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Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: fb.com/a.macdonald.iv Age: 31 Posts: 6,367

[FOR BEGINNERS] Super Starting Strength: High Frequency Compound Training



Too many beginner programs assume you are (a) an idiot (b) lazy or (c) both. This program is designed for smart and motivated people who are capable of doing additional research. Specifically it was designed for a friend of mine, who is both of those things. If you are smart, I trust that you will be able to google terms that you find confusing. I am covering a lot of subject matter in a short period of time, so I can't explain everything at the most minute detail.



But before I even begin outlining what you'll actually be doing at the gym, I need to explain a few concepts so that you understand what your body will be doing.



Understanding calories and the role of nutrition in your gains



I am being extremely general here, because certain metabolic factors can cause variation in calories by up to 300 or even 500 per day.



However, in general, the following things are true:



3500 calories = 1lb of mass

1 gram of carbohydrates = 4 calories

1 gram of protein = 4 calories

1 gram of fat = 7 calories

BMR = the amount of calories your body burns doing jack shit

TDEE = your total calories burnt in a day (i.e. BMR + whatever else you did)



An average woman's BMR is around 1300-1600 and an average man's BMR is around 1700-2000. Depending on what you do during the day, your TDEE might be 1500 or it might be 4000.



But this point is important: if your TDEE (calories burned) is greater than your calories consumed, you are in caloric deficit and will lose fat or muscle or both.



Here is a BMR calculator (useful for fat loss, since many people overestimate TDEE):

Here is a TDEE calculator (useful for our purposes):



How you lose fat depends on factors like (a) what kind of macronutrients you're eating (polyunsaturated fats are known to be better for weight loss than saturated fats, though I don't know about monounsaturated fats) and (b) what kind of anabolic activities you're doing (weight training is anabolic and to an extent high-intensity interval training is too, but low intensity cardio is not) and (c) how much testosterone you have. (Women can



If you burn 3500 calories, you have burned one pound of mass. Unless you're eating to extreme caloric deficit, most of this will be fat. I've posted this before, but



However, if you are the average overweight person (or god forbid obese), this is overkill to the extreme. These recommendations are for people who find controlling their nutritional intake exceedingly easy; if you are a weight significantly beyond what you'd prefer, by definition you don't have these principles down. Instead, most people who are obese or overweight respond best to extreme caloric deficits -- I'm talking like -800 or -1000 per day or more. Why? Because if someone is overweight or obese, they obviously cannot exercise the kind of dietary control that a bodybuilder would yet. They are at a beginner stage where they don't even have a calibration for their caloric intake. They don't know what rapid weight loss is like. A person like this needs to go balls-to-the-wall for a while to feel what rapid weight loss is like, then dial it down once they have a feel for it.



Why am I going on about weight loss when this program is designed to gain strength, not lose fat? Because you need to understand how caloric deficits and surpluses work to gain strength in the first place.



In extremely simplified terms, this is how muscle growth happens:



- you create trauma to your muscle fibers

- the muscle fibers repair themselves, growing in the process (hypertrophy)

- the central nervous system adapts the grown fibers (strength)



You don't add or lose muscle fibers, unless an animal bites into your arm and tears off part of your bicep. You have all the fibers you're ever going to have -- they just grow or shrink, depending.



With this in mind, both strength and size increases are caused by caloric surplus and high-protein intake. You need extra calories for the energy used to build muscle and you need protein for that purpose. This is why protein synthesis is strongly related to muscle growth.



(You generally cannot burn fat and gain muscle at the same time, by the way, unless you're (a) severely overweight (b) using steroids or (c) recomping, which isn't even doing that but rather alternating between very brief periods of surplus/deficit.)



You should be eating +500 to +1000 above your TDEE in any kind of strength training program. For beginners I recommend +1000 for similar reasons to why I recommend balls-to-the-wall calorie restriction for the overweight: you don't know what eating huge surpluses feels like, so once you have that in check and you get very good at monitoring your caloric intake, you can dial it down if necessary.



For protein, I believe .7g per lb is the point where a natural (e.g. non-PED using lifter) maxes out the amount of protein they can use.



However, if you're a beginner, you probably will underestimate or overestimate your protein intake to hilarious degrees. So I recommend the normal broscience amount of 1g per lb of bodyweight. Overshooting is better than undershooting in this regard, because if you go over you'll just get extra protein your body won't use -- if you undershoot, you might be underperforming, which we don't want.



The best protein sources are always going to be meat or protein powder. This is because meat is a combination of muscle and fat, and speaking in extremely simplified terms, muscle is protein. Protein powder is an invention we've been able to make with the aid of industrialization. There is nothing wrong with protein powder. If you don't give a fuck about whether your protein comes from animals, myprotein.com sells



Pea isolate: $8.67/lb

Rice concentrate: $8.18/lb

Pea concentrate: $7.70/lb

Soy isolate: $6.14/lb



If you use soy protein, keep in mind that soy at very high levels (150-250g+/day depending on bodyweight) can elevate estrogen levels, so you'd need to vary your protein sources somewhat (e.g combining soy, rice, and pea protein) and probably use additional protein since not all of it would be absorbed. But given how cheap rice, pea, and soy protein are, this shouldn't be a problem. Also,



Regardless, even if you think you have your nutrients in check, you should still read nutrition labels as often as you can and start to memorize the fundamental components of the food you eat. You'll eventually get an idea of what food is made up of and you'll start to be able to eyeball calories. Sometimes you truly have no idea (I would have never known that Sonic's large reese's shake exceed 1500 calories unless you told me) but usually you can get it more or less correct.



