[cheald]

Starting Strength is fine for a beginner. It's not an optimal program, but it's simple, easy to understand, and built on good foundational principles. As an on-ramp into resistance training, it's better than a complex program that'll scare beginners off or burn them out.

[satvikpendem]

This is directly addressed on that page too:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200528135350/https://thefitnes...

As well as in the section above it.

[cheald]

It still doesn't change the fact that a suboptimal program which keeps beginners engaged and moving forward is infinitely superior to a more complex one that they fall off of.

[anigbrowl]

This is survivor bias; SS keeps some beginners engaged but there's no count of those who drop off or never start it. I was in the latter group; it was the first program recommended to me, but I was leery of it because I don't have medical insurance and was skeptical about the feasibility of the suggestions based on what I knew about my own body, so I just did nothing about it. When I did start lifting, I started out with light weights and spent months figuring out a program while getting a kinetic understanding of the different muscle groups and how they worked together, spamming volume for a while and gradually adding more weight.

I don't mean that SS is a bad program, it works for lots of people and it's very accessible. But I also think it's way oversold and not magic.

[cheald]

It's definitely not magic, but it's on the 80 side of the 80/20 split, IMO.

It isn't the right starter program for everyone, but then, nothing is. The best program for the beginner is whichever one keeps you consistently showing up and moving forward.

[satvikpendem]

It does actually. The program is so poor that beginners might not even see enough progress that they're put off from working out, because "what's the point if I've been at it for a month or three and still don't have any gains?" That's why it's better to actually pick a good program, one that shows consistent gains as motivation rather than plateauing as a demotivational force.

Other recommended programs like 5/3/1 are not "more complex," that's a false dichotomy. They're just as simple but with different sets of exercises.

[cheald]

This is a very silly argument to be made against a lifting program which has verifiably moved countless people off the couch and into resistance training. The reason people recommend Starting Strength is because it's what successfully got them into lifting.

I train 5/3/1 now, I have for years, I love it, and I absolutely do not recommend it to beginners. I've tried. Their eyes glaze over when you start talking about "training maxes" and "periodization". They get confused and lose whatever sliver of motivation they had. Save the optimization for when they're bought in. Any beginner is gonna make progress on essentially any structured program just due to neuroadaptation. Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

[satvikpendem]

I did SS too in the beginning. I didn't see much progress and that has also been verifiably the case for others too, if you are using anecdotes as your verification process. That SS works is despite its quality, not because of it. And so what? Should we not try to improve programs just because they work in some cases? We don't have to use 5/3/1 then, we can use even the basic beginner routine as recommended on r/fitness, it is pretty good while discarding the problems of SS.

[cheald]

But you're still lifting, presumably. That sounds like success to me.

I tried to start lifting multiple times. SL 5x5 is what actually made it click. Now that I know what I'm doing, I could write volumes on its flaws, but what I needed wasn't a technically optimized program, but one which gave me a clear goal for each workout and an easy way to see what the path forward looked like.

As the reddit beginner program correctly notes:

> The primary goal is to be a simple, easy to follow routine that will help beginners get into the gym, start training with the standard barbell lifts, and build a habit of going to the gym consistently. Consistency over time is the biggest point of failure in making progress, and the aim is to lower the barrier as far as possible to starting and staying consistent.

The point of a beginner program really isn't the volume moved or optimizing the particular split, but to give the beginner a structure on which to build routine and learn good habits. It helps no one to crap on Starting Strength, when it has an established history of achieving exactly that goal. Offering things like the reddit program as a potentially superior alternative is fine to the eager newbie, but telling people that Starting Strength is a bad way to start is just counterproductive.

My advice to every new lifter is that the best program for them is the one that gets them going back to the gym consistently, and I'll continue to stand behind that. It's not SS for everyone - and that's fine. But it is SS for a lot of people, and that's also fine.

[dogman144]

Have you even done SS or read the book, actually end to end?

Comparing 5/3/1 or a reddit post to SS indicates a complete lack of familiarity.

You can use dismissive like survivorship bias all you’d like, but end do the day Rip knows and runs a tier 1 program to get in life shape. It’s very difficult to read SS and execute it as designed and not come to that conclusion.