Today was the first time I completed a full Starting Strength workout, and the first time I made use of my 15 kg plates. I reached new highs in all three exercises. Today’s working sets:
- Squat: 60 kg × 5 reps × 3 sets
- Press: 22.5 kg × 5 reps × 3 sets
- Deadlift: 67.5 kg × 5 reps × 1 set
Surprisingly, the app gave me 25 kg × 5 reps in the warmup set for press (higher than the working set). Not sure if this is a bug or a feature. If it’s a feature it’s dumb, because 25 kg was more than I could do with good form.
I’m happy to have reached 60 kg in squat today. Squat is such a scary and uncomfortable exercise that I instinctively want to skip it, but in the Starting Strength method, you start every workout with 9 sets of squats.
Yesterday I rediscovered the StrongLifts routine on YouTube. It’s almost identical to Starting Strength. No aerobic warmups, a small set of compound movements, high weights low reps, and A and B workouts with 3 exercises 3 times a week. The only difference I can spot is the use of barbell rows and doing 5 working sets (instead of 3) on most exercises).
Mehti, the guy behind StrongLifts, has generously shared his A and B workouts in two videos, showing the full workouts including rest in between. This is precisely the kind of training I’m aspiring to do. I’ll stick to Starting Strength, since it’s more elaborate, but seeing actual footage of a full workout was very interesting.
Tomorrow I’ll go to work for the first time in more than a year, so from now on I’ll have to put my workouts in the early morning, or (next best) in the evenings.
Nine Inch Arms 