The principles behind Super Starting Strength







But this program is not Starting Strength; it's the same volume with more principles from studies incorporated, hence "super." I think Starting Strength is suboptimal, for several reasons:



1. Starting Strength places a disproportionate emphasis on lower body movements, and only uses one upper-body compound (bench press)



2. Starting Strength has the lifter training 3x/week, which is not ideal for (a) CNS adaptation or (b) strength gains



3. Starting Strength, perhaps inadvertently, creates the belief that all a lifter needs to do is train bench, squat, and deadlift. This kind of training results in nice legs but hilariously inadequate biceps, among other things.



4. Starting Strength does not use any kind of variation in exercises.



Now, with this aside, I think Starting Strength is a genius program. You cannot fuck it up. Tons of people I know plateau using gymbro splits and isolation exercises because they see pro bodybuilders training that way, without realizing that pro bodybuilders are taking hormones (hgh, insulin, test at 2g/week etc.) that create a rate of hypertrophy that's so far beyond what a normal person will get that they can afford to target those bodyparts separately. A normal person will not respond well to those kinds of programs unless they know what they're doing, and by definition a beginner does not. Meanwhile, you can be a complete moron and get great gains on Starting Strength, which is why it's so popular.



But there are programs that would produce faster gains for beginners who are smarter than the average person and can do a bit more research about what they're training with. This program is designed assuming that you are somewhat competent and can research a bit on your own if you don't understand something. This program is designed assuming you are a beginner who wants to get the fastest results possible in the shortest period of time. If you're going to get a gym membership, why half-ass it?



So, there are a few principles that have been known to work very well, which this program is based upon:



1. High-frequency training yields better strength gains when controlling for volume

http://gregnuckols.com/2014/02/18/hi...-powerlifters/

http://www.strengthandconditioningre...re-frequently/



(This program takes the volume of starting strength and spreads it across six days, with slightly higher rep ranges to aid recovery and to help learn the movement better.)



2. Periodization is better than no periodization, and non-linear seems to be better than linear

Periodization vs no periodization:

Types of periodization compared:



(This program incorporates a deload week for this reason.)



Some other principles, like "high volume > low volume" and "high speed of reps > slow speed of reps" are not incorporated into this program, for two reasons:



1. If you are a beginner, your body is not going to be able to tolerate a high-volume program like German Volume Training. It's not fucking happening. Your delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) will be ridiculous and you will need recovery periods of 3-4 days per workout.



2. If you are a beginner, you are just getting used to the exercise. Speed reps are potentially dangerous if you're reckless.



With that said, I do incorporate conjugate training (exercise variation) because that's been known to work.



So, here's the basic idea. This is the same volume as Starting Strength -- 15 reps per exercise per 2 days -- but spread out over 6 days. And instead of doing bench/squat/deadlift ad nauseam, we vary the exercises.



The actual program



You will be going to the gym 6x/week. This sounds like a lot, but each workout will be pretty short. Your total time at the gym per week will be something like 3-5 hours, depending on how busy your gym is.



You will do each set of reps with the same weight. So if you're doing 8 repetitions (8 lifts), and you feel like you can do 12, add more weight until you feel like the max you can do is 9.



You will NOT go to failure -- the point where you can't lift anymore. This is dangerous for a beginner doing bench press anyway. Try leaving 1 or 2 reps "in the tank", meaning you know you could do 1 or 2 more reps. Going to failure is not ideal in a program that has you training 6 days/week.



When I write AxB (e.g. 2x7, 1x5) the first number refers to the number of sets, and the second number refers to the number of repetitions. So 2x7 is two sets of 7 repetitions, meaning you'd lift the weight 14 times total that day.



The exercise variation I've used here is very similar to what I use for myself in my own high-frequency program, except I've left out some variations.



1:

flat barbell bench 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

regular squat 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

bent over barbell rows 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")



2:

overhead press 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

leg press 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

conventional deadlift 1x4 (with a weight you feel you could do 8 reps with, leaving 4 "in the tank")



3:

incline barbell bench 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

box squat 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

machine rows 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")



4:

flat barbell bench 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

leg press 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

conventional deadlift 1x4 (with a weight you feel you could do 8 reps with, leaving 4 "in the tank")



5:

overhead press 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

regular squat 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

lat pulldowns 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")



6:

incline barbell bench 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

leg press 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

conventional deadlift 1x4 (with a weight you feel you could do 8 reps with, leaving 4 "in the tank")



7:

[off]



These would repeat.



