Starting Strength, 3rd Edition - Mark Rippetoe [1]
The book needed a new look, too. Our hope is that you enjoy the illustrations by Jason Kelly, in a different style than usually found in a fat messy textbook, and that you appreciate Stef’s Herculean efforts to make this a better-looking example of the bookmaker’s art than the previous edition.
Many people deserve thanks for their contributions. In no particular order (certainly not alphabetical):
Dustin Laurence, Dr. Dennis Carter, Dr. Philip Colee, Dr. Matt Lorig, Stephen Hill, Juli Peterson, Mary Conover, Catherine Oliver, Bill Starr, Tommy Suggs, Mark Tucker, Thomas Campitelli, Ryan Huseman, Maj. Ryan Long, Maj. Damon Wells, Andrea Wells, John Welbourn, Brian Davis, Justin Ball, Nathan Davey, Travis Shepard, Paul and Becca Steinman, Mike and Donna Manning, Gregg Arsenuk, Michael Street and Carrie Klumpar, Skip and Jodi Miller, Ahmik Jones, Heidi Ziegele, Lynne Pitts, Kelly Moore, Eva Twardokens, Tara Muccilli, Dan Duane, Shane Hamman, Jim Wendler, Dan John, Jim Steel, Matt Reynolds, Charles Staley, Maj. Ryan Whittemore, John Sheaffer, Will Morris, Andy Baker, T.J. Cooper, Doug Lane, Simma Park, Myles Kantor, Phil Hammarberg, Barry Vinson, Gant Grimes, Josh Wells, Shelley Hancock, Terry Young, Ronnie Hamilton, Anil Koganti, MD, Rufus-dog, Ursa-dog, and Mr. Biggles.
—Rip
Chapter 1: Strength - Why and How
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Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not. As humanity has developed throughout history, physical strength has become less critical to our daily existence, but no less important to our lives. Our strength, more than any other thing we possess, still determines the quality and the quantity of our time here in these bodies. Whereas previously our physical strength determined how much food we ate and how warm and dry we stayed, it now merely determines how well we function in these new surroundings we have crafted for ourselves as our culture has accumulated. But we are still animals – our physical existence is, in the final analysis, the only one that actually matters. A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.
As the nature of our culture has changed, our relationship with physical activity has changed along with it. We previously were physically strong as a function of our continued existence in a simple physical world. We were adapted to this existence well, since we had no other choice. Those whose strength was adequate to the task of staying alive continued doing so. This shaped our basic physiology, and that of all our vertebrate associates on the bushy little tree of life. It remains with us today. The relatively recent innovation known as the Division of Labor is not so remote that our genetic composition has had time to adapt again. Since most of us now have been freed from the necessity of personally obtaining our subsistence, physical activity is regarded as optional. Indeed it is, from the standpoint of immediate necessity, but the reality of millions of years of adaptation to a ruggedly physical existence will not just go away because desks were invented.
Like it or not, we remain the possessors of potentially strong muscle, bone, sinew, and nerve, and these hard-won commodities demand our attention. They were too long in the making to just be ignored, and we do so at our peril. They are the very components of our existence, the quality of which now depends on our conscious, directed effort at giving them the stimulus they need to stay in the condition that is normal to them. Exercise is that stimulus.
Over and above any considerations of performance for sports, exercise is the stimulus that returns our bodies to the conditions for which they were designed. Humans are not physically normal in the absence of hard physical effort. Exercise is not a thing we