edricus

 So I have started doing strength training again, in june I was feed up with getting lazy, soft, and feeling lethargic from working and staying at home. I did some research from swedish sources and the conclusion was that hitting the gym is a safe activity as long as there is distancing, hygien and that kind of stuff.

As a friend asked me what kind of a program I was doing, and I do get those questions every now and then I figured I might as well write it down and keep it so that I can just link this post.

So what do I do for workouts. Well it is free weights and mainly the big lifts. Squat, Deadlift, Benchpress, Overhead or military press, with barbell rows as a extra back/ sholder workout. I follow the Stronglifts 5*5 program (see link below) which basically means that you have two sessions A and B, you do 5 sets of 5 reps per lift and you add 2,5 kg per session  (except for deadlifts where you do 1 set of 5 reps and add 5 kg per session).

You start your first session with an empty barbell at 20 kg and do a session with at least one day of rest between the sessions. In the begining this might seem to be kind of odd but when you are up about session 10 - 15 you will understand why. The two sessions are A Squats, Bench press and barbell row and B Squats, military press and deadlifts.

This is a linear progression of weights and since you squat every session you add 10 kg of 20 lbs in 4 sessions, or about every 10 days. It does get heavy quite fast. At my 13th session I did 50 kg squat, 35 kg bench and 45 kg barbell rows after having started at 20 kg squat, 20 kg bench and 30 kg barbell row.

You wil most likely want to add some warming up sets to your work, the program starts every session with 2*5 with an empty barbell (20 kg) but I also added in 1*3 at 40 kg before I did the work of 5*5 at 50. The warming up helps your body acklimatise to the weight, which is important when you are starting to lift. It also helps you to get warmed up and get the technique training in.

So this is a beginners strength program, depending on how strong you are when you start out you will reach plateaus sooner or later. But this is a marathon way of training, the goal is to get strong, and you can get from zero to deadlifting your own body weight in a few months. You need some basic working out stuff, and a notebook with pen to keep track on your progress, a stop watch is usefull to keep track on the rest between sets. I usually start at 60 seconds in the beginning and then go to 90 seconds and now I am looking at 180 seconds between sets. This is to help with the recovery between sets.

Now here is the thing, you will fail, you will reach a plateau but, you are going to keep working out to get over that plateau, in the begining you add weight every session, after a while you add weight every week and later you can add weight every couple or weeks or month. 

There are other options for similar programs the other common one is Starting strength by Mark Rippertoe, which is similar but a bit different, se link below.

The great poet Henry Rollins has written a pice about the benefits of working out with Iron.

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/henry-rollins-iron-and-soul/

https://youtu.be/sXI3lzLhddw 

I have also added a 15 - 20 minute stretching session after the work outs which is really nice.

https://youtu.be/L_xrDAtykMI

https://stronglifts.com/

https://startingstrength.com/get-started/programs