The reasoning behind off days work like this: even if you work out on one day, your muscles are recovering another day. So let's say that instead of 2x7, you did the normal starting strength 3x5 for 3 days a week. You would do this every other day for 6 days with an off day on day 7; so, on Monday you'd lift, on Tuesday you'd rest, on Wednesday you'd lift, on Thursday you'd rest, on Friday you'd lift, and then on Saturday and Sunday you'd rest.



I take the view that unless your volume is VERY high (e.g. German Volume Training), two off days are usually suboptimal for maximizing the caloric surpluses you're taking in. A greater amount of your extra calories will be stored as fat instead of being used for protein synthesis and muscle growth.



So, you have one off day. You will need this off day after six days in a row of lifting. In theory you could lift every day if you lessened the current volume proportionally (e.g. 2x6 with a weight you could do 9 reps with instead of 2x7 with a weight you could do 9 reps with), but I don't think a beginner program is suitable for that because your body will not be used to recovering yet. Plus, after six days of lifting in a row, your body will be using the extra calories you're taking in for hastening recovery on your off day.



You will notice that only a few exercises make up the program:



1. Bench (flat barbell, incline)

2. Overhead press

3. Squat (regular, box)

4. Deadlift

5. Rows (barbell, machine)

6. Lat pulldowns

7. Leg press



These exercises will work all of the muscles in your body collectively. They are compound exercises (as opposed to isolation exercises) in that they work multiple muscles at the same time. Some compounds work one muscle more than others -- e.g. overhead press works shoulders and chest, and bench press works shoulders and chest, but overhead press puts far more emphasis on shoulders than bench press.



I've staggered the exercises for recovery purposes. The leg press comes after a squat and during a deadlift period because deadlifts work the lower back tremendously and so do squats, so to have both of those on the same day will mean you'll have to have a longer recovery day.



You can YouTube videos on how to do these exercises. Scott Herman and Elliot Hulse have great instructional videos.



For bench, I recommend wide-grip. For deadlift, only do conventional. Mixed-grip is fine, but don't try something like sumo until you've done conventional a lot. Maintain strict form during bent-over rows, make sure you're going low on squats and leg press, and make sure your overhead presses are as high as you can push them.



Rest periods



For some reason, people get this wrong a lot.



You should be resting anywhere from 90 seconds to 3 minutes between sets -- however long you need to lift the same weight. Your rest period is where your body replenishes creatine phosphate, ATP, and so on. You need these things to be able to lift the same amount of weight for the same amount of reps and make gains, so that next time you can add weight and lift more. If you lower the weight for the next set, you're dropsetting and from experience I can tell you that this is generally awful for strength gains.



If you do need to rest for 3 minutes, that's fine. 3 minutes sounds like forever, especially because the vast majority of people you see in the gym do not train using long rest periods. But, most people in the gym train like morons and do not train for strength, so you're not going to be part of that group. Download an audiobook if you need something stimulating while you rest.



I'm not going to define a certain rest period because, frankly, it varies depending on the person. 90 seconds between sets (e.g. you'd do 7 reps, then rest 90 seconds, then do another 7) is my minimum recommendation for beginners. You might need two minutes, or you might need three. Whatever it takes to do the same amount of weight for the same amount of reps for that particular training session. (Obviously, you won't do the same amount of reps forever -- you'll add weight when you feel like you can do 10 reps instead of 9, or when the weight feels lighter, or when you generally have some indication that you've grown stronger.)



Accessories



Accessories are extra exercises (usually isolation as opposed to compounds) that are used for mostly vanity purposes, because certain muscles get under-worked in these programs.



I recommend one accessory:



1. Calf-raises



That's it. I'm not even convinced that you need bicep curls, given the presence of rows and lat pulldowns in this program.



Deloading



At some point, your body will need a break. For every 4, 6, or 8 weeks you follow this 2x7 program, do 1 week of 1x7 to give your body a break, then switch back to the 2x7 structure. Whether you do it every 4, 6, or 8 weeks is up to you and how you feel it will impact your progress, but 8 weeks is the longest I suggest going before doing a deload week.



What if I can't work out every day?



Working out every day is optimal for strength gains, but here is a 3.5x/week program:



1:

flat barbell bench 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

regular squat 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

bent over barbell rows 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")



2:

[off]



3:

overhead press 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

leg press 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

conventional deadlift 2x8 (with a weight you feel you could do 10 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")



4:

[off]



5:

incline barbell bench 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

box squat 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")

machine rows 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")



6:

[off]



[REPEAT]



This has somewhat higher volume, but your off days should allow adequate recovery. If not, add a second off day after day 6.



Can I vary from this program



You can, but then you're doing your own thing. This is to be followed pretty strictly -- not perfectly, but 90-95% adherence. If you break from it, you're breaking from something that, according to studies, should produce great results. It's up to you.



Can I do cardio on this program?



Yes, and this will be beneficial for your health, but make sure you raise calories to compensate. If you run for an hour, you'd need to eat an extra 1000 calories on top of whatever you were going to eat. If you tapdance for an hour, add 350 extra calories minimum.



