Get weekly training tips, real-world coaching insights, and strength strategies that actually work — from a Starting Strength Coach who walks the walk.
details matter
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Reader, Details matters. Take the 5 Step Deadlift setup. Telling someone to "put the bar against the shins" sounds fine until you watch what they do with it. The bar ends up shoved forward or dragged back, their hips end up too low as they squat to it, and it ends up nowhere near where it belongs directly over the middle of the foot. Compare that to "the bar starts directly over the middle of the foot, about 1 inch from vertical shins." Now the lifter knows the exact spot to set up so the bar travels straight up in line with gravity over the midfoot. Squat depth works the same way. Telling someone to "get your hip crease below the knee" can put them six inches deeper than they ever needed to go, grinding out range they never had to earn. What you actually want to tell them is that the apex of the hip crease should land about an inch below the top of the patella. That satisfies The Criteria. Instruction can be technically true and still leave too much room to get it wrong. The specific version puts the lifter in the exact position the lift requires, every rep, every time. This is what separates the guys who build clean form and keep adding weight from the ones who train willy nilly and stall out years before they should. Being precise about how you teach and learn the movement is most of the game. It's also most of what I do for the people I coach. Getting the instruction exact so the inch that's off never becomes a stalled lift or a nagging tweak. If you're tired of guessing whether your positions are right, apply for coaching and I'll tell you exactly what to fix and hold you to it while we drive your lifts and strength up together over the next couple year.s Sam Krapf, SSC |
Sam Krapf
Get weekly training tips, real-world coaching insights, and strength strategies that actually work — from a Starting Strength Coach who walks the walk.
Reader,Let's talk about Dan.Dan is 44, a father of three, and has been working with me for about eight months. He came in at 158 pounds with fused vertebrae in his back. Playing with his kids or throwing them around the house could leave him laid up for several days afterward if he wasn't careful We made the modifications he needed, found the Key Performance Lifts he could train effectively, and focused on steady progress over time. He’s now 171 pounds and considerably stronger. On a recent...
Reader, Stringing together week after week, month after month, year after year of consistent, effective, well executed training is where the magic happens. You do that long enough and you wake up one day annd weights that used to staple you to the floor are now just warm ups. You've mutated. I want to walk through what that actually looks like for a real client, because the timeline matters here. A guy in his 50s trained with me about 10 months on NLP and into intermediate programming,...
ReaderMost everything I do for my clients is information you can get for free in about 20 minutes of searching. The Novice Linear Progression aint a secret. You can buy the Blue Book for like $20 on Amazon. Squat, press, deadlift, bench, add weight every session. 3x5, sometimes 1x5 on deadlift. Eat more, sleep more, do it again Wednesday. That's the whole program, and I've even written extensive details and expansion on the programming stages through the phases for free that you probably...