Don’t Jump Ship: Earning the Transition from Novice to Intermediate Training


If there’s one thing that never changes with people who reach out
saying they’re doing Starting Strength, it’s this: they ran the
LP, the bar slowed down and shit got hard, so they bailed out and
jumped straight into the Texas Method or some other intermediate
setup they cherry-picked out of Practical Programming. And I
get it: people want to keep getting stronger, and on paper the
reaction to make sweeping changes makes sense. But this knee-jerk
jump to intermediate training is one of the most common – and
costly – mistakes lifters make and it almost never works out.

You
Only Get to be a Novice Once

The Novice Linear
Progression, or NLP, is the most efficient way to get strong, fast.
It’s simple, hard, brutally effective, and it works every single
time it is applied and followed correctly. After all, there’s a
reason why a lot of times Rip gives the same answer to folks having
issues in their LP – YNDTP (You’re not doing the program). If you
do the fucking thing as it’s laid out, it always does what it says it
will do.


The novice effect – meaning the ability to add weight to the bar
every single session – is real, and it’s powerful. You only get
to be a novice lifter once in your life and once it’s gone, it’s
gone. If you cut it short, like way too many people do, because of
impatience, boredom, or temptation, you’ve thrown away the low
hanging fruit of easily won strength gains that are a pain to get
back.

The
Problem with Jumping Straight to Intermediate Training

Intermediate programs
are designed for lifters who can no longer recover from the
workout-to-workout stress of the basic linear progression. These
programs require more complexity to organize the
stress/recovery/adaptation cycle over longer periods of time. They’re
not magic, they’re not inherently better, and they’re also not for
you – just yet. They’re just necessary when the LP has
fully run its course.

Switching to
intermediate programming too early, and often abruptly from one
workout to the next, makes it nearly impossible to know what’s
actually working, if anything did. When you change exercise
selection, frequency, volume, and intensity all at once, and
performance either improves or goes down the shitter, you’re left
scratching your head for answers. You’ve altered everything
simultaneously, so there’s no way to pinpoint what variable made
the difference. Instead of adjusting the piece that needed attention,
you overhauled the entire system, and now you’re flying blind and
you will get yourself stuck, again.

Not only that, but
intermediate programming comes with more training variables to
manage, more stress to recover from, and more room for error.
Navigating this phase of your training career takes experience that
you just don’t have, and if you haven’t squeezed all the progress
you can from the LP, you’re simply not ready for it. Besides,
simple > complex , despite what almost all personal trainers and
“functional training” enthusiasts would have you believe, and if
you have the choice between forging ahead with simplicity instead of
complexity, you’d be wise to take advantage of it. I don’t know about
you but if I can keep getting stronger with sets of 5 and a
relatively straightforward progression, I’ll take that any day of the
week over some 5-day powerlifting split I found online. Plus, running
this fucking gym in Brussels is stripping years off my life one day
at a time, so I need to be efficient with my training.

The
Four Variables and Why You Don’t Touch Them All at Once

As a coach, we
generally manipulate four training variables to continue driving
progress and managing our lifters.

1. Load/Intensity –
The weight on the bar

2. Volume – Total
sets and reps

3. Frequency – How
often we train

4. Exercise Selection –
Duh

Change one variable,
and others will shift whether you want them to or not. For example,
increase intensity and you’ll likely have to reduce volume to
facilitate recovery properly. Add accessory work? You’ve increased
total training volume whether you realize it or not. Bump up training
frequency with more days in the gym? That’s another hit of volume
that affects recovery. Even something that seems simple – like
swapping the Squat for a front squat on a light day – changes the
exercise selection and lowers the load you can use, which alters the
intensity and thus training stress. Everything’s connected,
and small adjustments matter.

Making big, sweeping
changes means you’re trying to juggle all of these variables at once,
introducing guess work and chaos instead of clarity. If, however, you
make small changes, one at a time and based on the needs of the
individual lift and the recovery capacity of the lifter, then you can
figure out what’s working and what’s not. You can therefore avoid
a major overhaul and derailing your hard earned progress.

Turn
One Dial at a Time

Not all lifts stall at
the same time or for the same reasons. Some use significantly less
muscle mass and are extremely sensitive to bar path while others can
overcome these issues because damn near everything is contributing to
the exercise. So please, my friends, don’t change everything when
only one thing is slowing down.

We try to make small,
logical changes, one variable at a time so that the LP evolves
smoothly, and over time, into more intermediate programming. After
two or three of these small, well-timed changes, your LP has quietly
become something else, something slightly more complex and very much
like the programs folks tried to jump right into in the first place.
You’ve arrived at some more advanced training gradually,
methodically, and intelligently, instead of freaking out and
overhauling your entire program the second something stalls. Let’s
break it down:

The
Press and Bench Press

These are often the
first lifts to stall, because even though they aren’t as
systemically stressful as squats and deadlifts, they use much less
muscle mass and therefore have less contractile mass contributing to
the lifts. When they do slow down, we don’t start throwing in
back-off sets (which lowers the stress), reaching for the incline
bench or doing a bunch of accessory work for the triceps. Instead,
keep it simple:

1. Microload the weight
– You can’t make 5lb jumps forever, so start going up in smaller
increments.

2. Switch from 3×5 to
5×3 – This keeps the overall rep count the same but running triples
will allow us to drive the weight up longer, which is the name of the
game in basic programming.

