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Comment by googlryas | Hacker News Reader

Squat, deadlift, bench, overhead press with good form, heavy enough so you can do 3 sets of 5 repetitions and just barely finish the last two.

Do this 2-3x a week.

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If you are beginner, the simple program works ("starting strength"). Just ignore the critique for 2months/year and focus on technique + linear progression. It is much simpler to get gains than the critics want you to believe. Here's good summary for nutrition, training intensity, volume https://youtu.be/EbfdMaV7qqM

Heck, I've long suspected that a person could get a significant benefit just from deadlifts alone. Works basically all the muscles.

No, I'm not really advocating that as a real plan. No, this is not backed up by expertise. Just an observation that deadlifts are super simple and yet manage to work damn near every muscle from the neck down.

This is not great advice, according to what we know from both the research literature and people who are successful in (and successful coaches of) barbell sport. Namely, it's too much intensity, and not enough variety and volume.

One good reference to learn more is https://www.strongerbyscience.com/complete-strength-training..., and other articles on that site.

It's good advice for a novice (it's the Starting Strength program) because it's easy to remember and stick with. It's true it will only take you so far, and you will eventually need a more nuanced program depending on your goals.

The original poster did not have the "for a novice" qualifier.

Right… anyone who wasn’t a novice, by definition, has their own routine/program.

Greatly depends on your definition. In the communities I frequent "novice" means a strategy like that will still get you progression. There are also a lot of people complaining about having plateaued or even regressing but still sticking to non-periodized programs, i.e. they're intermediates trying to train like novices.

IMO the period through which SS is appropriate is shorter than the period over which it's effective. It's altogether too common for people to come to the conclusion that weight on the bar is the only progression that matters. Something like a double progression is almost as simple and at least introduces the idea that there are other dimensions that are worth progressing in. The other thing is that because novices can improve session to session, they can go a long time where they're legitimately close to their 5 rep max but don't have the practice to maintain good technique especially through the later sets, and end up ingraining bad practice.

That eventuality of needing a more nuanced program comes before most novices realize it, and definitely before SS starts running out of steam.

>One good reference to learn more is https://www.strongerbyscience.com/complete-strength-training..., and other articles on that site.

The site's author seems to have really done the research, but man he really needs to spend a bit more effort converting all that research into a one or two page summary. I just want to know what the most effective training strategy is, not when my tendon elasticity is dropping.

Not if you're trying to build mass

That is a recipe for a variety of nagging injuries, at best, that will almost certainly get exacerbated.

Exercising only highly-restricted movements by themselves looks nice on a training log, but isn't really effective.

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