I am making this post in the hopes that SS/SL will be removed from the sticky.
Reasons: >It has too little upper body volume. Over 2 weeks, you hit your chest and deltoids 3 times each and your biceps 0 times (biceps are a secondary muscle in rows).
>It has too little deadlift volume. It is perfectly ideal to deadlift more than 1x per week, or at the least to deadlift far more than just 1 set in a session.
>It has no hypertrophy and accessory work. Most people in gainit probably want to focus on more visual changes. Stronglifts is the antithesis of a program that will provide aesthetic and visual improvement.
>It does not promote or encourage proper progression. GSLP, an SL variation (that includes arm work), includes the final set to be until failure. These sets help you to be aware of your progress in relation to increasing the next increment in progression, and help you to determine the speed and timing of your next increase.
>It does not include arm work because "if you only do heavy compound exercises like Squats and Deadlifts, without direct arm work, then your arms will increase in size" It's simply moronic to discourage targeting the arms and recommending squats/deadlifts to build arms instead.
>People stay on SL5x5 for too long People often use SL5x5 and plateau because eventually they outgrow the program and can't gain much more. This issue a byproduct of lack of volume/frequency.
>No variation in rep/set ranges SL sacrifices variation in weight, reps, sets, and intensity in the name of simplicity. Even an exercise (rows) that may arguably be more beneficial in hypertrophy ranges is at 5 reps. The 5x5 scheme doesn't account for beginners being unable to hit 5x5 on a harder exercise (OHP).
>It promotes plateaus SL5x5 strongly encourages people to deload by great amounts. Deloading by far more than is necessary. It suggests that beginners start at the bar and only increase by x amount per week, get to a point until they stall, then to deload and start all over again. This almost reads like someone made a program to try and sabotage people's training.
These flaws have caused people to become confused about training, with many often afraid to do more than 1 set of deadlifts, or train the same muscle two days in a row, or doing AMRAP sets, or add their own extra exercises because SL discourages beginners to go off the program with scare tactics. The flaws of SL5x5 greatly outweigh its benefits. Additionally, any benefits that Stronglifts has is likely shared by other programs too.
Please petition by replying below. Thanks.
Owen Bell
wow you're a faggot
Jason Ramirez
based
Cooper Thompson
Gay
Luis Cook
Stop posting dyel. It has accessory work. Read the book you stupid fuck.
Parker Diaz
>Stronglifts is the antithesis of a program that will provide aesthetic and visual improvement.
A STRENGTH program does not focus on aesthehics, OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT
Anyone who did SS properly will tell you its a great starter program, yeah its a bit heavy on the legs and it could do with some modification but it's still great and I don't regret doing it just throw in some arms and some pullups and your set
Very autistic, no intelligent or insightful criticism. Clearly just looking to be contrarian and getting pats on the back.
Ayden Clark
It's simple to remember and good for learning the forms of various lifts and getting a general understanding of how hard certain lifts are. Good for complete beginners then move onto another program.
Landon Bailey
Not an argument.
StrongLifts and Starting Strength might be the most often-recommended programs on this board, and they’re pretty good at introducing new lifters to the gym. However, if you plan on using them to gain strength or muscle mass, they’re poor options.
Many of you might say you’ve ran SL and SS and got fine results, but that’s not really what makes a good program for a new lifter. New lifters can see results from doing damn near anything. A good beginner program gets you results efficiently. So, here’s why I believe the base SL and SS programs are suboptimal, and how you should tweak them. To keep things simple, I’ll be focusing my critiques on SL, but the majority carries over to SS as well.
Grayson Hill
1: Lack of frequency
This one is especially funny since SL is often referred to as a high-frequency program. I disagree with that label. Over a two-week period, you hit your pecs, biceps, and shoulders (the muscles most guys care about for aesthetics) only three times. Elevated muscle protein synthesis, the driver of hypertrophy (1), lasts roughly 36 hours after training (2). Since you should keep protein synthesis elevated as much as possible, averaging 112 hours between muscle stimuli as SL does is far from optimal. Even while controlling for volume and intensity, high frequency generally beats out low frequency for both muscle and strength development (3).
