For those curious to get started, Starting Strength, by Mark Rippetoe is the gold standard in beginners programming. http://startingstrength.com/
It takes you through the basic compound exercises and talks about some important concepts in weight training, highly recommend it.
I worked on this basic program that requires you to go to the gym 3 times a week and basic linear progression got me up to a 400lbs squat for reps at the age of 28. It took about 18 months to get there.
My biggest regret is that I stopped going to the gym, if you do start, please keep going. It's better to go and do something easy than to undo the habit.
By the time you're looking at follow-up programmes, you should start reading about periodisation, and why sticking with any one programme indefinitely limits further development.
Stronglifts / 3x5 programmes are a good initiation. Once you're initiated, you want to understand the stimulus / response / rest / nutrition relationships, and identify what your specific training and fitness goals, needs, and limitations are.
That's what you end up building a programme around.
The problem with beginners -- in any field -- is that they tend to develop One True Religionism. If you've been doing nothing, then doing virtually anything is better. But that virtually anything can progress in response only up to a point.
That's where the complications come in.
The key point is that your goals determine your methods.
Though the basics remain, for strength: full-body, compound, freeweight movements, with training frequency, set, rep, and inter-set rest intervals selected to address your specific goals.
Similar principles drive other elements of fitness: cardio (if that's your thing), skill-based activities, etc.
They can even be generalised to other domains of life.
None of those are meaningfully different. At core, they're all the same program:
1. Basic compound lifts
2. Linear progression
3. 3x5 (StrongLifts also switches to 3x5 once the weights get heavy)
There are some differences, but they're pretty minor and people nitpicking them for beginners are mostly wasting time because it really doesn't matter that much.
They're meaningfully different in how they approach failure.
StrongLifts is worse off in this regard for the reason that they teach reducing volume once you start running into plateaus in order to artificially progress. "Benching that lift too hard? Well cut out 40% of the volume and keep going!"
Starting Strength fails in teaches the idea of deloading by dropping weight then taking a run at it without changing any of the training methodology which is arguably a reason for the "spinning the wheels" approach you see from several lifters who claim to run the program for months on end upwards and beyond a year. It's also seen as a less ideal program for its poor split on upper/lower volume and really benefits from accessory lifts thrown in when the lifter is capable.... but at that point you might as well just run a better program.
They're decent programs in that they get a untrained individual to put up enough weight to get themselves out of a horribly weak position but they don't teach anything meaningful for long term. Other programs achieve the necessary linear progression that is capable during your noob gains without having stupid programming quirks that lifters need to unlearn when they move onto intermediate programs.
> They're decent programs in that they get a untrained individual to put up enough weight to get themselves out of a horribly weak position but they don't teach anything meaningful for long term. Other programs achieve the necessary linear progression that is capable during your noob gains without having stupid programming quirks that lifters need to unlearn when they move onto intermediate programs.
I think here I have to argue on the side of "done is better than perfect". StrongLifts/SS are both programs with tons of resources, massive communities and scores of Youtube videos with technique, tips and reviews. StrongLifts actually has a very high-quality, ad-free app (supported only by in-app purchases) that tracks your progress, tells you how long to rest between sets and handles the de-load and other programming quirks for you. In-app purchase also unlocks accessory lifts, which the app will then track for you.
Most importantly, StrongLifts/SS will keep the median person with no knowledge of lifting occupied for at least a year while they build up strength, confidence and knowledge about strength training. It gets them into the rhythm of lifting 3x/week, eating and sleeping right. At that point, they may be better informed and more able to separate signal from noise about all the other programs out there that might better suit their needs.
I'd much rather unlearn programming quirks than bad form. Both programs place strong emphasis on learning good form. That's what a lot of the deload and wheel spinning is often about in my experience; you get more training hours under your belt and improve your technique. IMO this is important for people who just haven't lifted that much in their lives and don't have the muscle memory and feel for body position and form that more experienced lifters have.
> They're meaningfully different in how they approach failure.
All 3 of these programs do deloads to handle failure. StrongLifts also starts dropping sets/reps, but that's after deloading repeatedly at which point Starting Strength just says to go do a different program. So no meaningful difference until you have outgrown the program.
> Starting Strength fails in teaches the idea of deloading by dropping weight then taking a run at it without changing any of the training methodology which is arguably a reason for the "spinning the wheels" approach you see from several lifters who claim to run the program for months on end upwards and beyond a year.
That's not running the program. You can't deload and work back up to the same weight repeatedly. You can call that Starting Strength but it's not. You get some number of deloads (3? can't recall) and then move to a different program. Pretty sure Starting Strength coaches will also tell you you're not eating/sleeping/training right if you keep getting stuck at a novice weight.
> It's also seen as a less ideal program for its poor split on upper/lower volume and really benefits from accessory lifts thrown in when the lifter is capable....
Sure, but for someone untrained, this really doesn't matter much. Hence nitpicking.
> They're decent programs in that they get a untrained individual to put up enough weight to get themselves out of a horribly weak position but they don't teach anything meaningful for long term.
They teach you to grow muscle and to learn to push yourself in the gym. Not sure what else a beginner program is supposed to teach.
> Other programs achieve the necessary linear progression that is capable during your noob gains without having stupid programming quirks that lifters need to unlearn when they move onto intermediate programs.
> Starting Strength fails in teaches the idea of deloading by dropping weight then taking a run at it without changing any of the training methodology
No, starting strength tells you to take exactly two runs up until your failure weight and then move on to another program, which for many people works very well and allows them to progress far beyond weight they failed at. People who can run an SS linear progression for a year straight are rare, but they exist and they end up in the upper 3s, 4s and 5s for bench, squat and deadlift after their first year.
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.
Sorry, but I'm legitimately curious what that image was meant to be and it looks like you linked a thumbnail.
Mid-post edit as the Google Image Search result comes in [0]. Amazing how I was able to find it with a reverse image search. I hadn't heard of the Greyskull variant, and I do 5x5 Stronglifts.
Yes and no. In a scientific sense you may have a great point. In a pragmatic/popularity and also anecdotal/conversational sense, I think Rippetoe can be comfortably called the gold standard.
I think that for most people any (safe) strength training is the best programme. I'm also a bit sceptical about monstrous squats - enough of those and you'll compress the discs in your spine and end up shorter! I recall a Polish friend telling me that when Polish blokes came back from their military service they were generally a couple of inches shorter and a foot wider from all the intense lifting.
It takes you through the basic compound exercises and talks about some important concepts in weight training, highly recommend it.
I worked on this basic program that requires you to go to the gym 3 times a week and basic linear progression got me up to a 400lbs squat for reps at the age of 28. It took about 18 months to get there.
My biggest regret is that I stopped going to the gym, if you do start, please keep going. It's better to go and do something easy than to undo the habit.