Starting Strength, 3rd Edition - Mark Rippetoe [199]
It is understandable that you want your program to show results. But please understand this, if you miss everything else in this entire book: stronger does not necessarily mean more weight on the bar. Resist the temptation to add weight at the expense of correct technique – you are doing no one any favors when you sacrifice form for weight on the bar. Progress stops, bad habits get formed, injuries accumulate, and no one benefits in the long run.
Figure 8-5. An example of the first few days of a typical beginner’s program.
Nutrition and Bodyweight
It is common to want what you cannot have. But you must keep in mind that the phenomenon of cause and effect cannot be argued with or circumvented by your wishes and desires. Everyone who has been a kid or has raised kids is familiar with the phenomenon of the “growth spurt,” which happens naturally during all stages of normal development. Growth occurs sporadically as we develop and mature; it is not smooth over the course of the whole infant/child/adolescent/teenager continuum, but within the growth spurt itself, a period of smooth linear increase does occur. We are creating an artificial growth spurt with our training, and if the stress is sufficient and the diet is adequate to facilitate recovery, amazing progress can occur. This is why proximity in age to the normal growth window makes for a more efficient response to this stimulus: the processes by which growth is accomplished are still functioning, and the system is not yet cemented in its final form. The older the trainee, the further the remove from the capacity to generate a growth spurt. But the stimulus/response relationship is axiomatic – you get out of it what you put into it, within the context of your ability to respond. You maximize this ability by training, eating, and resting in the most effective way possible.
A program of this nature tends to produce the correct bodyweight in an athlete. That is, if you need to be bigger, you will grow, and if you need to lose bodyfat, that happens, too. It is possible, and quite likely, that skinny kids on this program will gain 10–15 pounds of bodyweight in the first two weeks of a good barbell training program, provided they eat well. “Well” means four or so meals per day, based on meat and egg protein sources, with lots of fruit and vegetables and lots of milk. Lots. Most sources within the heavy-training community agree that a good starting place is one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day, with the rest of the diet making up 3500–6000 calories, depending on training requirements and body composition. Although these numbers produce much eyebrow-raising and cautionary statement-issuing from the registered-dietetics people, it is a fact that these numbers work well for the vast majority of people who lift weights, and these numbers have worked well for decades.
One of the best ways to move in the direction of these numbers is to drink a gallon of milk a day, most especially if weight gain is a primary concern. A gallon of whole milk per day, added to the regular diet at intervals throughout the day, will put weight on any skinny kid. Really. The problem is getting them to do it. It is apparently a persistent tendency, since about 1990, for boys to think they need a “six pack,” although most of them don’t have an ice chest to put it in. The psychology of this particular historical phenomenon is best left to others to investigate and explain. Aesthetics aside, heavier is eventually necessary if stronger is to occur, and once most people see that weight gain actually makes them look better (amazingly enough), they become less resistant to the idea.
Milk works because it is easy, it is available, it doesn’t need any preparation, and it has all the components necessary for growing mammals, which novice lifters most definitely are. There also seems