As the title says, this is my humble attempt to say goodbye for Skinnyville and never look back.
I find this thread very inpirational and what he did is basically exactly what I wanna achieve.

Me
- 30 years old
- 175cm/5'9"
- 63kg/140lbs
- 0 lifting experience, hell, never even been inside a gym
- weak as hell

Goal
- Get strong

How to achieve my goal
- SS for starters (do it as long as it keeps working)
- Then something else, time will tell
- GOMAD (not really, but lots of food and protein)

Cardiotarding
- Bicycling to/from work = 10kms/6.2miles, 10 times a week
- Usually takes me 25-ish mins to get to work and 28-ish mins from work
- Willing to slow down pedaling (or even completely drop it) if it interferes with recovering from lifting

Other stuff
- Gonna lift at home, mostly alone
- Built a small gym at home, with SS on mind
- Have had some kind of Sciatica for 10 months. In the beginning I couldn't even stand straight but lately it has gotten somewhat pain-free

15.11.2011

SS-Workout #1 (I'm gonna do Tu/Th/Sat)

Legs felt somewhat tired from day's biking prior the warmup so I expected squats to be exhausting (even if lightweight).

I only listed work-sets.

Warmup:
5 mins of running-in-place


SQ:

3 x 5 x 35Kg/77lbs

Coulda prolly gone a tad higher starting-weight-wise, but from what I read, better start too low than too high, rite? I'm sure my form was atrocious, knees traveling too forward for sure and not sure about my back. Also I found my bar position being prolly too low, resulting the weight being supported with my arms/hands.

BP:

3 x 5 x 40Kg/88lbs

Felt good and somewhat easy.

DL:

2 x 5 x 60Kg/132lbs

I know I'm supposed to do just one work-set of DL but since I needed to start with 60Kg to get correct bar height resulting no warmup-sets with lower weight and I didn't feel like adding weight, so decided to do 2 sets with 60Kgs. My form prolly sucked big-time.

Food:

~2800 kcals / 210g of protein

Is there some kind of forum standard for rounding the lb-figures if using KG-plates?
I just divide Kgs with 0,453.

As expected, this happened -> http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=587

Both thighs are lulz-sore. Had a hard time just to climb downstairs to get breakfast. ****ing squats

Also took me around 29 mins to bike to work instead of standard 26 mins.

Use google (77 kg in lbs) or a calc (77*2,2).

Definitely better to start too light - progress is lightning fast on SS anyway. I'd encourage you to get some vids up, best thing you can do for your technique besides getting a knowledgeable coach. I wouldn't go crazy on the food just yet - wait until your form is a bit more solidified. Good luck.

Yeah, I keep my log in an excel-sheet and have kg's in one column and lb's in next column and currently have it so that lbs are kgs/0,453 which is basically same as *2,2.

Unfortunately, dunno any knowledgeable coaches.
I'll try recording some vids during my next workout or at the latest on saturday. I guess I need to figure out how to lower the resolution in my camera to make the files upload-friendly. Also, I'm not too keen to upload vids showing my face on the interwebz so I need to figure out a way to make vids that are good to judge my form from but don't show my face.
I think my cal intake is pretty much same as what I consume, ~2,8K on lifting days and ~2,4k on off-days, I try eating that for starters, see what happens and adjust accordingly.

Thx.

Youtube converts your vid to an appropriate resolution, unless you have an insane camera I wouldn't worry about it.

All right, kool. Nothing insane, max res is full-hd i guess.

Any recommendations on how much to add weight on each lift between workouts?
I've read SSed2 (okay, so far I've read Squat, BP and DL-chapters) and watched the dvd, but somehow I musta forgotten the suggestions of how much to add weight for those lifts.
I vaguely remember reading in SS-wiki something like this:
5-10 lbs for BP, OHP, Squat and PC
10-20 lbs for DL

Is that correct? And as I'm lightweight and weak, should I err on the low side or high-side of the ranges?

Yeah, go with 5 the squat, OHP and BP and 10 for DL. You will probably need to start microloading the OHP and BP pretty quickly, given your strength levels. You can order fractional plates (from http://ironwoodyfitness.com/fractionals.php e.g.) or use the washer trick in the FAQ.

Btw, it's recommended to program like this (from PPST 2.0):

Round 1:
- Squat
- BP/OHP
- DL

Do this for 2-3 weeks.

Round 2:
- Squat
- BP/OHP
- PC/DL (or chins if you wuss out of PCs like most)

This should work for another month or two.


