I seriously roasted like a pound of pork belly, took the half cupish of liquid rendered fat, and dumped it into my lentils. I probably left out two tablespoons. Made me sad. Never again will I show such wanton waste.

Oh my lord, that sounds fantastic.

Thremp is my hero. I'm totally doing that next time I make carnitas.

I don't know about anyone else, but as soon as I finish the last DL rep at the end of most of my squat/bp/DL days, I don't think I could even do a single 30 lb barbell curl. So I couldn't imagine adding much more to it without affecting the core lifts.

Sex.

Good decision. Gl;hf!

EZ game. Beats that ****ing Arc Trainer.

I got my hands on a copy of SS.

Read through Squat, Bench & DL so far. Amazing stuff.

DL seems somewhat confusing to me, but been practicing my form in the office.

I also read through the programming section to see what kind of reps/sets I need to do to start tonight.

Should I go similar to the warm-up/work set table(8-2) with a 2 warm-up sets with the bar & then how much weight should I go up for work-sets just starting out?

Obviously I'm concentrating on form at this point so not worried about how much I can get.

if the book recommends what to do, I'd follow that advice

there is a section in the book about how you do your first training session to establish your starting weights. You start with an empty bar and then increase weights until your movement slows down noticeably. You should do that.

January 13, 2010: Workout #1

Squat
warmup 2x5 45
warmup 1x5 65
working sets 3x5 75

Bench Press
warmup 2x5 45
warmup 1x5 65
working sets 3x5 75

Deadlift
warmup 2x5 45
warmup 2x5 65
working set 1x5 75

Obviously I was concentrating on form and had a couple of the Trainers watch my form squat and deadlift, since I was totally new to those. I seemed to grasp the material really well, even for DL. I'm not sure my back position/posture was perfect for DL, but they said it looked very good for a first time.

Diet thus far today:
Fat(g) Carbs(g) Prot(g) KCals
66.77 151.00 112.03 1621

Questions:
1)I realize I deviated somewhat from the overall charts in SS for warming up, but I didn't really have any weight jumps for warming up, so thought I did OK. Let me know if there is a better breakdown for warming up/work sets.
2)Haven't read Press or Power Clean yet. Anything to think about before I get reading?

TFG,

be sure to look at all the form vids on the starting strength wiki/youtube as well. If you can get the SS DVD, it is very much worth the investment. For learning the exercises I'd almost say it's better than the book, or at least takes way less time.

1) You did fine. The warmup calculator applies less at lower weights and when you're trying to figure things out. Do you think that these working sets are a good place to start? By that I mean did the bar speed slow down on your final reps? If not, you can increase the weight rather rapidly.

2) Press: Keep your abs tight. Think of your body as a column of muscle from the floor to your head. Drive the bar straight up and get under it quickly. Think about it brushing the tip of your nose as it goes up (obviously you don't want that, but it should be a good visual cue as to how close you want it).

Power Clean: They're gonna suck. Don't worry about it. Mine still do. There's too much to focus on overall, so the first thing I'd think about would be keeping straight and unbent arms. Think of them as pieces of rope that attach to the bar and just so happen to be the way that it moves up. You want a tight grip, but other than that, you don't want to pull with the arms. The movement is all in the jump and hip extension.

The other thing about the PC is that you should focus on pulling the bar high as ****.

You may want to omit the PC for now. You should be deadlifting every workout day until you can't recover from it adequately. So that means something like this:

A:
Squat
Press
DL

B:
Squat
Bench
DL

You can work light hang cleans or power cleans in there since the weights are so low.

The DVD is coming. Been reading the Wiki and the bodybuilding.com FAQ as well. Thanks for all the help.

Sounds good, I'll DL like you said & I'll try some light power cleaning as well.

1. Eat more.
2. Don't put too much stock into what a random PT says. They are generally clueless and it wouldn't surprise me if they had never done or taught a proper DL before and just decided to say yes to whatever you were doing. Read the book, watch the DVD, watch the youtube/wiki videos, and videotape your form and post it here and/or Rip's forum.
3. Like kyle said re: the clean, at such a light weight you can easily just pull it up with your arms but as the weight gets heavier you won't be able to so it's important to focus on the hip extension from the start instead of learning bad technique then having to relearn the movement.

Good job so far.

Eat moaaarrr!

Trying to eat more, haven't got to Dinner 1 or 2 yet.

Can't wait to get my hands on the DVD.

I just wanted to say how refreshing it is to see someone who takes everything in stride and trusts the knowledge of people who have done this before, big ups.

It feels good to know I'm on the right track now. I have a ton to learn but I'm eager to.

Workout felt great today. Got a chance to practice power cleaning the bar, and it seemed to go well.

-Is there anything I can/should do on my off day for abs or anything else? I'll be at the gym prob(I work right next to it) when my wife comes.

If you wanna add in more ab work, I suggest OH support work, gymnastic progressions, and turkish get ups.

Aren't planks pretty awesome for weak ppl?

this. at your weight, the shovel method works.

I don't know how people can't get enough calories in... on work out day I think my main meal is like 1400-1500+ cals or something

Dude, you're like twice the size of TFG

Considering I was trying to eat lighter yet high protein before this, it's been hard for me to immediately flip the switch.

Ended up eating yesterday:
Fat(g) Carbs(g) Prot(g) KCals
112.27 195.50 141.53 2286

Gonna go for more today.

Could you explain what the first two are? Couldn't find anything on them.