How I got started with weightlifting - a weightlifting primer

[skunkworks]

It's been close to a year since I started lifting semi-seriously. I am a relative noob when it comes to weightlifting and I'll be the first to admit it. I overpost in this forum in a tuq-and-furlongesque way but I really do try to post only when I think I can contribute. Some of these contributions I've learned through experience, some just by reading the right resources.

I do a lot of reading and research, but I've still managed to say misleading and incorrect things. What can I say? Our understanding of sports science is still rudimentary and in a state of flux and it's hard to know who to trust. There are always going to be plenty of crackpots spouting nonsense and profiteers spreading misinformation. Sometimes I can smell the BS from miles away but other times I can't help but fall for it. Scientific skepticism is your best defense.

Finding truth in health and nutrition is tough, and I especially feel bad for noobs because the barrier of entry for something as simple as lifting weights and gaining strength is still so high. I get it wrong all the time. Regardless, I still refine what little I do know about lifting and nutrition while still seeking knowledge and greater understanding of how to keep my body in shape.

What I want to do here is introduce noobs to the very basics of lifting and nutrition. I don't claim that my way is the best way or that I've won any bodybuilding contests. That's why I'm choosing to introduce the basics of weightlifting by telling my story. There are plenty of paths that all reach the same destination so don't start arguing about why your way is superior. If you want to bitch, great; do it in your own effin' thread.

*****

I started lifting at the beginning of April 2006, a couple of weeks after finishing the LA Marathon just before my goal time of 5 hours. I had quit smoking about 7 weeks earlier after 8 years of half-a-pack a day. I never worked out and lived a sedentary, cubicle lifestyle -- a perfect fit for a software programmer. At the time I was 24, 5'10", 148 lbs., and around 13% body fat. To this day I'm still not sure how I managed to finish under 5:00. Let's just say I had a lot of free time to train back then.

I always wanted to be bigger but my slim frame never held onto weight very well. The heaviest I'd been was maybe 153 and it was a flabby 153 at that. After the emotional high of the marathon and the inevitable "wtf do I do now" afterwards, I was desperately in need of a new fitness goal. Why not start lifting? Yeahhhh it's [censored]' beefcake time.

One of the best personality traits I have is that when I really commit to a new hobby or interest, I dive headfirst into it. I knew one website that had the respect of almost all lifters around: T-Nation. I managed to stumble into their newbie forum and noticed a lot of different lifting programs being thrown around: Westside Barbell for Skinny Bastards, HST, blahblahmeowchow, it's all very confusing. Jumping straight into T-Nation felt like hopping onto a treadmill already going max speed. T-Nation is probably close to the best resource online for health and fitness, but you still need to be able to separate wheat from chaff.

While lurking, I kept hearing about a strength coach named Mark Rippetoe whose beginner lifting program was greatly respected. His lifting regimen seemed to be putting ridiculous amounts of muscle on high school athletes in short periods of time. I finally got directed to the bodybuilding.com forums where I found THE WORLD'S BEST GUIDE TO NOVICE BARBELL TRAINING, a fitness program that implements Rippetoe's ideas from his book, Starting Strength. I was ready to start.

I signed up at a nearby 24 Hour Fitness gym. This place is gigantic and really nice, but it's meant to be a day spa, not a Gold's Gym. I didn't have many options, but as long as they had some free weights and weren't too busy during peak hours, I couldn't complain.

Some advice: choose a gym that has the equipment you'll need. That's a power rack or squat rack, a bench press (you better know what this looks like), and a pull-up bar. Machines are totally unnecessary and in most cases counterproductive; really now, this is all you need to get started. You'll know you've found a good, hardcore gym if they have bumper plates like this which are used for the Olympic lifts and allow you to drop the weights onto the floor without damaging it. They should also allow you to use hand chalk. If you find a local gym like that, awesome.

I went in there and did my best to replicate the lifts I'd observed online. Squatting was brand new and foreign as hell to me -- I think I put 25 lbs. on each side of the bar (which weighs 45 lbs itself, btw, for a grand total of 95 lbs), managed to bend down about halfway, and basically royally [censored] it up. It looked like I'd seen others do it at my retarded gym, but just a little bit deeper. DO NOT DO THIS.

