for everyone.

But what worked for me was Bigger, Leaner, Stronger by Michael Matthews

https://www.amazon.com/Bigger-Leaner-Stronger-Building-Ultim...

It's an updated approach to Starting Strength. It builds a weekly routine around the core lifts of bench, incline bench, overhead press, squat, and deadlift.

And while he dives into some iffy science at times and the diet section is – while informative and eye opening to me in the beginning about how much I needed to change my diet – it's also extremely unrealistic, especially for a beginner.

But, if you keep those things in mind, it's a strong base to build a lifting habit around.

I've been lifting 5 times a week for a couple years now and, while I've since modified much of the book to fit my personal goals and approach, it helped me get somewhere from no previous lifting experience (other than aimlessly wandering around the Y in my teens and 20s).

I can second that anecdote. I took up weightlifting (Strong Lifts 5x5) about two years ago. I used to have pretty regular back pain, but weightlifting 3x a week and it went away. I've also noticed that my standing posture improved on it's own as well.

As anyone whose done squats near their max can tell you, it's far from effortless, but over time a few co-workers have joined me and they've had similar benefits.

For anyone looking to get started, I'd actually recommend Starting Strength (by Mark RippleToe)over Strong Lifts, but really any of the common programs (Ice Cream Fitness, GreySkull, etc) are good.

Yeah, it is refreshing to see people posting results from these predominantly weight lifting programs. Helps keep me motivated on what I'm doing.

If anyone is interested in starting, but lacks the money for a personal trainer, I've found Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe (http://www.amazon.com/By-Mark-Rippetoe-Lon-Kilgore/dp/B005PI...) to be a huge help in learning all the lifts. The first chapter is almost 60 pages just on squats going over everything from foot position to hand position, along with an explanation of why.

At first I upvoted this site because I was impressed by the concept.

But then I thought about it a bit more... and I have to say that it's not really a good piece of information for beginners. When I saw that under the "shoulders" section the Overhead Press was never mentioned, I was stunned! And the deadlift form [1] is wrong. Your head shouldn't be looking straight forward, you should be looking at a slight angle down to the floor in order to keep your spine in better form. [2]

For one, beginners should begin with routines revolving around the main 4 lifts (Overhead press, Bench press, Squat, Deadlift). They should not begin by doing a fuckarounditis (yes it's a real term that's used) routine they make themselves by thinking "what muscle do I want to grow today?".

Secondly, beginners need to understand the importance of sleep, diet and protein intake. These are vital factors that aren't immediately addressed by this website.

There's already lots of good advice here about how to get into weightlifting (/r/fitness, /fit/ sticky, Starting Strength, etc.). I highly recommend you buy the book Starting Strength and read it cover to cover. It goes into detail about everything.

[1]: https://musclewiki.com/Exercises/Male/Lowerback/#Deadlift

[2]: https://startingstrength.com/training/looking-up-in-the-dead...

Starting Strength is bandied about like the bible of fitness. While it is a great read, especially for beginners, you should take any such cult following with a grain of salt.

For anyone who has never done free weights I cannot recommend enough the need for finding a competent trainer when you are starting out. Although SS goes into great detail on how to properly perform the lifts nothing compare with having a professional evaluate your form.

This is even more important in a sport like lifting where often times the first hint that you are not using proper form is through injury.

The big catch to this advice is that most professional/fitness trainers are worthless. I don't have any advice on how to weed out the good ones from the bad ones other than getting recommendations from someone you trust.

Seconded almost as strongly as I possibly can, but with added caveats! I was a bean pole for my entire life, struggling to gain weight. The answer was simple: I wasn't giving my body the signal to gain muscle by lifting some HEAVY weights. I read Starting Strength and followed the program. I put on ~30lbs over 3-4 months, and got WAY strong. That's after having done crossfit for at least 5-6 years. I took my squat from 185lbs to 300lbs.

