profile

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.

Featured Post

The unsexy truth about long term progress

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...

Reader,A 56-year-old client just crossed 9 months of consistent training with me. Here's where he landed: Squat went from 225 to 325. Deadlift went from 185 to 370. That's 100 pounds on the squat and 185 on the deadlift, measured by 5-rep max. Massive 9 month 5RM progress by 56 year old client. The process was simple. We got his form locked in and standardized through video review first, ran a basic novice linear progression, transitioned through the NLP phases when the time came, then moved...

Reader, At training 3 days a week, your first 100 sessions takes about 8 months. That's the real unit of measurement and something I look for my lifters to accomplish when I bring them on board. Once you understand what happens inside that window, the six-week transformation promises start to look pretty silly. The first month is about getting your technique locked in. Squat, press, deadlift, done right, every time. For most people this is the first time anyone has ever actually coached them...

Reader, Why do you, as a lifter who desires to be strong, want your training to feel easy? To never feel strain? To never miss a rep? To cruise through every session and walk out feeling like you did something without actually doing anything? This shit is supposed to be hard. That's why way less than 1% of people actually do it. There's a weight range where most novice and intermidiate lifters stall: Squat: 255 – 315 Bench: 175 – 225 Press: 115 – 155 Deadlift: 315 – 365 A lot of factors...

Reader,When Nathan came to me in early September, he was already a serious lifter but was stuck in the all too common rut of not knowing how to progress post novice programming.Now often when I onboard someone new, the reason they are stalled is due to atrocious form and them thinking they need more advanced programming. So we end up fixing the lifts and pulling their programming back to novice stage.But Nathan was already a pretty solid lifter — some minor form errors here and there, but...

Reader,Matt spent two years training his garage gym. He read Starting Strength cover to cover, watched all the form videos, and set up his phone at every angle trying to figure out what he was doing wrong. But his his squat was a mess. The bar position was wrong his wrists hurt constantly, his elbows flared up, and every rep felt awkward. And the worst part? His numbers were stuck. He'd add weight, miss reps, deload, grind back up, and hit the same wall again. Meanwhile his tendons were...

Reader, Quick question: Are you still logging sessions, filming sets, and pushing hard... but the bar just isn't moving like it used to? Resets feel like Groundhog Day, tweaks keep popping up, or life (work, kids, travel) keeps throwing curveballs that kill your momentum. You're not alone, I've seen this exact pattern in dozens of guys who've run NLP (or tried to) and hit the intermediate wall. Right now, I'm offering a free personalized audit to the first wave who respond. What you get:...

Hey Reader Lifters should strive to push their strength higher than they think they need at least once in their life. Here’s why: it solves a real problem down the road. A lot of guys set their sights on what I call Standards 1.0: 135 lb Press 225 lb Bench 315 lb Squat 405 lb Deadlift That’s a solid base. Respect to anyone who hits those numbers. But life happens: sickness, injury, work demands, family stuff, or just a long break from training. Your strength can drop fast. Your “floor” can...

Good morning, Lifter, Yesterday on X I posted about the first time I deadlifted 500 pounds. I’d trained hard for it. In a dingy basement powerlifting gym you might know as Massenomics HQ, somewhere in the frozen plains of Western North East South Dakota, I finally pulled 500 off the floor. I was fired up. When I got home, I told my now-wife (who was my girlfriend at the time) what I’d done. She looked at me and said,“Wow… is that a lot?” And I had to answer honestly: “Yes. But no.” Side bar:...