Six Basic Weight Training Questions - Page 2

Starting Strength. Got it. You are a river to your people.

Greyland, from my lurking, you seem like a reasonably friendly guy, and since Amazon takes a while, let's talk for a minute about goals.

What kind of goals are we talking about here? (20 inch biceps? 3 x 10 x 225lbs? Big fight with Apollo Creed?) I guess an open-ended goal like "greater size and strength" is too vague. Can you describe a goal that you had, and how you achieved it?

Assuming you're a novice, there's a book called STARTING STRENGTH by Mark Rippetoe that outines several ideas on effective weight training, and it addresses several of these common questions. And because I'm not a complete dick, I'll take a stab at answering them for you.

Rippetoe suggests that beginners alternate between two "full body" workouts of different compound exercises, advocating building a foundation of strength from which to use in later, more complex training. These workouts are performed 3 times a week, and never on consecutive days.


According to Rippetoe, this can vary depending on the exercise. But generally speaking, for beginners, we're looking at 3 work sets of 5 reps.


As long as you need. Weight-on-the-bar and finishing your sets is more important than heart rate. As you get more advanced this will probably be from 2-3 min, but it's best not to overthink it.



The duration of the beginning workouts that Rippetoe describes last about 20-30 minutes.



This is essentially a non-issue, but Rippetoe is a strong advocate of consistency. As a beginner, don't take more days off that prescribed, and the volume is light enough that this shouldn't be a problem.


If you're a beginner, no. If you're more advanced, it should be used judiciously.


There is an issue of goals and "programming." As a beginner, you should be aiming for workout-to-workout progression, and Rippetoe's ideas address that.

But of course, Rippetoe is one guy amongst many who claim to know the answers, and each have their devotees and evidence to support their theories, so caveat emptor. For more information, you should actually read his book, or for a quick and dirty overview (and what I used to answer these questions), you can check out this page.

That should be enough to get on base.

I answered my own questions using the principles of the text you recommended. I did a web search on "Starting Strength," and bam. It was a low calorie burn.

In any case, do you disagree with any of the answers?

And Whacked, I'm not sock-puppeteering. That would require getting a new user id, and the intent to be duplicitous, and that REALLY WOULD be burning more calories than it's worth.