It took 2 months of rereading the squat chapter, filming myself, correcting myself, etc, before I finally got that one down. Now that I understand it, I can spot faults in others, but it took a while for it to click. Rereading the dbook helps, though a couple of Rippetoe's coaching cues set me on the wrong path. A starting strength specific coach can straighten you out in just a couple of sessions. DON'T think any other certification, personal trainer, or coach is a substitute, they are NOT.

Don't do starting strength for a year. (If it takes you that long to do the novice linear progression, you are definitely doing something wrong.) Rippetoe's advice for intermediates is pretty marginal IMO and you can't possibly stay a novice for a year doing the program.

Switch to Barbell Medicine's "the bridge" instead of resetting the weights a second time.

The book "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe (book and author pretty much universally lauded by the strength training community) is also a great starting point.

Beginners can often become overwhelmed by all the differing viewpoints and training methods presented to them when researching strength training but (besides avoiding injury by maintaining proper form and generally listening to your body to allow sufficient recovery time) the most important thing by far in anyone's fitness lifestyle is simply consistency in actually working out.

For skill building:

Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards

The Little Schemer by Friedman and Felleisen

Literature, for starters:

Heinlein's earlier works

Anything by Asimov

1984 and The Animal Farm by Orwell

Detective novels by Doyle or Christie

Hackers by Steven Levy

>From a biological perspective, a specimen might want to be able to do this to signal to potential mates that he is worthy of reproduction

You've made a lot of assumptions about his motivations. In Starting Strength, Rippetoe basically makes the claim that these exercises are the most effective way to improve someone's overall health and fitness. His attitude is probably best summarized by the following quote:

>Humans are not physically normal in the absence of hard physical effort.

Now, I'm not going to argue with you about whether humans need exercise to be healthy or if so, which kinds. But for the people who do come to that conclusion (that apparently includes the author), there's plenty of motivation beyond attracting mates.

The deterministic-coupling-between-exercise-and-fitness thing is a good idea, but I'm worried that the OP has ignored the vital, crucial importance of doing something wise with your daily hour of fitness. If you're a fitness n00b and spend an hour a day doing steady-state cardio on the treadmill, your results will be hilariously worse than if you implement a formal fitness plan that has worked for lots of other people such as [0-1] or similar. All "exercise" activities are not created equal.

[0] Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength
[1] Lynn MacDonald's Body Recomposition

I even more urge people taking this advice to read and go slow. It's super easy to hurt yourself if you end up with bad technique or go up in weight too fast--anything more than 5 lbs at a time is too fast. Read Starting Strength for some of the technical background and get some help from a friend who actually knows what proper technique looks like.

IMO - just get the Starting Strength book by Mark Rippetoe and run with that for a year or two (or possibly forever depending on your goals). Quick gym sessions (45 min or less), strength focused exercises and IMO for those basic barbell movements it is the best.

If after you a bit of time you stall in strength and wish to go farther add in more bodybuilding type exercises or switch to another program like Wendlers 5/3/1...etc

But really if I had to recommend anything to most people to stay strong (esp as you age and live the lives we live today), the basic barbell exercises taught in Starting Strength are all you really need for a lifetime.

> Starting Strength - because this time I actually started lifting instead of just reading it :)

For me it's High-Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way. Frankly I don't care about strength, and am focusing instead on bodybuilding.

I used to spend a lot of hours in the gym not really knowing what I'm doing (no plan, no goals). After this book I now have a good plan and clear, predictable goals.

Many of the comments here seem to be focussing on increasing grip strength but that misses something the article could have delved into more. Grip strength is strongly correlated with health and longevity, but its not directly causal - simply increasing your grip strength wont really add many years to your life. Instead grip strength is strong correlate with overall musculo-skeletal mass and strength, which does have a highly causal relationship with health and longevity. So, focussing purely on grip strength will do more to break the correlation than give you a long life.

If you want to have a healthy, long life focus on overall strength. Squats, deadlifts, odd-object carries etc. If you're new to lifting, have someone who isn't show you proper form. Or just read Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. Its the bible of heavy lifts.

Source: I can deadlift more than 3 times my bodyweight while still having a 7 min mile.

