Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

A new friend at my gym has been recommending Mark Ripptoe's "Starting Strength." I just downloaded it to my iPad but I'm wondering if anyone here has and experience, feedback with his approach. Basically he advocates starting with super low weights and focusing on form for major compound exercises - deadlifts, squats etc.

I'm checking it out and sticking with my old approach for now, just wondering if anyone here has thoughts about it. Thanks!

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I'm a novice and did it for 12 weeks or so. If you are a novice and want to get your big compound lifts up, it works great. The program has you adding 5-10 lbs every workout, so it adds up in a hurry. At the time I had lifted for maybe 6 weeks or so and I made a ton of solid progress before stalling -- it got all the basic compound lifts up to respectable newbie numbers.

Downsides in my opinion is that its pretty simple and leaves a lot out -- but I think that's the point of the program. I'm now doing a more balanced 5x5 based workout 3x a week that includes the basics of SS, but also includes chins, rows, direct arm work, etc. I'm still uppng weight regularly, but I'm getting much better results in my back, arms, etc that I just wasn't hitting with SS.

I also think the nutrition advice is bunk unless you are a 15 year old who weighs 120 lbs. So many folks at the SS forums just chant "eat eat eat" and then folks are shocked that they have packed on loads of fat in 6 months.