Round 3:
- Squat
- BP/OHP
- PC/DL/Chins

Okay, 10 for DL and 5 for others it is. Smallest plates I own now are 1,25kg, so I'll take a trip to a nearest hardware store when the need arises.

I actually remember that while reading the SS-wiki I liked that version of the program most, or maybe it wasn't exactly like the program u posted but something very close to that.

I def want to at least try PC but I also really like doing chins. Well, at least I get to do chins in the round 3 if I decide to go with PCs in round 2, we'll see.

Thanks a lot again, really useful stuff.

It seems like ur like me and browse/post @ 2+2/other forums at least 30% of your supposed working time

EDIT; By PPST, do u mean Practical Programming for Strength Training? I actually ordered that from Amazon at the same time I ordered SSed2, haven't read it yet though.

lol, not 30% on average for sure but prob around 30 mins or so per day for sure.

and yeah, re: PPST.

Legs felt incredibly weak when pedaling home, took me 35 mins to get there instead of usual 28 mins. I really hope that they'll be better tomorrow or I won't be able to squat ****. Not that I'm gonna squat **** anyways, weight-wise that is.

16.11.2011

Food:

~2400kcals / ~180g of protein

You'll adapt pretty quickly, first few sessions are the worst by far.

Hope so, and for sure I'm gonna try squatting, no matter what.

17.11.2011

SS-workout #2

Warmup:
5 mins of running-in-place + some leg-raises

SQ:

2x5x20
1x5x25
1x3x30
1x2x35
3x5x37,5kg/83lb

OHP:

3x5x20
1x5x25
1x5x30kg/66lb

DL:

1x3x60
1x5x65kg/143lb


Legs felt still horrible all day and while biking to home from work I was 80% sure that I won't be able to squat at all, but whaddya know?
On my way home I actually stopped by a local supermarket and grabbed a foam roller. The instruction-paper that came with the roller said not to roll before exercising but **** that.
I did roll my quads and hamstrings for quite some time immediately prior my workout. Also did a bunch of static stretches and those two combined seemed to make a difference.
Squatting felt actually pretty good but I'm sure my form still sucks, so time to record some videos on Saturday. OHP felt ok too, but really not sure if I should add weight next time or try to do 3 sets with today's weight. DL felt ok-ish but no idea about my form so try to video it on next workout as well.

Food:
2750 kcals / 200 g's of bro-teen

Foam rolling before exercise is fine and in fact beneficial to get rid of soreness/stiffness imo.

sorry to hijack but since this is a beginning thread and i have a beginner question, thought i'd ask it here.

just started my gf on a SS type program (squats, DL or squats, bench then bunch of iso and body weight exercises cause she doesn't feel it's a workout without them) and her legs aren't sore the next day.

her form is pretty good, and she is working pretty hard every set (grunting loudly and face getting red). i know soreness isn't everything, but for a beginner that has pretty much never lifted weights at all, i thought it was strange and perhaps am missing something. she is 100 lbs and squatting 55 only. should i be making her do more sets right now, or just load the bar as normal ?

Soreness is not an indicator of anything. Just keep going as per normal. Better asked in the beginner question thread though.

Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking.
It also said to "avoid rolling if suffering from disc herniation" and I might be seeing that my sciatica could be a symptom of exactly that.
OR it could be a couple of other things. It's never been diagnosed so can't know for sure.
Anyhoo, gonna keep rolling and see what happens.

I don't care. BUT it's a gf-post and rules are rules, so PICS OR GTFO!

Also, as Soulman said, u'd prolly get more answers if posted in a thread that is read by a lot of ppl i.e. Beginners' Questions.

While biking to work today, legs felt, if not quite normal, at least a lot better than previous 2 days. Climbing stairs felt still very awkward.

18.11.2011

Food:

~2500 kcals / 180g of protein

WEEE!
Happened to have some spare wood, plywood and paint laying around so decided to build one of these and put it in the yard:



Gonna use it to spice up my warm-up and cool-off routines.

Drop the cardio unless you're prepared to eat a lot more than you currently do. 10km per day x 10 times per week is way too much. It will 100% interfere with your recovery from lifting.

Put it this way: you up your daily intake of calories to build muscle > you cycle 10km per day which depletes your glycogen (energy) stores + nutrients > less calories + nutrients to gain muscle... etc

If SS = Start Strength then I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner without a coach. There are so many things that can go wrong with deadlift and squat. Took me about 9 months to get the perfect form on deadlift so if you want to gain pure muscle mass then I would go for either volume training or High intensity training (HIT). Some people respond better to V, some people prefer HIT. After lifting for 2.5 years using volume training I have finally switched to HIT and couldn't recommend it enough. Hope this helps.