All of the basic lifts that the Rippetoe Starting Strength program has you do need to be done with good form. Any time you throw lots of weight around, bad form will get you injured. The more weight you handle, the more likely it is you get injured. This matters the most then for the heaviest lifts: the deadlift and the squat. These just also happen to be the two best exercises for building mass and overall strength, which is why it is imperative that you learn good form early. These lifts are not optional. Start with just the bar only until you get the motion down pat.

Random aside: Don't be a eff-tard and do exercises in the power/squat rack that you can do at other, less populated stations. This means you, Guy Who Is Curling The Bar In My Rack For 5 Minutes.

Another aside: Take it easy the first few times you go. Your body will be incredibly sore after the first few workouts, so it's actually okay to only do one work set instead of the normal three that the Starting Strength lifting program has you do.

After a month of dicking around with moderate progress on the easier lifts like the bench press, I started to realize that my squat form was atrocious. All the descriptions online of what it should feel like weren't there for me: my hamstrings never touched my calves, my weight wasn't on my heels, I would lose balance and start tipping forward onto my toes, and when I did try to center my weight on my heels I ended up falling backwards. I was still clueless. This is when I finally decided to stop relying on internet strangers and go straight to the source: I gave in and bought the Starting Strength book.

It is to this day the best purchase I ever made for my physical well-being. The book does a painstakingly precise job at teaching these lifts and is always good to have on hand.

If you're gonna buy Starting Strength off of Amazon, do yourself a favor and buy Rippetoe's other book, Practical Programming, while you're at it. Instead of teaching lifts like his other book, it goes more into depth about workout program theory, why we lift when we lift and how much of it, etc. Also, if I was smart back then, I would have looked for reference videos on good lifting form. Check out Crossfit's video section.

Anyway, I finally fixed my form and it made a huge difference. All of a sudden, instead of half-squatting 135 lbs., I could barely push 95 lbs. up doing ATG (ass-to-ground) squats. If you think that's humbling, you should have seen me penguin-walking around the next day because my hamstrings and adductors were so sore. "Wow, so that's what a squat is supposed to be like." Yeah. Totally on my way to beefcake status.

Once I got comfortable with the major lifts, here's what my workouts looked like:

Workout A:
3x5 Squat
3x5 Bench
3x5 Power Cleans or Pendlay Rows
2x8-10 Dips

Workout B:
3x5 Squat
3x5 Overhead Press
3x5 Deadlift
2x5-8 Chin-ups

These were done 3 times a week, alternating between Workout A and Workout B. If you're just starting out, you'll start flying through the weight. After a while, progress will start to slow and you'll start to hit plateaus. It's important to be diligent about your workouts -- going 3x a week, working with high intensity -- but it's also very important to learn how to listen to your body. An injury can be disastrous to your progress, so knowing when to take it easy can be worth much, much more than pushing yourself hard all the time. This is why Rippetoe built into his program the resetting of weight after you fail.

There's also a mental grind that can wear you down if you don't give yourself some breaks now and then. It's important to be diligent about working out 3x/week, but there needs to be balance in knowing when to ease up on yourself. I ended up getting sick of working out about 6 months into the program -- of doing the same damn lifts, having to exert myself so damn hard every time to get just a bit more progress, fighting for every rep -- so I basically dropped all my workouts for 2 months. This is way too long a break, so if you can see this coming, give yourself a preemptive 1-2 week break to recharge your batteries.

One other thing I do to keep it fresh is to substitute slight variations for certain lifts, especially when I'm still feeling a bit sore. I like swapping out back squats for front squats every now and then. You can also do things like drop the weight but increase reps for a workout, or have your work sets ramp up to your max (if I lift 225 normally, do a set at 205, one at 215, one at 225). There are other little tricks to keeping your workouts varied or to combat an "off day" at the gym, but that's all that they are: tricks. The meat and potatoes of the Rippetoe program is still all about slowly increasing the weight you lift and putting in your dues at the gym.

*****

Anyway, time to wrap this bloated post up.

It's been close to 1 year since I started. Since then, I took two months off because I got sick of lifting. I also spent 2 months training for the LA Marathon while trying to lift 2x a week (the two types of training conflict horribly; choose one or the other). I even managed to injure my knee during a 13 mile run, forcing me to drop out of the marathon with only two weeks left. These were all horrible mistakes and setbacks.