Weight lifting 3x a week for a little over an hour each time. Going to the gym can be daunting if you have never done it and/or don't have a buddy. "I don't know how to use the equipment", etc. I read Starting Strength and afterwards felt confident enough to get in there and try it out.

Strong Lifts follows the same philosophy as SS, but has modified the workout some. The stronglifts site does cover nutrition (calorie/protein intake) to some extent, which SS does not.

I would do some research on your own first before starting a routine. There is a lot of controversy as well as misinformation about the topic.

http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5-beginner-strength-tra...
http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-2nd-Mark-Rippetoe/dp...

As someone who made best progress following the ideas described in Starting Strength after trying numerous approaches that didn't really work, I'd say you can safely assume N=2 now.

Really, this book teaches a very "old-school" approach to fitness but as a matter of fact, it does work and it did indeed work for thousands and thousands of people already. I know we like to get all scientific on everything these days, and I think this is a good thing, but there's something about fitness and especially building muscle that makes intuitive sense without any science whatsoever: If you want to be strong, start lifting heavy things. Do that in a controlled fashion, with a simple workout plan, and you'll eventually succeed.

Starting Strength is the way to go:

http://startingstrength.com/

The basic outline is that it's 5 exercises, three times a week, with three exercises per day - you alternate some of them. It should take about an hour including warm ups.

There's a wiki, but buy the book. For equipment, you'll need weights, a barbell, squat rack, and bench. It's all stuff a gym should have, or is relatively easy to find on craigslist for cheap.

Completely agree, this is very good advice. I wish I had more time to respond but I'm at risk of being late to work. Here's how you put forth the minimum amount of time commitment while deriving the greatest amount of benefit:

-If you typically squat less than 270 pounds all the way down to parallel, do Starting Strength until you do [1].

-If you typically squat at least 270 pounds all the way down to parallel, do Madcow 5x5 [2]. I can't speak past this fitness level because this is where I am.

-Eat according to the Leangains nutrition guide to achieve massive strength gains while getting/staying lean and eating only a couple meals a day [3].

Make sure to read the Starting Strength book or watch Mark Rippetoe videos on youtube to learn proper technique (vitally important!)

[1] http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/The_Starting_Strength...

[2] http://stronglifts.com/madcow-5x5-training-programs/

[3] http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html

Disclaimer: There are obviously other programs which offer the same amount of benefit, but I don't think you'll find anything that surpasses the benefit you'll receive from these guidelines, and you certainly won't find many programs that surpass the simplicity; therefore, for the sake of not overwhelming anybody, I've only listed a small compilation of systems that really work.

Hey bud. Instead of sending $8 a month to have information that is already accessible to you regurgitated to you with pretty UI try this instead...

Do you walk? If you don't, start there.

A study of sedentary, overweight men and women (aged 40 to 65 years) showed they lost body fat and weight when they walked or ran 12 miles a week during an 8-month study, without changing their diet. A control group of non-exercisers all gained weight and fat during the 8-month study."

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

Do you sit at a desk a lot? You probably have poor posture associated with it. Do any yoga, at all. Literally any program.

Here's one from my favorite online yogi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAUf7aajBWE

Do you want to lift weights? For $8, one time, you can order Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe.
- https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-Basic-Barbell-Train...

This book will teach you how to lift the weights, as well as how to program the lifts, which is twice as much as this app is claiming to do. At 1/12th the price for the first year, 1/24th the second, and 1/36th the third, etc..

I disagree about the trainer unless the user is a novice or is okay spending a lot of money on a trainer. In my experience all personal trainers are not created equal. The chapter on doing squats in Starting Strength is 80 pages long. Odds are it would cost you a couple of hundred dollars and many session to get that much information from a good trainer. Reading the book, watching the DVD and working with light weights to focus on correct form would be a better approach that hiring a trainer. After those steps are done it would be useful to hire a trainer to check your form and give you tips.

I’ll echo the sentiment that “being strong” helps keep many maladies at bay. However I cannot recommend Starting Strength for achieving it.