3. Eventually increase
frequency – Instead of alternating the press and bench every
session, we go to pressing and benching twice per week each, using a
Volume/Intensity split:

For example:

  • Monday: Press 5×5
    (usually strict)
  • Wednesday: Bench 5×5
  • Friday: Press 7-10
    heavy singles, Bench 1×5

But again, this only
happens after the basic LP tools (microloading and sets of 3) have
stopped working or an astute coach notices that changes will be
needed soon and makes adjustments before they become necessary.

The
Deadlift

Folks assume the
deadlift stalls early, but that’s not actually the case. The
deadlift typically doesn’t stall, it just becomes too taxing to
pull a heavy set of 5 three times a week. Because it starts from a
dead stop, without the benefit of a stretch reflex, and involves the
heaviest weight early on, it’s the most stressful lift in the
program. That stress adds up fast, and it will start to impact the
other lifts and your overall recovery if it’s overused. Because of
this, the frequency of pulling heavy needs to be reduced.

The first step is to
reduce heavy pulling to twice per week by inserting a lighter pulling
movement mid-week, usually the Power Clean (or another light pull if
appropriate for the individual). We’ll then reduce it further to
pulling heavy once a week with lighter and medium pulls on the other
days. This keeps progress moving on the deadlift on a weekly basis
without burying the lifter in fatigue or jumping into overall
intermediate programming prematurely.

For example:

  • Monday: Deadlift 1×5
  • Wednesday: Snatch 5×2
  • Friday: Power Clean 5×3

Looks like an HLM
setup, doesn’t it? These small changes turn your LP into more
intermediate programming for your pulls one step at a time while
still maintaining increases in weight every week, without the need
for a hard pivot.

The
Squat

The Squat keeps moving
for a while but eventually, the stress becomes too much to recover
from three heavy days per week and we need to stay on top of it. When
you change this thing, again, keep it simple:

1. Add a light day:
Introduce a light squat in the middle of the week (around 80%) for
2–3 sets of 5. This maintains frequency and technique while
facilitating recovery for Friday. Squatting heavy twice a week will
work for some time, so take advantage of this fact.

2. Top set on Friday:
Keep Monday at 3×5, Wednesday light, and turn Friday into a heavy top
set of 5 followed by back-off sets at 90%. This allows further
progress to continue twice per week while better managing fatigue.

3. Shift volume to
Monday: As recovery demands increase, reduce Friday’s volume to just
the top set of 5 and add that extra work to Monday working into 4–5
sets of 5 at ~90% of Friday’s weight. Congrats, you’ve just
morphed your LP into a proper HLM setup and you didn’t have to blow
your programming to hell to get there.

For clarity – after a
few small changes:

  • Monday: 4-5×5 (at 90%)
  • Wednesday: 2-3×5 (at
    80%)
  • Friday: 1×5 (+5lbs from
    previous week), (possibly1-2×5 backoffs at 90%)

These small changes
manage stress across the week, and we’ve successfully avoided
overhauling the LP on a dime and jumping right into something more
complex the lifter is not ready for. I can assure you, that if you
dive into something like the Texas Method fresh off your LP and go
too heavy, you’ll dig yourself a recovery hole that can take a while
to get out of. So don’t be a dumbass and spring-clean the fuck out of
your LP. Be smart and transition one step at a time.

As a caveat, it’s
important to understand that each lift progresses at its own pace.
It’s entirely possible, and quite common, to be on intermediate or
even advanced programming on your upper body lifts while your squat
or deadlift is still moving up just fine with a basic linear
progression. One lift stalling does not mean the others are done too.
This is exactly why we isolate the problem and adjust that lift’s
programming, instead of panicking and blowing it up. Change the
variable that needs changing
, and leave everything else alone
until it actually needs to be fixed. Again, don’t be that guy.

Intermediate
Programming is Earned, not Given

There’s a reason
Practical Programming is hundreds of pages long: Intermediate
and Advanced programming is nuanced and they are meant to be
guidelines to follow, not a menu to choose from. If you’re jumping
around between the sample programs before you’ve exhausted your LP
or made the appropriate small changes, you’re just doing
complicated shit for no reason and you will stall. I can assure you
that Rip and Andy Baker didn’t write the fucking thing to be used
as a choose-your-own-adventure guide.

You don’t need
complexity until simplicity no longer works, my friends. Simple,
hard, and effective is always preferred if it means we can continue
adding weight to the bar. After all, we’re in this to get stronger,
are we not? Ask any advanced lifter how much they’d love to go back
to making linear gains if they could. Believe me, it’s the best time
to be a lifter. And if you follow the LP, eat, sleep, and recover
like you’re supposed to, it works for a long time, so please don’t
skip ahead. Make the smallest adjustments you can, keep your
variables tight, and understand why you’re changing things.

You’re get to be a
novice lifter one time, so milk it for everything it’s
worth. Don’t throw away the easy gains because you got bored,
impatient, or things start feeling heavy. The complicated,
individualized shit will be there when you actually need it and when
that day comes, you’ll be stronger, more experienced, and will have
actually earned the extra work that’s coming.

Until then, keep it
simple, and add weight to the bar, one workout at a time. That’s
the game.


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