I think it would take less time to do it the SS way actually. For me personally Lyle's way is way too late anyway

Plus it's too much fun (and I use that word with some ambiguity here) to increase your squats every time.

Kyle, I understand your opinion and I think it's admirable if you can live by it. I'm just too paranoid and easily embarrassed.
Since I don't get into discussions on the internet, I'll just leave it at that.

btw, if anyone is offended that i post their pictures on the internet, here are my naked pics for whatever revenge you decide to bestow.

me 6 months ago, while starting p90x.



me a week ago, 1 month into SS.



i see some improvement if i do say so myself.

Genz,

there are definitely cultural differences at work here. In addition, you're studying law right? I think it's entirely fair to see this differently, given that.


I work in IT and Norwegians lol at hierarchy so I obviously don't care.

Yeah your fashion sense has improved.

Soulman, are you hiring?

no, 6 months ago i was holding the iphone upside down. noob move.

I think "eating through your sticking points" results in doing just that automatically most of the time. You bulk up until you feel uncomfortable about your gut, then you eat less, get leaner, but get stuck, so you start eating again. Rinse, repeat. That's better than eating unreasonable amounts just for the sake of doing so, just getting fatter, creating the need to convince yourself that underneath all the fat you are growing and getting stronger, which finally leads to a narcissistic personality disorder...

I'm not teh boss. Yet.

we all know that some professions would care about stuff like that because, well, it's just very different for their culture. it is simply weird in a lot of professions for a colleague to be posting half naked pics of himself on weightlifting forums. they want people who "fit" (man, was that word ever hammered into my brain during school) and for some professions/companies Zach's internet past will make him stand out in a way where he's not seen as a "fit."

however, Zach doesn't seem like the type to work in those places. he has somewhat of a hippie look with that hair.

Zach is an example (we only need use his first name anymore, like Kobe) of the eating unreasonable amounts crowd. Would his strength results have been comparable if he had only eaten through his sticking points? Or is "eating through your sticking points" only useful for those with body image concerns?

I think it's more that eating follows the linear progress of the weights on SS: the more you lift, the more you need to eat. That has certainly been my experience.

It is my opinion as well that he overate unnecessarily. However, it's not like it's gone to waste; the additional fat mass (and LBM) will help him when it comes to recovery and strength gains down the line.

But some people just don't care that they get fat when they train. And maybe he's one of them. So who cares.

I'm not really worried about myself.
The whole Web 2.0 / social networking / posting pics on the internet thing is a topic that gets a lot of attention here right now, because quite some people start to feel the consequences of their actions. And sometimes I'm just baffled at how careless other people are and open themselves up to all kinds of attacks, libel, slander etc. Yeah, it's very well possible that my background makes me think more about what could go horribly wrong.

As a matter of fact, I know a few people who work in HR and they told me "of course we google people and look at pictures. And of course we discarded applications because of that. Everybody does it. LOL." I think it sucks ass. Everybody gets drunk sometimes. Older people had the luxury that they didn't get photographed every time they went out. Now they lower the hammer on younger people who do exactly the same stuff but have to endure that 6 billion people get the chance to see them do it.
And often HR people have little idea about your qualifications and just check your application for a given set of requirements before they pass it on to the people who actually know stuff about the job. So you don't even get a chance to show the company what awesome kind of guy you are if the HR dude doesn't like your facebook profile picture. That's why I meant it's too simplistic to say that the company can go **** itself when stuff like that happens.

Pro tip I just discovered: cut up an orange, lemon, strawberries, whatever, and throw it in a pitcher of water. Nothing earth shattering, but it makes it a lot easier to drink a ton of water and avoid soda/juice.

Can you scale your consumption of excess calories up as you progress linearly so that you make the same progress in strength as someone who hammered food from the start? If so then the result would be getting just as strong but with a lower BF% and without the added effort of eating a lot of food. Perhaps progressively increasing caloric intake is the most efficient approach as a ratio of both effort:strength and effort:appearance.

I don't know what his strength gains would have been. But honestly, what recreational trainee doesn't care about his body image at all and is purely interested in strength gains? Someone who badly wants to compete maybe. But as a beginner? I don't know. I have a hard time believing that. I'm more inclined to think that a novice finds himself skinny and dreams of weighing 200 lbs so he wants to get there as soon as possible. So he drinks 2 GOMAD and rationalizes his fat gains. Rip on the other hand assumes/requires that everyone has the ambition and dedication of a professional athlete and gives advice that relates to those people, disregarding mostly anything about real life outside the gym that makes it necessary to consider common sense. His individual advice to people who go to his gym and pay him is probably different. But everything he says wrt SS assumes 100 % dedication and compliance.

That's basically what's been offered as advice in H&F lately. I didn't start pounding food (well, pound - 4k-ish) until recently, I didn't need it to gain strength when weight was super-low.

I was interpreting "eat through sticking points" as eat a lot for a few workouts, then stop, then start eating a lot again when the weight feels heavy again. If instead everyone has meant "progressively increase calories, but only by the amount necessary to prevent stalling" all along, then I think I get it now.

You eat an excess of kcals to make sure that you have enough kcals. If you could calculate your needs with pinpoint accuracy, you wouldn't need an excess at all to ensure gains. It's just a safety buffer. So you don't need a bigger excess when you progress. You need a bigger base amount of kcals, but the excess should be kept as small as possible. So while you might have a need of 3,500 kcals as a novice, you make gains (and gain fat) when you eat 3,700 kcals. If you are more advanced and have a need of 4,500 kcals, you don't need 7,000 kcals suddenly. That wouldn't make any sense.

ETA: in that context, "eat through your sticking points" would mean that you realize that you have started undereating so you get into trouble with regeneration etc. So by eating more, you get up to a new base level.

Now that I think I get it, it seems to me that the next step is clearly to stage a 2+2 H&F interwebs attack on the SS forums.

For building muscle it basically comes down to BUMPBUMPBUMPBUMPBUMPBUMBBUMBUBMPBUMPBUMPBUMBBUMBUB MPBUMPB and make sure you never BUMPBUMPBUMPBUMPBUMPUUMBUMPBUMBMUBUMP. BUMPBUMPBUMBPBUMPBUMBUMPBUMPBUMPBUMPBUMPBUMPBUMP. Or at least that's what I got from Practical Programming.

his deadlift seems pretty low but his squat is very impressive at 345x5. bench is awesome too.

i think its pretty great progress for just some regular dude in 6 months.

70s style squats though AMIRITE!!

agree with victor the progress is good for 6 months.