1. The weight and progression advocated by the book is dangerous. I personally had a meniscus tear while squatting 275lb. You might say I didn’t have proper form, but it just takes one moment’s lapse to permanently injure you.

2. I don’t think you need to lift extremely heavy weights to benefit. Largely I think the linear progression extolled by Starting Strength and its supporters are a way to gamify and motivate. But lifting heavier as the only goal may lead to injuries. Motivation can also be found in performing better at some sport.

3. Aesthetically speaking, SS is focused on the legs, glutes, and kinetic chain. Not enough attention is given to upper body. This can lead to strange body proportions. I believe much more focus should be given to the upper body.

> I don't care about being as strong as I can be.

You should.

From the introduction to Rippetoe's Starting Strength:

“Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not. As humanity has developed throughout history, physical strength has become less critical to our daily existence, but no less important to our lives. Our strength, more than any other thing
we possess, still determines the quality and the quantity of our time here in these bodies. Whereas previously our physical strength determined how much food we ate and how warm and dry we stayed, it now merely determines how well we function in these new surroundings we have crafted for ourselves as our culture has accumulated. But we are still animals - our physical existence is, in the final analysis, the only one that actually matters. A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their
squat strength goes up.”

Starting Strength was definitely my best book of 2011. I went from a reasonably out of shape cube denizen who strained at a 125 pound low bar back squat to a 300 pound low bar back squat in just seven months. Rippetoe makes it very clear how any idiot can pick up a lot of strength in a very short period of time. Great Book.

I agree with the general advice, especially with the Starting Strength recommendation, but the milk advice (also from this book), speaking from own experience, is a recipe for disaster unless you are aiming for a powerlifting physique, with plenty of muscle hidden underneath plenty of fat or unless you are __really skinny__. "Starting strength" is great for exercise technique, but go also get a good nutrition book and make sure you are actually following a nutrition plan in the same way you are following an exercise program. It's easier to do it then it is to loose the fat belly afterwards, or to get rid of the stretch marks from a too rapid weight gain.

In a similar vein, I'd recommend Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe.

Before SS, my martial arts instructor always chided me: "Crazybear, don't power through the disarm. There are lots of guys bigger than you. Get the leverage right."

Now he tells newbies: "Don't power through the disarm, it won't work on a guy like Crazybear. Get the leverage right."

It's a simple how-to guide to getting strong. Just follow the program he gives and you become stronger - it's time tested and works well for pretty much everyone. Be really careful with deadlifts, particularly if you have back issues.

Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. I'm four years in, and still getting stronger (albeit, at a much slower rate than when I first started). Some people need variety to keep their interest in exercise, but I like measuring my progress with the same 5 lifts year after year.

I bought fractional Olympic weight plates to help me when I plateaued. Recently tried creatine, and that was a nice boost (10% increase in most lifts), but the side effects weren't worth it.

I don't think the two are _necessarily_ contradictory.

The article says, essentially, that a basic strength and conditioning program is the way to go. The GP says that picking a sport that makes you fit is the way.

To add another opinion, that ties the two together, to the mix: think of the fittest people you know. To a person, they're probably obsessed with their chosen sport (which may be soccer, or bodybuilding, or weightlifting, or running, or ...). These people live and breathe their sport, and when they're not doing it or training for it, they're thinking of how to get better at it.

At some point, thinking of how they can get better at it is probably going to lead them to doing, well, a basic strength and conditioning program. That's because squats and presses and the rest of what the article outlines are still about the best the exercise world can come up with for almost all the athletes out there.

(For what it's worth, I'd strongly second the recommendations of the article for Starting Strength and Olympic-Style Weightlifting. They're both fantastic books.)

Pick up Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe that's mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Form goes a lot farther when you understand the why rather than just trying to replicate it. The book does an extremely good job of explaining the biomechanics behind the movements and what makes proper form proper.

Having a trainer to make sure what you're actually doing matches what you think you're doing is definitely a good thing, but going in informed may make you less nervous.

Lifting barbells allows you to control the weight much more than climbing or punching things.