Since we are on a rhythm game forum, this is my estimate for DDR/ITG calories burned:



Mostly 8 footers (DDR Extreme / ITG scale) = 300 calories in an hour



For every foot rating beyond 8, add 125 calories. So:



Mostly 9 footers = 425 calories in an hour

Mostly 10 footers = 550 calories in an hour



And so on. This is completely arbitrary and based on my own experiences.



However, if you are playing 12-13 footers or higher and you play for an hour, I'd add 1200 extra calories just to be safe. If you don't see yourself making strength gains, add 500 calories on top of that.



From experience, DDR players tend to undereat more than overeat. If you play 13s regularly, err on the side of overeating.



When will I outgrow this program, and what happens when I do?



I think a normal lifter will outgrow this program in about 12-16 weeks. So, after that, there are several options:



1. You can continue doing this exact program, but with 5 reps at heavier weights (where you might be able to do 6 or 7 reps max instead of 9 max)

2. You can lower the rep count by 1, leave one extra in the tank and add an extra set (so instead of doing 2x7 leaving one or two reps in the tank, you'd do 3x6 leaving two or three reps in the tank)

3. You can try

4. You can try

5. You can try

6. If you are a woman, you can try a

7. You can try

8. You can try

9. You can try



There are infinitely many other options, but the above are some suggestions.



The program I used for myself uses high-frequency training with undulating intensity and incorporates exercise variation like this one does. So instead of doing 2x7 every day, some days you will do 2x8 and others you will do 2x4. If you do wish to try the program I currently use for myself after trying this beginner program, keep in mind that my program was designed for people who either not natural or who are used to high-volume lifting after several years of training, so here's a version with the volume scaled for people who are not beginners but nonetheless not adapted to that volume:



HIGH-FREQUENCY UNDULATING INTENSITY STRUCTURE



Contrast to Mark Rippetoe's prescription, I believe high-frequency hypertrophy programs are ideal for beginners. This is because the high frequency leads to strength gains while the hypertrophy creates muscle that can then be adapted to CNS.



- Don't stick to the rep ranges religiously; some days will be 3 sets of 3.5, or 3 sets of 5.

- Deadlifts are sets of one, just because they're so much more taxing.

- Lower back seems to recover slower than other body parts, so squats/deadlift are staggered to minimize lower back volume in a single day.

- Lower body seems to respond better to higher reps, so squats are x6 and x10 compared to x4 and x8.



Accessories:

- calf raises (alternating emphasis on gastrocnemius and soleus, so one day you'd do gastro-emphasized calf raises and another day soleus-emphasized calf raises)

- wrists/upper forearm work (barbell bicep curls holding toward the neck; wrist curls)

- HIIT conditioning (2-3x/wk)



note: ITT stands for 'in the tank' reps or negative reps, i.e. reps you could perform but are not



1:

flat barbell bench 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)

back squat 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)

bent over barbell rows 2x10 (2 reps left ITT)



2:

overhead press 2x12 (1-2 reps left ITT)

leg press 2x15 (1-2 reps left ITT)

conventional deadlift 1x10 (2 reps left ITT)



3:

incline barbell bench 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)

box squat 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)

machine rows 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)



4:

flat barbell bench 2x12 (1-2 reps left ITT)

back squat 2x12 (1-2 reps left ITT)

wide-stance deadlift 1x10 (2 reps left ITT)



5:

overhead press 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)

box squat 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)

lat pulldowns 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)



6:

incline barbell bench 2x12 (1-2 reps left ITT)

leg press 2x15 (1-2 reps left ITT)

conventional deadlift 1x10 (2 reps left ITT)



7:

[off]



Since your training sessions are so close together, your cumulative gains will be far more significant. If you feel like you can handle more volume (be very wary of this feeling), you can try to switch to my higher-volume setup with 3 sets instead of 2.



How do I perform these exercises?



Below are videos of how to perform the exercises mentioned. Of all of them, deadlift and squat matter the most to get right.



overhead press:



deadlift (MOST IMPORTANT TO GET RIGHT):



squat (second most important to get right):



bent over barbell row:



wide-grip bench:



incline bench:



box squat:



how to fail a squat (you should be leaving 1-2 in the tank, but this is useful if you end up going to failure on accident):



(NOTE: squatting in a



sumo deadlift:



lat pulldowns:



machine rows:



leg press (GO DEEP on this one, almost all have safety bars you can use if you fail anyway):



that should cover all the exercises I mentioned



What if I have other questions?