Fix: Bench and Overhead Press every workout.
Grayson Garcia
>hitting 3 plate squat and 3.5 plate squat in less than 6 months is not efficient results
Ayden Morales
2: Lack of volume
Increase in muscle mass trends logarithmically over time, meaning beginner lifters can gain the most muscle in the least amount of time. This is important even if you’re only interested in strength, because increasing your muscle mass is the best way to increase your strength (4). Researchers recommend a minimum of ten weekly sets for each muscle to see good results (8)- SL gives you 7.5 for pecs, shoulders, and biceps, and 1.5 for hamstrings. This means increasing sets (5) and reps per set (6) are the best ways to maximize both aesthetic and strength progress.
Fix: Do more sets and more reps when possible.
Alexander Harris
What is 107.5kg in freedom units?
Also I agree with this user.
William Lewis
3: Lack of bicep involvement
Rows and cleans alone aren’t great at growing biceps. Your biceps are only secondary muscles involved in the movements, meaning they won’t really be taken anywhere close to failure. Since number of sets near muscular failure is the primary factor when inspiring protein synthesis (6), your bicep development will be subpar if you don’t fix this.
Fix: Ideally, add Chin-Ups. Not only do they hit the biceps hard, but the extra back work will balance out your increased benching. If you can’t do Chin-Ups, do 30° Bent-Over Rows with supinated grip, which shifts emphasis to the biceps
William Myers
two hundred and thirty seven pounds
Leo Price
4: Poopoo lower body programming
If you’re mainly interested in aesthetics, SL is probably a bit squat-heavy for you. If you’re mainly interested in strength, 1x5 deadlifts three times every two weeks is a bad plan. Taking the time to warm up and load the bar, only to perform one serious set is not an efficient way to spend your time. The idea that you should only do 1 set because CNS fatigue is silly. SL is made for beginners using light weight. CNS fatigue is not an issue for them. The idea that you should only do 1 set to avoid form breakdown is flawed as well. The programs are designed to eventually push you to form breakdown regardless of how many sets you’ve performed, so that’s inevitable. On top of all of this, Deadlifts are really the only exercise in the program that hit your hamstrings (no, Squats don’t to a significant degree [9])- why give them a measly 3 total sets every two weeks?
Fix: Squat less, Deadlift more. The increased leg work from Deadlifts will make up for decreasing Squats.
Carson Flores
>t. never read starting strength The program incorporates more upper body work after the untrained stages (taking someone from 100lb squat to 315lb squat) are through with.
David Kelly
5: No periodization
This one’s simple: Not varying your rep ranges is sub-optimal for both strength and hypertrophy progress (10). SL sacrifices this great strategy in the name of simplicity. I think you can handle a little variation. You’re not stupid.
Fix: Vary your rep ranges.
Kayden Nelson
Fuck off with lvysaur copypasta. Your routine is retarded, built by a fraud bodybuilder who doesn't post body or numbers. 4x4 then 4x8 deadlifts in one week works against your strength gains and you're not getting aesthetic lifting bitch weight 8 times. There's a reason that his intermediate routine is ignored, because he programming is awful and he just coasts by because novices gain from anything.
Austin Bailey
Dyel user here who wants to start lifting. Is the book absolutely necessary if I want to start with SS? It sounds like OP is having misconceptions having not read it.
If you’re healthy and just getting into lifting, it can take you a considerable amount of time to get to challenging weights following the typical SL progression scheme. Going so long without being challenged will have new lifters quitting before they even start touching real weights.
Fix: Use infrequent AMRAP (as many reps as possible) sets to determine progression speed.
Gabriel Stewart
Applying all the changes I suggested, you get something like this:
lvysaur’s Beginner 4-4-8 Program
The weight progression is a tiny bit more complicated, but I think most are willing to put in a few minutes of extra thought in exchange for better progress. Since your 8 rep weight should be ~90% of your 4 rep weight, your 4 rep weight would begin at 50lb if you want to start with the bar for 8 rep sets. Here are some questions I anticipate:
Why 4 sets? To respect time constraints. Do 5 if you want.