If you read Starting Strength (Riptoe, mentioned many times on this thread) you'll learn about the recovery and response cycles to stress on the body. You should be regularly increasing the amount you're lifting regardless of your bodyweight (which is what you are always lifting in climbing,) in order to actually increase your strength over time.

Barbells also allow you to start with smaller weights at the beginning of the workout, and then move on to heavier sets when you're warm. AFAIK there's no way to do this with climbing.

Re: barbells not "natural" - firstly, more natural than most of the other equipment in the gym, and secondly it depends what you're doing with them. lifting them over and over, slowly is one way to use them (and builds strength), but speeding up your reps and/or performing power cleans will improve your power (literally rate-of-work) which is what is important in sports like martial arts and ball games. You can train for almost any sport with a barbell, with the right lift, rate, set lengths and intra-workout rest period.

> The thesis of the 4-hour body is to understand as much of the science as meaningful, and then to do the absolute minimum in terms of diet and exercise in order to improve your body

And my point is that the absolute minimum is all you need to get novice gains, in any system. High reps, low reps. High frequency, low frequency. High intensity, low intensity. High density, low density. High volume, low volume. High tempo, low tempo. They will all work for the novice, just not very long. Nothing I have heard about this book changes this fact.

> Instead of just criticizing, perhaps you can offer a suggestion for a better alternative of a knowledge repository aimed at the goals and the audience Tim Ferriss is trying to impact?

For novices, the go-to golden standard is Starting Strength by Rippetoe. He's a strength coach with decades of both practical and research experience. I'd back him in a controlled twin study against Feriss for AU$1000 right now.

I also think Starting Strength is overrated, and I always push friends who are new to barbell training towards Greyskull LP (it's like SS but incorporates AMRAP sets, endurance, and conditioning).

Having said that: Starting Strength the book is invaluable to people who need instruction on the major compound movements and don't have access to a trainer / friend.

I started with stronglifts 5x5, but switched to Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength.

Starting Strength is a little harder to get into because it is based off of a paid book instead of a free pdf. But it is a better program in my opinion. Stronglifts is basically a ripoff of it but with better search engine optimization, hence its popularity.

Differences:

-Stronglifts starts with minimal weight. Starting Strength starts with weight that is hard. I think it is advantageous to do lower weight if you need to figure out form, but if you can get proper instruction there is no reason to start so low, you are just wasting time.

-Starting strength does 3x5 instead of 5x5. 5x5 is too many if the weight is truly difficult (Stronglift agrees and goes down to 3x5 when you get failures)

-Stronglifts has a bunch of instructions and rules to follow, but there really is no explanation as to why, for form or the program. Starting Strength's book is extremely thorough (almost too verbose).

-Starting Strength does power cleans instead of barbell row. Power cleans are essential because they develop speed, while all other exercises in both programs only develop strength. Work the lats with Chin-ups.

-The author of Starting Strength seems more credible since the programs are so similar yet his came earlier, he has been around a long time coaching, and has lift much higher weights than the author of Stronglifts).

Both programs will be a million times better than nothing, but I think if you are serious about getting strong Starting Strength will serve you better.

Lumbar pain is endemic among desk-ridden males who do not get sufficient exercise. Proper posture is incredibly important for protecting the lumbar spine, and men with weak, lengthened muscles (erector spinae and various others) tend to have trouble even extending the lumbar spine properly at all, and pain results from the lumbar spine being in constant flexion. I say "men" because women generally do not experience this problem.

Any exercise that builds strength in the glutes, hamstrings, and lumbar muscles that stabilize the spine, can be highly beneficial for relieving lumbar pain.

My favorite exercise for this is deep barbell squats with a straight spine and weight on the heels, as described in Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. Start with just the bar or no weight at all and increase the load very gradually, focusing on proper form at all times.

I wasn't trying to say that body weight exercise trumps weightlifting when the focus is on strength, I was simply saying that you can build strength in other ways too.

If I woke up one day and decided that the most important thing in my life was to one day bench-press 400 lbs, I would grab a copy of Starting Strength and hit the weights. There really isn't any debate about that.