Reply below and I'll add in your questions here. Otherwise, you can just message me if I've linked you here personally. Lately I've had a lot of people come asking me for advice on how to lose fat, how to train, etc., so this will be my program for someone who has never touched a weight in the gym ever. I'm posting it here so that I can link it to people when necessary.Too many beginner programs assume you are (a) an idiot (b) lazy or (c) both. This program is designed for smart and motivated people who are capable of doing additional research. Specifically it was designed for a friend of mine, who is both of those things. If you are smart, I trust that you will be able to google terms that you find confusing. I am covering aof subject matter in a short period of time, so I can't explain everything at the most minute detail.But before I even begin outlining what you'll actually be doing at the gym, I need to explain a few concepts so that you understand what your body will be doing.I am being extremely general here, because certain metabolic factors can cause variation in calories by up to 300 or even 500 per day.However, in general, the following things are true:3500 calories = 1lb of mass1 gram of carbohydrates = 4 calories1 gram of protein = 4 calories1 gram of fat = 7 caloriesBMR = the amount of calories your body burns doing jack shitTDEE = your total calories burnt in a day (i.e. BMR + whatever else you did)An average woman's BMR is around 1300-1600 and an average man's BMR is around 1700-2000. Depending on what you do during the day, your TDEE might be 1500 or it might be 4000.But this point is important: if your TDEE (calories burned) is greater than your calories consumed, you are in caloric deficit and will lose fat or muscle or both.Here is a BMR calculator (useful for fat loss, since many people overestimate TDEE): http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator Here is a TDEE calculator (useful for our purposes): http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/ How you lose fat depends on factors like (a) what kind of macronutrients you're eating (polyunsaturated fats are known to be better for weight loss than saturated fats, though I don't know about monounsaturated fats) and (b) what kind of anabolic activities you're doing (weight training is anabolic and to an extent high-intensity interval training is too, but low intensity cardio is not) and (c) how much testosterone you have. (Women can bring their testosterone levels substantially higher by supplementing DHEA, which will aid muscle growth and weight loss by biasing the body to burning fat instead of muscle. If you burn 3500 calories, you have burned one pound of mass. Unless you're eating to extreme caloric deficit, most of this will be fat. I've posted this before, but this study outlines nutritional recommendations for bodybuilders losing fat while optimally preserving muscle. However, if you are the average overweight person (or god forbid obese), this is overkill to the extreme. These recommendations are for people who find controlling their nutritional intake exceedingly easy; if you are a weight significantly beyond what you'd prefer, by definition you don't have these principles down. Instead, most people who are obese or overweight respond best to extreme caloric deficits -- I'm talking like -800 or -1000 per day or more. Why? Because if someone is overweight or obese, they obviously cannot exercise the kind of dietary control that a bodybuilder would yet. They are at a beginner stage where they don't even have a calibration for their caloric intake. They don't know what rapid weight loss is like. A person like this needs to go balls-to-the-wall for a while towhat rapid weight loss is like, then dial it down once they have a feel for it.Why am I going on about weight loss when this program is designed to gain strength, not lose fat? Because you need to understand how caloric deficits and surpluses work to gain strength in the first place.In extremely simplified terms, this is how muscle growth happens:- you create trauma to your muscle fibers- the muscle fibers repair themselves, growing in the process (hypertrophy)- the central nervous system adapts the grown fibers (strength)You don't add or lose muscle fibers, unless an animal bites into your arm and tears off part of your bicep. You have all the fibers you're ever going to have -- they just grow or shrink, depending.With this in mind, both strength and size increases are caused by caloric surplus and high-protein intake. You need extra calories for the energy used to build muscle and you need protein for that purpose. This is why protein synthesis is strongly related to muscle growth.(You generally cannot burn fat and gain muscle at the same time, by the way, unless you're (a) severely overweight (b) using steroids or (c) recomping, which isn't even doing that but rather alternating between very brief periods of surplus/deficit.)You should be eating +500 to +1000 above your TDEE in any kind of strength training program. For beginners I recommend +1000 for similar reasons to why I recommend balls-to-the-wall calorie restriction for the overweight: you don't know what eating huge surpluses feels like, so once you have that in check and you get very good at monitoring your caloric intake, you can dial it down if necessary.For protein, I believe .7g per lb is the point where a natural (e.g. non-PED using lifter) maxes out the amount of protein they can use.However, if you're a beginner, you probably will underestimate or overestimate your protein intake to hilarious degrees. So I recommend the normal broscience amount of 1g per lb of bodyweight. Overshooting is better than undershooting in this regard, because if you go over you'll just get extra protein your body won't use -- if you undershoot, you might be underperforming, which we don't want.The best protein sources are always going to be meat or protein powder. This is because meat is a combination of muscle and fat, and speaking in extremely simplified terms, muscleprotein. Protein powder is an invention we've been able to make with the aid of industrialization. There is nothing wrong with protein powder. If you don't give a fuck about whether your protein comes from animals, myprotein.com sells 11lb bags of protein powder for less than $90. If you are vegan, TrueNutrition.com sells bulk protein at the following prices (medians, for reference):Pea isolate: $8.67/lbRice concentrate: $8.18/lbPea concentrate: $7.70/lbSoy isolate: $6.14/lbIf you use soy protein, keep in mind