Din Edition – Starting Strength Weekly Report June 16, 2025


June 16, 2025


Din Edition

On Starting Strength



  • Strength and Soldiering –
    Justin Goonan, Army strength and conditioning coach, joins Rip, Nick, and Rusty to discuss training, testing, and working with military populations.


  • Big Questions, Asymptotes, and the Rippetoe Plot by Jonathon Sullivan –
    In Starting Strength, Practical Programming, and The Barbell Prescription we present what I have come to simply call the Rippetoe Plot. I choose this terminology because (a) that’s what it is…


  • Introduction to Bars –
    Mark Rippetoe talks about an essential part of barbell training – the bar. He compares three bars, shows how to test for a bend, and explains how a bent bar can be used in training.


  • Advice for An Aspiring Coach by Jack Bissett –
    When COVID travel restrictions from the UK to the US were finally lifted in 2023 I decided I would make the trip to beautiful downtown Wichita Falls, Texas to attend a seminar…


  • The Trifecta of Squat Cues by Phil Meggers –
    The descent of your squat is important. It should put you in a strong bottom position so that you can effectively drive your hips out of the hole, so let’s discuss a cue – really a trio of cues…
  • Weekend Archives:

    The Skinny Fat Lifter by Robert Santana –
    One of the most common concerns shared by clients is aesthetics. “Coach, I want to get strong, but I want to lose my belly.” The issue is visible on both the 5’10” 220 lb untrained male…
  • Weekend Archives:

    The Phenomenology of Barbell Training by Mark Rippetoe –
    In Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training 3rd edition I defined the term “phenomenology” by quoting the definition of the word from the Concise Dictionary of Physics…


In the Trenches

caitlin locks out a rack pull
Caitlin Schiebel locks out a rack pull under the watchful eye of SSC Jarret Beck at Starting Strength Columbus. [photo courtesy of Paul Jackson]
kim begins a deadlift workset
Kim Johnson’s deadlift workset compels her rack neighbors to linger, watch, and snap photos, before heading out the door from a 6:00 am session at Starting Strength Atlanta. [photo courtesy of Adam Martin]

Get Involved

Best of the Week

Time Under Tension

JosephMayoGolf

A friend who’s new to SS asked a question that I’m not qualified to answer. He asked which is superior as a novice trainee – moving the bar with maximal effort each rep or a slower more deliberate “tempo” for more time under tension? I will defer to the experts now……..

Mark Rippetoe

Lifting more weight each workout = more force produced each workout = a strength adaptation. This “time under tension” distraction just will not go away. We have taken thousands of people from 135 x 5 x 3 to 405 x 5 x 3 without measuring the “time under tension.” We just measured the tension. The time it took was a function of the height of the lifter and how fast he did the rep, one of which is constant and one of which varies by the % of 1RM the load is, which increases with training advancement.

ColeTrain

On average, how long does it typically take yall to get someone from 135x5x3 to 405x5x3? I know this is highly dependent on the trainee and how closely they follow the program, but a rough estimate would be appreciated

Mark Rippetoe

6 months to 1 year, depending on height, bodyweight, genetic endowment, and adherence to the program and diet.


Best of the Forum

An interesting consultation at the doctor’s office…

SS2016

I’m a med student in Europe and am currently on my General Practice rotation (aka local doctor – don’t know if you guys use that term in the US). I was shadowing a doctor who initially trained as a physical therapist. I apologise if it doesn’t meet the criteria of “Mark Rippetoe Q&A” but I want to share this story with you from this afternoon:

Today, a 42 year old woman came in with right anterior knee pain x 3 months. Her knee was painful when walking up the stairs and when squatting down to pick up items from the floor. There was creptius in her knee during knee extension.

The doctor concluded that she had patellar chondromalacia secondary to patellar-femoral syndrome/the patella not tracking correctly. The doctor prescribed her analgesia, ordered an XRay of her knee and sent her to physical therapy.