The original argument against bodyweight exercise was that it's a complete waste of time. It clearly isn't. When I started basic training, about 20 percent of us could actually pass a PT test. Some people could only perform a couple of push-ups. After 8-9 weeks of doing nothing but running and body-weight exercise, nearly everyone passed.

If you took a cycle of recruits, tested them on the bench-press on day 1 of basic training, and then did so again on the last day, I'd be willing to bet that on average, their numbers would be significantly higher.

Very true. I almost included in my post above that I went about learning deadlifts multiple ways. First, I read Rippetoe's Starting Strength book and watched countless videos. Then, I would take selfie videos of my form that I'd look at myself and share with a few close friends further along in their training than myself to get their feedback.

Finally, I also would seek out PTs who looked like they knew their lifts and just book them for single sessions to correct my technique. I would do this several times, as form tends to slide. Well at least for me. Most PTs would offer a free session however I insisted on paying for it as I only wanted the technique check, and not someone to hold my hand every time I needed to go to gym. I think I got respect from them for that. (If I could afford it I'd have their assistance a lot more, alas I couldn't justify it.)

Having said that, I still managed to do my back in after a deadlift session last year. Not during the session, but after - as I went to lift my son the same night who suddenly decided to make himself heavy. It hurt a bit but then was ok, however the next morning I completely locked my back up getting out of bed. Lost out on 4-5 months of training thanks to that. Lesson learned: I was probably going too heavy, too soon. Also, to listen to my body and drop the ego 100%. If something doesn't feel right, just stop, let it recover, and save the energy for the next session.

About to start the 5x5 Powerlifting program now, with the Android app - am looking forward to seeing the results. The reset will include dropping weights a lot, but also locking in 3 sessions per week - a big increase from my previous 1-2.

I've really gone down the rabbit hole with barbell lifting in the past year. Yes, read starting strength, and also practical programming for strength training (rip's other big book). Read Fit, which Kilgore contributed to, and then find some good blogs (I recommend 70sbig).

Barbell lifting can be the nerdiest way to work out.

I'm sure he has more exhaustive logs that support his claims but the quote above (the same story was in Wired a few weeks back) isn't detailed enough to prove that Tim gained 8.5 pounds of muscle per week.

I was unfamiliar with hydrostatic weighing so I looked it up. Hydrostatic weighing appears to measure water displacement to figure out the body's density and hence fat to muscle composition. The density of muscle is 1.06 g/ml and fat is 0.92 g/ml. [1]

A gain of 30 pounds of water (1.0 g/ml) would show up as roughly equal gains in fat and muscle since water's density is about at the midpoint between fat and muscle. Ferriss's claim is +34 pounds of muscle and -3 pounds of fat.

I'm certain Ferriss gained lots of muscle in his four-week trial. His methodology isn't all that different from Gallon Of Milk A Day (GOMAD) plus the Starting Strength workout plan, both of which I've personally used to some success. That said, the freely available quotes don't give all of the necessary information. If you happen to buy the book, please share with us.

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/576481.html

The book Starting Strength has an anecdote which I found here - https://www.athlegan.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-starting-stre....

> There's a famous story about a greek wrestler, back in the 6th century BC – Milo of Croton. He'd train by lifting up and carry around a newborn calf. Every day he continued doing so and as the calf grew into a bull, so did he. This is linear progression.

I lift weights 3 days a week, first following the program laid out in the book Starting Strength and more recently following "The Texas Method" as described in Practical Programming for Strength Training by the same authors.

More recently I've started following the Zone Diet and doing a medicine ball workout 3 days a week (lifting MWF, med ball TuThS). Google "med ball 400".

After a year of that I'm starting to look like a heroic Greek statue (my wife likes that), I feel awesome, and my productivity is through the roof. All in 30 minutes max per day (with one day a week off).

I bike around town, walk a lot, and run occasionally. I find that the strength training makes running and fast cycling easy when I do it.

http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-2nd-Mark-Rippetoe/dp...