that soy at very high levels (150-250g+/day depending on bodyweight) can elevate estrogen levels, so you'd need to vary your protein sources somewhat (e.g combining soy, rice, and pea protein) and probably use additional protein since not all of it would be absorbed. But given how cheap rice, pea, and soy protein are, this shouldn't be a problem. Also, NAKED Rice protein lists its amino acid profile though, and it compares favorable to their casein product.Regardless, even if you think you have your nutrients in check, you should still read nutrition labels as often as you can and start to memorize the fundamental components of the food you eat. You'll eventually get an idea of what food is made up of and you'll start to be able to eyeball calories. Sometimes you truly have no idea (I would have never known that Sonic's large reese's shake exceed 1500 calories unless you told me) but usually you can get it more or less correct. Starting Strength is a program designed by Mark Rippetoe designed for beginner lifters. It's touted as the best strength training program for beginners because it teaches the fundamentals of heavy lifts and gets the body adapted to heavy 5-repetition compound sets.But this program is not Starting Strength; it's the same volume with more principles from studies incorporated, hence "super." I think Starting Strength is suboptimal, for several reasons:1. Starting Strength places a disproportionate emphasis on lower body movements, and only uses one upper-body compound (bench press)2. Starting Strength has the lifter training 3x/week, which is not ideal for (a) CNS adaptation or (b) strength gains3. Starting Strength, perhaps inadvertently, creates the belief that all a lifter needs to do is train bench, squat, and deadlift. This kind of training results in nice legs but hilariously inadequate biceps, among other things.4. Starting Strength does not use any kind of variation in exercises.Now, with this aside, I think Starting Strength is a genius program. You cannot fuck it up. Tons of people I know plateau using gymbro splits and isolation exercises because they see pro bodybuilders training that way, without realizing that pro bodybuilders are taking hormones (hgh, insulin, test at 2g/week etc.) that create a rate of hypertrophy that's so far beyond what a normal person will get that they can afford to target those bodyparts separately. A normal person will not respond well to those kinds of programs unless they know what they're doing, and by definition a beginner does not. Meanwhile, you can be a complete moron and get great gains on Starting Strength, which is why it's so popular.But there are programs that would produce faster gains for beginners who are smarter than the average person and can do a bit more research about what they're training with. This program is designed assuming that you are somewhat competent and can research a bit on your own if you don't understand something. This program is designed assuming you are a beginner who wants to get the fastest results possible in the shortest period of time. If you're going to get a gym membership, why half-ass it?So, there are a few principles that have been known to work very well, which this program is based upon:1. High-frequency training yields better strength gains when controlling for volume(This program takes the volume of starting strength and spreads it across six days, with slightly higher rep ranges to aid recovery and to help learn the movement better.)2. Periodization is better than no periodization, and non-linear seems to be better than linearPeriodization vs no periodization: http://www.strengthandconditioningre...periodization/ Types of periodization compared: http://www.strengthandconditioningre...tion-strength/ (This program incorporates a deload week for this reason.)Some other principles, like "high volume > low volume" and "high speed of reps > slow speed of reps" are not incorporated into this program, for two reasons:1. If you are a beginner, your body is not going to be able to tolerate a high-volume program like German Volume Training. It's not fucking happening. Your delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) will be ridiculous and you will need recovery periods of 3-4 days per workout.2. If you are a beginner, you are just getting used to the exercise. Speed reps are potentially dangerous if you're reckless.With that said, I do incorporate conjugate training (exercise variation) because that's been known to work.So, here's the basic idea. This is the same volume as Starting Strength -- 15 reps per exercise per 2 days -- but spread out over 6 days. And instead of doing bench/squat/deadlift ad nauseam, we vary the exercises.You will be going to the gym 6x/week. This sounds like a lot, but each workout will be pretty short. Your total time at the gym per week will be something like 3-5 hours, depending on how busy your gym is.You will do each set of reps with the same weight. So if you're doing 8 repetitions (8 lifts), and you feel like you can do 12, add more weight until you feel like the max you can do is 9.You will NOT go to failure -- the point where you can't lift anymore. This is dangerous for a beginner doing bench press anyway. Try leaving 1 or 2 reps "in the tank", meaning you know you could do 1 or 2 more reps. Going to failure is not ideal in a program that has you training 6 days/week.When I write AxB (e.g. 2x7, 1x5) the first number refers to the number of sets, and the second number refers to the number of repetitions. So 2x7 is two sets of 7 repetitions, meaning you'd lift the weight 14 times total that day.The exercise variation I've used here is very similar to what I use for myself in my own high-frequency program, except I've left out some variations.1:flat barbell bench 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")regular squat 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")bent over barbell rows 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")2:overhead press 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")leg press 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")conventional deadlift 1x4 (with a weight you feel you could do 8 reps with, leaving 4 "in the tank")3:incline barbell bench 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")box squat 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")machine rows 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")4:flat barbell bench 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")leg press 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")conventional