The doctor claims that her vastus lateralis is too strong for her vastus medialis. So she needs to avoid working her vastus lateralis and strengthen her vastus medalis, so the muscle imbalance will be corrected. She gave her an exercise where she turns her right foot out to a 30 degree angle, flexes her right knee while keeping her left leg and upper body straight, then extending her right leg. She needs to repeat this 10 times per day.

After the woman left, I asked the doctor if it’s possible to isolate the vastus medialis. She said you can’t fully isolate it but it’s better to try to work it by itself. Apparently, the vastus medialis is worked maximally in the last 30 degrees of knee extension. I asked her would it be more beneficial to strengthen the entire quadriceps by squatting which would both correct any “imbalances” and further strength the hamstrings, calves, abdominal muscles and lower back which would make her stronger altogether. In her opinion, squatting is bad for the knees, and for a woman approaching menopause, we don’t want to increase her risk of a fracture by getting her to lift heavy weights. Before I could respond, the next patient walked in.

I should add that this woman is from a financially disadvantaged area, has a sick child at home, doesn’t have private health insurance, will have to wait 4 weeks for her XRay and will most likely pay for physiotherapy sessions privately so she won’t have to wait 3 months for free sessions.

I’m not going to lie, I was pretty mad walking out of the clinic today. Does the same shit happen over in the States as it does in Europe, with regards to doctors (and a lot of PTs) knowing nothing about getting people stronger and healthier?

Mark Rippetoe

Happens every day. It’s built into the system.

Scaldrew

Built into human nature, I’d say. People who need help the most are the least likely to receive it, or often even want it. The world’s entire elderly population would benefit the most from being stronger and hardly any of them will lift weights in their (remaining) lifetime. Same is true for injured people, and I’d say people generally.

Quite poetically, people want help the most, in the older sense of the word “want”, meaning “lack”, and the newer sense, both. They’ll always both lack it and really need it. Because if they didn’t really need it, they’d probably already have it in some form or another.

Anyway, doesn’t mean we should do nothing. Glad you’re a doctor who knows better.

GammaFlat

Story 1: My son was getting a physical from his pediatrician. Her eyes narrowed when my son’s weight was 99 percentile (for his age of 14). She asked him if he lifted weights. He rolled his eyes and sighed yes – he knew where this was going. “How much weight do you lift?”, she says with now wide eyes not really knowing any better way to ask the question. He explained that he was doing 3 sets of 5 squats over 300lbs. She shrieked out, “Why???? You don’t want your heart to explode!”. We still chuckle about this occasionally because if anyone in the room was going to have a cardiac event it was the doctor. I think her “heart” was in the right place but she couldn’t digest that a 14 year old kid was taking a lifting program seriously. She strongly urged him to continue to lift with much lighter weights . When does it become ODO?

Story 2: My son was seeing a cardiologist to screen for things per recommendations of Sully (Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and some sort of idiopathic stenosis I think). These recommendations (which I believe to be good) rule out possible heart conditions that cause “sudden death on the soccer field” events of kids. While viewing the ultrasound, the cardiologist became alarmed and said he had a thick wall in his heart (HCM) and it could be caused by a couple of things, most of which were real bad (infection scarring, hereditary defect…). He saved the best for last and said “There’s one thing we can try. Zero activity for 3 months and we take another look at the heart to see if the wall narrows.” If it doesn’t, he will likely need to restrict physical activity in a big way – no sports, possible medication. It was hard to keep him still for those three months and I later learned he was cheating some but was not supposed to lift and not even walk briskly. After going back in 3 months, the cardio doc said “his wall had shrunk” and was fine to continue all physical activities and declared he had an “athlete’s heart”. huh?!

One of the cool things we learn out of Story 2 is the adaptation of the heart to lifting – and rapid de-training when sedentary (3 months). We would have had to do more testing to learn how quickly the heart muscle thickens but it was likely less than (and maybe a lot less than..) 12 months.



Credit : Source Post

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