I can’t do Chin-Ups? 30° Bent-Over Rows with supinated grip.
I can do more than 4/8 Chin-Ups? Weighted Chin-Ups.
How much do I deload after failure? No change here. 10% as a beginner.
How do I progress? Smallest incremental jumps possible between workouts to meet the weekly goal.
Why alternate Squats and Deadlift days? Deadlifting after Squatting sucks, and doing both on the same day would take a lot of time. Do both every day if you want. I also didn’t want to suggest something like 2 sets of each lift every day because that would become inefficient when you factor in warming up, loading the bar, waiting for a rack, etc.
Why not alternate starting Overhead Press vs starting Bench? Doing so would introduce fluctuating levels of fatigue to the lifts, which I don’t think is appropriate %RM based linear progression program. It can definitely work if you used RPE to autoregulate your weights, but I don’t think beginners have the experience necessary to do so. I opted to start Bench because more people care about Bench. Start Overhead Press if you want.
Jace Taylor
I'd say yes because it explains the way to correctly do the program and gets conflated or confused with Stronglifts or with just the introductory programming.
Stronglifts is mostly ripped off from Starting Strength but there's some differences - more volume, cleans replaced with rows, larger deloads, etc. Starting strength goes into detail about how to do the lifts, what to eat and do to recover, why it focuses on certain lifts early on, when to introduce other exercises, etc.
Mason Edwards
No, just read stuff online and watch vids.
Adrian Perry
OP a shit.
SS a great book and program to get strong quickly.
SL a great free resource for getting strong lifts quickly.
OP a quick way to get your dick sucked when your wife is working late.
Xavier Carter
Thanks user, you’re a cool dude. Wish me luck.
Caleb Gomez
Good luck breh we're all gonna make it
John Butler
desu I never read it but yeah can't do any harm, come to think of it I should really buy some lifting books
Josiah Phillips
holy mother of all reddit spacing and reddit humor please go
The book is a must if you ask me. I mean, rpobaly you could get that info from other sources, but if you completely lack knowledge to discern between solid stuff and utter garbage, investing the money in getting it is a smart move.
I would also suggest getting Practical Programming after you've been for a few months on SS.
>It has too little upper body volume. Add assistance exercises. You are free to do this >It has too little deadlift volume. This is addressed on the SL website >It has no hypertrophy and accessory work. You can add these. >It does not promote or encourage proper progression. How the fuck is linear progression in weight not proper progression >It does not include arm work You can add assistance exercises >People stay on SL5x5 for too long Not the program's fault. Also even SL5X5 is not supposed to be 5X5 forever. If you deload 3x in a row you switch to 3X5, then (I think) 3X3 and then 1X3 >No variation in rep/set ranges See above >Boring start it actually makes sense for beginners to start with low weights since it builds a habit of going to the gym and associates going to the gym with progression, which will of course slow down later.
Julian Taylor
How does it feel to get burned doing a meme routine?
Levi Butler
Post body
Jace Perry
It was legitimate coaching. I’m on the cheapest option and they have me on Texas Method, except more volume on DL because I’m still adding weight per session somehow.
It’s nice getting form checked on every lift every session.
Adrian Morris
>Not an argument. When will this meme die
Asher Taylor
Dude, just go to reddit, you'll be happier there.
Jacob Price
>It has no hypertrophy and accessory work. yeah, this pretty much kills starting with strength programming as a beginner natty meme. hypertrophy should be an emphasis for beginners
Christian Walker
Post body
Nathan Sanchez
How is hypertrophy preferable to strength for a beginner?
Every point in the OP is wrong because they all have the underlying assumption that novices need the same thing as non-novices.
Novices adapt from low volume and lack of direct work just fine. They're so unadapted that they adapt to SL just fine. It would be a terrible program for an intermediate or advanced lifter but that's not what it is.
Julian Rogers
>Please petition by replying below. Thanks. All of you have agreed to OP’s petition. Hopefully the mods see this.
