TN50 #80, Starting Strength, 18 July 2022

Hi Team,

Happy Monday and welcome to The Next 50 #80.  I volunteered for my first Performance Course back in 1986 as a 10th grader at James Wood Highschool.  Advanced PE!  That’s right not regular PE, Advanced PE; my first introduction to a weight room.  If I close my eyes, I can still smell the odd combination of rusty steel plates, WD40 and 1970’s era dried out plastic on all the benches and machines.  Since that time, I have been playing around with building and maintaining STRENGTH, mine and those people I am lucky to work with, in some form or fashion for, let’s see, 51-15 = 36 years.

One of my very active and fit clients has decided to venture into the Meat Head side of a gym for the first time and based on her current capacity with dumbbells, kettlebells, slam balls, box jumps, TRX, et cetera this is what I am thinking I will have her do based on 2 strength training sessions a week, these workouts will be in a well-equipped facility with EXOs trained Personal Trainers available for support.

Here’s what a twice a week strength training program will look like for the first 8 weeks.

Session 1:

  1. Back Squat/Leg Press
  2. Standing Overhead Press
  3. Seated Row
  4. Push Ups

Session 2:

  1. Deadlift
  2. Bench Press
  3. Weighted Lunges
  4. Pull Ups/Lat Pull Downs

The weight starting out would be just heavy enough to learn the proper movement patterns at full range of motion and progress as the form and range of motion allowed.

The Rep Scheme will be 5 Work Sets of 6 to 10 Reps per exercise, super setting back and forth between exercises 1 and 2, then 3 and 4 for both sessions.

After the first 8 weeks additional lifts and set/rep schemes will be introduced.

So, what am I missing, what would you change?  AND, if your initials are: BA, SN or JH please comment, I’m all ears.

As always share the post with your team or anyone who might find it useful.

Have a good one, Alex

PS. My website, fpp.llc is no longer just a landing page, check it out and let me know what you think. Many thanks to Melissa and Todd for months of patients as we designed this, you two rock!!!