Despite all of my huge mistakes and my apparent lack of dedication, I've made some serious strength and muscle mass gains. I'm very proud of that. A year later I am healthy and happy, and I haven't had a cigarette since 2/23/06, so anyone who wants to criticize me can suck it.

Anyway, here are some numbers. These are not one-rep maxes, they are what I use as working sets:

Before
Weight: 148 lbs.
Body Fat: 13%
Squat: 95 lbs.
Bench: 115 lbs.
Deadlift: 95 lbs.

Today
Weight: 168 lbs.
Body Fat: 15%
Squat: 225 lbs.
Bench: 170 lbs.
Deadlift: 235 lbs.

*****

As an addendum, I've gained an interest in Muay Thai and have started taking classes. The type of fitness needed there is different than what I've been working on because it requires less maximal strength and more aerobic fitness and muscular endurance. This means shifting my fitness training for a different purpose. For the time being, I've shelved my lifting program because these classes are beating the living [censored] out of me. I am eternally grateful for finding the Rippetoe program since it has helped build a base level of strength and fitness that I can now tailor more specifically to my new goals. I'm way stronger than I was before; now all I need is some increased lactic acid tolerance. Once I feel comfortable with my ability to keep up in my classes, I'll see how I can start adding the lifts back in.

[theblackkeys]

wow, good effing post.

I second your caution about performing squats and deadlifts with bad form. Get form down with as light a weight as you need, then work your way up. Really easy to halfway learn correct form, start adding weight, and eff yourself up because your form is just not right.

[tdarko]

Skunkworks,

This was a great read.

Congrats on the success with the cigs man, impressive. I like what you said about lifting and training for a marathon.

[SmileyEH]

Very nice post skunk and congrats on the progress! I wish I had started in weight training like you instead of spending 2 years curling and decline benching.

[skunkworks]

Thanks for the kind words. When I first started writing up the post I planned on having a small section on nutrition. After about halfway through my bout of verbal diarrhea, I decided that it might be a battle best saved for another day.

What I found out about lifting weights and running long distances is that you can't do enough of either one to make good progress. On the days of my runs, my muscles would be a bit sore and fatigued; on my lift days, it was hard finding energy and it seemed like my lifts had all stalled. In essence I was maintaining my lifts but not doing much else. I also think that not devoting enough time for runs may have contributed to the knee irritation I developed, and the fatigue from squatting may have had something to do with it as well. All I know is that they are two disparate fitness goals.

[bdams19]

Very inspiring, great post. I think I'm going to give this routine a shot.

[tdarko]

Skunk,

Makes sense. I lift differently than you do b/c of sport specific reasons so there are less Olympic lifts in my workout. My program is still designed to increase total body strength and flexibility but I find that I am still able to get my runs in but there is no doubt that I am not getting the 100% benefit as if I were dedicating myself first to the runs and second to the lifts instead of equal parts. Monday is my only weights + run day and I do my run after I lift, it is tough but it is also a my short run and my leisure pace...I just make sure that I have been eating well that morning and that since I know my pace times that I stick to them.

For me I lift M, W, F. I run M, T, TH, Sa. Su off.

[NoRiverRats]

Skunk,

Great post, must read by all noobs.

When I started at the gym in a serious way about four years ago I was almost right where you were when you started. Now I am at 183lbs and 13% fat.

One thing I found was that after making lots of gains my first year or so(it was too easy), things started to slow down after that. Now there are all sorts of ways to bust through plateaus, but the biggest conclusion I've reached is that diet and rest are critical, and sometimes not emphasized enough.

The more time you spend in the gym, the harder it gets to make the gains you want, so you push yourself to the extreme everytime. This requires a very diligent diet and more sleep than most get.

My experience is that the stuff I do away from the gym, is after four years, critical to my improvements in the gym.

In that vein I look forward to your nutirition post.

[Jetboy2]

Great post.

[danvh]

Im kind of going the other way. I quit smoking and living a stationary lifesyle about a year and a half ago. I started taking Muay Thai classes then and am looking to get into a lifting program now.

Let me know what kind of program works for you getting back into lifting. I have been looking into some programs like Ross Enemaite's (sp?) infitinate intensity, but havent found anything I really like that goes well with fighting..