I've been on the fence about starting one of these for quite a while, but figured this should serve as motivation.

I'm 20 years old, 6'0, 175 pounds. I have a pretty inconsistent schedule but want to make the most out of the chances I have to eat/sleep/exercise with some degree of consistency. I read SS like late 2008, lifted fairly regularly for a few months, then ran a marathon last year and stopped lifting for a while. After that I didn't really get back into it until recently.

In terms of goals I'd say my goals are vainer than a lot of 2+2 but less vain than just about any non 2+2er. I primarily want to just focus on getting strong now, but I don't really want to end up having 20% body fat in doing so. I enjoy starting strength and I enjoy eating a lot, but long term I don't see myself weighing like 220 pounds or anything like that. My main sport is volleyball, so after a few months I'll likely switch my focus to more plyometric type stuff, but for now I'm primarily just working on the exercises in starting strength.

I think in general I need work "piecing it all together" in terms of warmup, stretching, what to do on my off days etc. In general when I go to the gym I usually just do my warmups, do my work sets and go. I understand its probably a good idea to start dynamic stretching and foam rolling more regularly and figured being judged by the H&F forum is probably a good way to get motivation to do so. I also have a home chin-up bar and #1 and #1.5 COC grippers. I'm not too sure how regularly I should do each of these since I don't want to overtrain but at the same time feel pretty motivated right now and am willing to commit plenty of time/effort to getting stronger.

Hopefully in the next week or two I can get a video camera to start posting videos to be critiqued. I think my squatting is horrible(both #'s and techniquewise) and feel that I'll never be able to view myself as a man until I can squat with heavy weights properly. I think I'm fairly competent at Bench, Deadlifts and OHP, but who knows. I've done very little power cleaning but plan on doing it more in the future.

Todays workout went pretty well, all my lifts are within about 5-10% of what they were when I stopped in early 2009.

Squat:
2x5x45
1x5x95
1x3x135
1x2x155
3x5x180

These felt pretty good, my last 2 workouts I think I was taking low-bar squats a bit too seriously and ended up having the bar low enough on my back that my wrists were supporting some of the weight, but I think I corrected that today.

Bench

1x5x45
1x5x95
1x3x115
1x2x135
3x5x150

Pretty good weight, never successfully done 3 sets at 155, we'll see how things go on Friday.

Deadlift
1x5x135
1x5x205
1x2x255
1x5x280

After rereading the deadlift section of starting strength I've started using the double overhand grip(used to always use one over, one under) and my grip strength is really bad. Meant to do 3 reps on my last warmup set but figured after 2 it would be pretty likely I just wouldn't be able to hold it the whole way. For my work set the weight didn't feel that hard on my body but even using an alternating grip is was the limiting factor, for the 5th rep it was definitely slipping out of my hands and I let it down a little quicker than usual.
Also, I usually do 4 warmup sets for deadlift, no idea why I only did 3 today, I think I meant to put 25's on instead of 35's for my 2nd warmup set and that just threw everything off.

Now some random questions

Do you guys recommend posting my diet on here?
I'm currently still lifting using a pair of running shoes, how stupid is this? If I want to get other shoes for lifting, should I get shoes made specifically for lifting or just flatter shoes(cost isn't a big factor, but I'd rather not waste money)?
What about other equipment? Should I consider getting straps for deadlifting or should I just tough it out until my grip is strong enough? How about a belt?
Is the recommendation in starting strength to workout 3 times a week just for convenience, or would I be able to workout 7 times every 2 weeks? My schedule is pretty flexible so the day of the week probably matters less to me than over 99% of people?
I also travel the European live circuit a fair bit, does anyone doing the same thing have any advice for eating well over there? I find whenever I go to play tournaments no matter how hard I try its hard not to mess things up(except EPT Prague which had a shockingly nice gym)
As earlier mentioned, how often should I use my chinup bar if at all assuming I'm eating lots and lifting 3 days a week?

Thats it for now, sorry if I've forgotten anything important, I'll definitely be keeping this updated

Welcome.

Sure, though I'd read what Lyle McDonald says in Flexible Guide to Dieting if you care about that kind of stuff. Some of the fat ****s in this forum (me, milesdyson) don't really care about our diet and are just in it to get strong, so we tend not to give advice on this topic as it would be useless to you.

Pretty dumb. I love my pair of VS Dynamos ($90), but a simple pair of Chucks ($40) will be a huge upgrade.

No straps, screw that. At least not yet.

Definitely try a belt and see if you like it. I love mine from APT ($45).

The extra rest day does have importance, but if you can tolerate every other day, try it. Recovery is highly variable and individual, so give it a shot if you want to.

lol europe is all I have to say about that.

This is covered in SS under the Onus Wunsler program. Can't remember exactly when they go in, but it has to do with when you drop deadlift frequency IIRC.