Just as a minor complaint, "Stronglifts" is just Mark Rippetoe's intermediate program lifted directly from his Starting Strength book and shamelessly rebranded.

If people are just getting into lifting, you can't do better than Starting Strength[0] for background info and mechanics on the main lifts.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-Mark-Rippetoe-ebook...

Yeah, my anecdata matches yours. I didn't start lifting until I read all the nerdy rave reviews of Starting Strength on this very website (circa 2012 maybe), and bought the book and tried it.

I was already in my late 30s, but in about a year, I doubled my strength on barbell squat, bench press, and deadlift. (Almost any beginner/novice can do this, BTW!)

But, it was a slog. I failed a lot, often repeatedly, before I could complete all my sets and advance to a higher weight. So the progression was slow.

Then we had a second kid and that was that — no time for lifting for a while! Like almost 2 years. And I did revert to a weaker version of myself (still 50% stronger than I was originally, though). But when I finally got back to it, I got back to 90% of my peak in maybe 6-8 weeks.

That same story repeated after we had a third kid.

This is a waste of time. Let me explain.

After years of spinning wheels, like many others, I've found that gimmicky crap like this is just that - gimmicky crap. This may be more efficient than a 30 minute run and burn the same net amount of calories, but you'll offset the entire effect of this workout by eating a cookie. For overall health and lasting benefits you're going to need to get into a gym and pick something heavy off the ground.

As technology-minded guys who tend not to get a lot of physical exercise, we're really susceptible to people throwing around the term "scientific" to describe their exercise pitches.

Please don't waste your time with this "workout," unless of course you're so weak and fragile that it'll literally kill you to do a squat. Really look into Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe for actual good advice.

"Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general." - Mark Rippetoe

Edit: Btw, time comparison: spend years chasing the latest "scientific" fitness fad (see article) and going nowhere or get in better shape while working an office job than 99% of highschool/college guys in a few months for a time commitment of 2-3 hours per week. That's the kind of math I'm talking about when I talk about starting strength and leangains.

You're obviously well educated on the subject. I agree with what you're saying. That's why my recommendation above was to do Bootstrapping Squats (at first), bench, deadlifts and chins -- just the basics. You especially want to strengthen the Posterior Chain (hamstrings, glutes, lower back) and Bootstrapper Squats are a simple way to get started.

There's a great book called Starting Strength that gives a basic starting program.

The book Starting Strength is often touted as the best way to learn the deadlift, front/back squat, overhead press, and bench press. It has a lot of detail about the posture you want during the lifts, as well as how to increase your workloads until you are Huge(tm). In short, you have a program of lifts you do (sets x reps x weight = work), and you increase your work output every time you go to the gym, which means you need to structure your workouts to allow for recovery but not atrophy.

I tried Starting Strength a few years ago. I was really pumped about the program, but I had a lot of trouble with it. I read the how-to sections multiple times, watched Rippetoe videos, and even sought out a trainer at one point. No matter what, the exercises always felt awkward and I never felt like I was doing them correctly.

I tried power cleaning a few times I simply didn't get it. It made me feel like a complete doofus.

When I deadlifted, I was able to lift less than a 12 year old girl.

Squat was the worst. I got up to about 235 (not counting the bar). I know this isn't a large amount, but it totally killed me. Just so brutally tough. I had some knee pain that flared up around that point and my elbows hurt all the time. Once after finishing a set, I was drenched in sweat and I felt nauseous for about 10 minutes. Another time, I felt the left side of my face go numb for a split second... I realized then that it wasn't for me.

Thanks for posting this article! I was actually in the middle of getting back into lifting to 1) improve my health and 2) gain some confidence by accomplishing something in my personal life. I e-mailed a personal training studio a few weeks ago, and they never responded even though they recommended that means to get in touch with them. My next step was going to be to enroll in a "big box" gym to take advantage of year-end deals and start personal training sessions there. This article gave me the thought that I should consider some more self-education first. I may enroll in a gym anyway as they have the gear and the space for working out, but I should consider self-training. Will check out the Starting Strength book.