deadlift 1x4 (with a weight you feel you could do 8 reps with, leaving 4 "in the tank")5:overhead press 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")regular squat 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")lat pulldowns 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")6:incline barbell bench 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")leg press 2x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")conventional deadlift 1x4 (with a weight you feel you could do 8 reps with, leaving 4 "in the tank")7:[off]These would repeat.The reasoning behind off days work like this: even if you work out on one day, your muscles are recovering another day. So let's say that instead of 2x7, you did the normal starting strength 3x5 for 3 days a week. You would do this every other day for 6 days with an off day on day 7; so, on Monday you'd lift, on Tuesday you'd rest, on Wednesday you'd lift, on Thursday you'd rest, on Friday you'd lift, and then on Saturday and Sunday you'd rest.I take the view that unless your volume is VERY high (e.g. German Volume Training), two off days are usually suboptimal for maximizing the caloric surpluses you're taking in. A greater amount of your extra calories will be stored as fat instead of being used for protein synthesis and muscle growth.So, you have one off day. You will need this off day after six days in a row of lifting. In theory you could liftif you lessened the current volume proportionally (e.g. 2x6 with a weight you could do 9 reps with instead of 2x7 with a weight you could do 9 reps with), but I don't think a beginner program is suitable for that because your body will not be used to recovering yet. Plus, after six days of lifting in a row, your body will be using the extra calories you're taking in for hastening recovery on your off day.You will notice that only a few exercises make up the program:1. Bench (flat barbell, incline)2. Overhead press3. Squat (regular, box)4. Deadlift5. Rows (barbell, machine)6. Lat pulldowns7. Leg pressThese exercises will work all of the muscles in your body collectively. They are compound exercises (as opposed to isolation exercises) in that they work multiple muscles at the same time. Some compounds work one muscle more than others -- e.g. overhead press works shoulders and chest, and bench press works shoulders and chest, but overhead press puts far more emphasis on shoulders than bench press.I've staggered the exercises for recovery purposes. The leg press comes after a squat and during a deadlift period because deadlifts work the lower back tremendously and so do squats, so to have both of those on the same day will mean you'll have to have a longer recovery day.You can YouTube videos on how to do these exercises. Scott Herman and Elliot Hulse have great instructional videos.For bench, I recommend wide-grip. For deadlift, only do conventional. Mixed-grip is fine, but don't try something like sumo until you've done conventional a lot. Maintain strict form during bent-over rows, make sure you're going low on squats and leg press, and make sure your overhead presses are as high as you can push them.For some reason, people get this wrong a lot.You should be resting anywhere from 90 seconds to 3 minutes between sets -- however long you need to lift the same weight. Your rest period is where your body replenishes creatine phosphate, ATP, and so on. You need these things to be able to lift the same amount of weight for the same amount of reps and make gains, so that next time you can add weight and lift more. If you lower the weight for the next set, you're dropsetting and from experience I can tell you that this is generally awful for strength gains.If you do need to rest for 3 minutes, that's fine. 3 minutes sounds like forever, especially because the vast majority of people you see in the gym do not train using long rest periods. But, most people in the gym train like morons and do not train for strength, so you're not going to be part of that group. Download an audiobook if you need something stimulating while you rest.I'm not going to define a certain rest period because, frankly, it varies depending on the person. 90 seconds between sets (e.g. you'd do 7 reps, then rest 90 seconds, then do another 7) is my minimum recommendation for beginners. You might need two minutes, or you might need three. Whatever it takes to do the same amount of weight for the same amount of reps for that particular training session. (Obviously, you won't do the same amount of reps forever -- you'll add weight when you feel like you can do 10 reps instead of 9, or when the weight feels lighter, or when you generally have some indication that you've grown stronger.)Accessories are extra exercises (usually isolation as opposed to compounds) that are used for mostly vanity purposes, because certain muscles get under-worked in these programs.I recommend one accessory:1. Calf-raisesThat's it. I'm not even convinced that you need bicep curls, given the presence of rows and lat pulldowns in this program.At some point, your body will need a break. For every 4, 6, or 8 weeks you follow this 2x7 program, do 1 week of 1x7 to give your body a break, then switch back to the 2x7 structure. Whether you do it every 4, 6, or 8 weeks is up to you and how you feel it will impact your progress, but 8 weeks is the longest I suggest going before doing a deload week.Working out every day is optimal for strength gains, but here is a 3.5x/week program:1:flat barbell bench 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")regular squat 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")bent over barbell rows 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")2:[off]3:overhead press 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")leg press 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")conventional deadlift 2x8 (with a weight you feel you could do 10 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")4:[off]5:incline barbell bench 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")box squat 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")machine rows 4x7 (with a weight you feel you could do 9 reps with, leaving 2 "in the tank")6:[off][REPEAT]This has somewhat higher volume, but your off days should allow adequate recovery. If not, add a second off day after day 6.You can, but then you're doing your own thing. This is to be followed pretty strictly -- not perfectly, but 90-95% adherence. If you break from it, you're breaking from something that, according to studies, should