Get chalk if you don't have it already. If cost is no issue I would go straight for a pair of weightlifting shoes. Mine are Adidas but VS and Rogue are fine too.

You going to EPT San Remo?

Me and my roomm8 there are gonna try and find a powerrack there and do SS workouts, if you want you can join us.

Ya, sounds great. The main hotel that qualifiers get put at has one of the saddest gyms I've ever seen but there might be an ok gym somewhere in the city.

Chalk seems like a smart idea, my gym primarily targets 30-50 year old computer programmers so I'm not sure whether or not they'll appreciate it, but I'll ask next time I'm at the gym

Don't ask, just act like you own the place and you can use chalk..

Definitely take 10 min before each workout to do foam rolling and drills like the ones out of Magnificent Mobility focusing on hip mobility and glute activation, its worth it and you really feel the results if you do it consistently.

what is magnificent mobility and link? also is foam rolling the "dynamic stretching" every1 hypes about?

If you want to get weightlifting shoes, here's a place in canada that got recommended on some forum that was linked from here: http://www.weightliftingshoes.ca/ Found it a while ago but still have been too lazy to actually buy some...off to start my log!

its all in the FAQ

Hey, today I got to the gym at 9:30 expecting it to be open until 11, it closed at 10 so everything was really rushed.

Been eating tons of meat and drinking lots of milk, felt really good.

Squat
2x5x45
1x5x95
1x3x135
1x2x155
3x5x185

These felt easier than any squatting workout I've done in quite a time. I also went to the gym with my friend whose quite knowledgeable and he says my squatting looks a lot better than it did a month ago.

Press
1x5x45
1x5x65
1x3x85
2x5x105
1x3x105

The gym was closing so I only had like 90 seconds between my 2nd and 3rd sets, these felt tough but I definitely think with more rest I could finish the 3rd set.

I planned on cleaning, but decided to do pullups at home instead

I recently switched from chinups to pullups after achieving a long time goal of 10 chinups, so I'm pretty new to pullups, did 5 sets with 4-5 minutes between sets(is this too much volume? I did these about 1hour after leaving the gym)

6,6,6,5,5

Gonna watch magnificent mobility tonight/tomorrow

Feb 12- Workout 3

Didn't sleep great last night, but felt ok overall

Squat
2x5x45
1x5x95
1x3x135
1x2x155
3x5x190

I've been doing 5 pounds jumps but felt good enough last workout that I was tempted to go to 10 pound jumps. Decided to stick to 5 pounds and they felt fine, but glad I went with only 5. The 5th rep on my 2nd set seemed pretty bad.

Bench

1x5x45
1x5x95
1x3x115
1x2x135
2x5x155
1x4x155

Kind of a PR... have done 3 sets of 5 at 154 last year, not sure which is tougher, but I'll wait until finish all 3 sets to call it a PR

Deadlift

1x5x155
1x5x195
1x3x225
1x2x255
1x5x285

These were pretty heavy, my last set took probably a minute, good workout overall, going to go eat a ton for dinner.

Feb 16- Workout 4

Been kinda busy, so I missed my workout Monday and decided I'll go Tues,Thurs, Sat this week instead

Squat
2x5x45
1x5x95
1x3x135
1x2x165
3x5x195 PR

Today squatting was making some part shoulder hurt(want to say my deltoids but not sure) I shouldn't say it was painful, just not very comfortable. I have no idea whether this is just a symptom of heavier weights or if I'm not balancing the bar in the right place. I've been focusing on keeping my elbows higher but it seemed that higher elbows resulted in more discomfort

Press
1x5x45
1x5x65
1x3x85
3x5x105

Felt good but tough, think it could be a few workouts before I get 110

Pullups

7,6,6,6,5

I did these several hours after the gym since I planned out my day pretty poorly and didn't have that much time at the gym.

I have a camera now and should try taking videos for Thursday's workout. I also tried buying chucks this week but they were all sold out, might order those weightlifting shoes online.

Feb 18- Workout 5

Purchased chucks yesterday, hard to notice any huge differences, but I feel like some combination of the shoes/using hand grippers made deadlifting easier this time around. I also took my camera to the gym and although I felt extremely awkward doing so I took about 12 videos which I'll post tonight or tomorrow.

Squat
2x5x45
1x5x95
1x3x135
1x2x165
3x5x200 PR

Getting tough, can't decide whether these looked better or worse than they did in my head, looking forward to seeing people critique them.

Bench

1x5x45
1x5x95
1x3x115
1x2x135
3x5x155 PR

I gave a little fistpump in the video after doing this, been really close to 3x5x155 a bunch of times but never successfully done it. Was kinda disappointed to see that my bar path wasn't perfectly vertical when in my head my bench form was pretty good.



Deadlift

1x5x155
1x5x205
1x3x235
1x2x260
1x5x290

Seemed easier than last workout, had some difficulties with the camera, hopefully the videos look ok