produce great results. It's up to you.Yes, and this will be beneficial for your health, but make sure you raise calories to compensate. If you run for an hour, you'd need to eat an extra 1000 calories on top of whatever you were going to eat. If you tapdance for an hour, add 350 extra calories minimum.Since weon a rhythm game forum, this is my estimate for DDR/ITG calories burned:Mostly 8 footers (DDR Extreme / ITG scale) = 300 calories in an hourFor every foot rating beyond 8, add 125 calories. So:Mostly 9 footers = 425 calories in an hourMostly 10 footers = 550 calories in an hourAnd so on. This is completely arbitrary and based on my own experiences.However, if you are playing 12-13 footers or higher and you play for an hour, I'd add 1200 extra calories just to be safe. If you don't see yourself making strength gains, add 500 calories on top of that.From experience, DDR players tend to undereat more than overeat. If you play 13s regularly, err on the side of overeating.I think a normal lifter will outgrow this program in about 12-16 weeks. So, after that, there are several options:1. You can continue doing this exact program, but with 5 reps at heavier weights (where you might be able to do 6 or 7 reps max instead of 9 max)2. You can lower the rep count by 1, leave one extra in the tank and add an extra set (so instead of doing 2x7 leaving one or two reps in the tank, you'd do 3x6 leaving two or three reps in the tank)3. You can try normal 5x5 training 4. You can try 5/3/1 5. You can try German Volume Training (people I know have gotten great results doing this)6. If you are a woman, you can try a modified volume training program for women I made based on sex differences in gains (also, if you are a woman, look into supplementing DHEA regardless of the program you use)7. You can try my high-frequency undulating program that I made for myself 8. You can try Westside 9. You can try Sheiko There are infinitely many other options, but the above are some suggestions.The program I used for myself uses high-frequency training with undulating intensity and incorporates exercise variation like this one does. So instead of doing 2x7 every day, some days you will do 2x8 and others you will do 2x4. If you do wish to try the program I currently use for myself after trying this beginner program, keep in mind that my program was designed for people who either not natural or who are used to high-volume lifting after several years of training, so here's a version with the volume scaled for people who are not beginners but nonetheless not adapted to that volume:Contrast to Mark Rippetoe's prescription, I believe high-frequency hypertrophy programs are ideal for beginners. This is because the high frequency leads to strength gains while the hypertrophy creates muscle that can then be adapted to CNS.- Don't stick to the rep ranges religiously; some days will be 3 sets of 3.5, or 3 sets of 5.- Deadlifts are sets of one, just because they're so much more taxing.- Lower back seems to recover slower than other body parts, so squats/deadlift are staggered to minimize lower back volume in a single day.- Lower body seems to respond better to higher reps, so squats are x6 and x10 compared to x4 and x8.Accessories:- calf raises (alternating emphasis on gastrocnemius and soleus, so one day you'd do gastro-emphasized calf raises and another day soleus-emphasized calf raises)- wrists/upper forearm work (barbell bicep curls holding toward the neck; wrist curls)- HIIT conditioning (2-3x/wk)note: ITT stands for 'in the tank' reps or negative reps, i.e. reps you could perform but are not1:flat barbell bench 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)back squat 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)bent over barbell rows 2x10 (2 reps left ITT)2:overhead press 2x12 (1-2 reps left ITT)leg press 2x15 (1-2 reps left ITT)conventional deadlift 1x10 (2 reps left ITT)3:incline barbell bench 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)box squat 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)machine rows 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)4:flat barbell bench 2x12 (1-2 reps left ITT)back squat 2x12 (1-2 reps left ITT)wide-stance deadlift 1x10 (2 reps left ITT)5:overhead press 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)box squat 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)lat pulldowns 2x10 (1-2 reps left ITT)6:incline barbell bench 2x12 (1-2 reps left ITT)leg press 2x15 (1-2 reps left ITT)conventional deadlift 1x10 (2 reps left ITT)7:[off]Since your training sessions are so close together, your cumulative gains will be far more significant. If you feel like you can handle more volume (be very wary of this feeling), you can try to switch to my higher-volume setup with 3 sets instead of 2.Below are videos of how to perform the exercises mentioned. Of all of them, deadlift and squat matter the most to get right.overhead press: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yjwXTZQDDI deadlift (MOST IMPORTANT TO GET RIGHT): http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/weik30.htm squat (second most important to get right): http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/cyberpump1.htm bent over barbell row: http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercise...er-barbell-row wide-grip bench: http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercise...ll-bench-press incline bench: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbFgADa2PL8 box squat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw9G3mvNnLI how to fail a squat (you should be leaving 1-2 in the tank, but this is useful if you end up going to failure on accident): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlPE49zlez4 (NOTE: squatting in a power rack allows you to set safety bars at whatever height you want, removing any risk associated with going to failure)sumo deadlift: http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercise.../sumo-deadlift lat pulldowns: http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercise...p-lat-pulldown machine rows: http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercise...ted-cable-rows leg press (GO DEEP on this one, almost all have safety bars you can use if you fail anyway): http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercise...name/leg-press that should cover all the exercises I mentionedReply below and I'll add in your questions here. Otherwise, you can just message me if I've linked you here personally. Last edited by Arch0wl; 02-5-2015 at 08:51 PM ..