People on the fitness Reddit have it out for Rip since they feel his beginner's program is not suitable for intermediate and advanced lifters.

I used it for about 6 months and I followed a couple of other programs (5/3/1 was the longest at nearly an year and a half). The emphasis on squat / deadlift / press / bench has all paid off years later and the only time I really learn a new movement is when I'm doing an isolation exercise.

I DO think the attitude Rip has towards movements like rows, Romanian deadlifts and machines (especially cable machines) was bad for my mindset, but I learned a lot by having my field of vision narrowed; I find a lot of the other criticisms of him to be irrelevant to his beginner-focused exercise program.

I’ll give you my 2 cents about Starting Strength. And please remember this is a sample size of n = 1. Other people (including yourself) will obviously have very different outcomes.

TL;DR - starting strength got me to the strongest I’ve ever been.

It got me stronger than I’ve ever been in my life. I’m 45 now and started when I was 32. I went from 180ish pounds to 230ish pounds in 19 months. I went from squatting the bar (45 lbs) to squatting a bit over 500 (502.5 was my personal best). Deadlift went from 135lbs to 612lbs (I bought those half pound and 1 pound change plates to carry with me to the gym just so I could say I was always adding weight to the bar).

So I think I was strong. I wasn’t competing in powerlifting strong (although I did compete. And in my age group I could usually at least place), but I was strong.

I was also completely out of shape :)

If you follow Starting Strength as written - the training and the diet - you will get strong, and unless you’re blessed with an amazing metabolism, you’ll get “fat”. At my strongest, I was obese according to my BMI. I couldn’t walk up 3 flights of stairs without getting winded.

To the Starting Strength crowd (back then; maybe it’s changed), the only cardio you needed was enough lung capacity to maintain bracing for a set of 5. Anything more than that would “kill your gains”.

So stick with Starting Strength? Absolutely if you’re getting back into it. Beginner gains are awesome. But don’t follow the program to a T. Do real cardio (not just more squats. not just high intensity. Do the slow and steady stuff as well). Do mobility work (yoga is good). Do corrective work (also known as pre-hab. I find Indian clubs and maces are phenomenal for shoulder health). And realize that if you talk to a true zealot of the Starting Strength world, they will tell you aren’t following the program and all the other stuff you’re doing is “killing your gains”.

I've read the book, and I'm still not sure wear the "gain killing" ideas come from.

The not doing the program sub-chapter seems to focus on hitting calorie targets and bar weight targets. Presumably "cardio" means you burn even more energy, but as long as you eat enough, I think it's within scope.

Your advice is solid though. Rippetoe focuses on increasing strength, so any other goals or constraints are up to the trainee.

I don’t believe it is in the books. I’d have to dig out the blue book and verify. But I think most of it comes from Rippetoe himself - forums, seminars, YouTube, etc.

For example, I went to one of his seminars in 2008 (I think. It’s been a minute). And someone asked about slow running in Maffetone zones, and he said paraphrased - “Look. You do what you want. But don’t come whining to me that your squat keeps stalling. I’m just going to tell you to stop running and eat more food”.

Depending on what you do for cardio, it will have an impact on the muscles. It’s not just calories. If you run/jog, the impact on your joints will accumulate with the lifting impact on your joints. And I think this is because beginners gravitate to Starting Strength. They try to do everything. They don’t know how to do things in moderation. So (IMO) it’s easier for the Starting Strength world to just say “No. Don’t do cardio”. Just some of the coaches are very, very draconian and less than flexible about it.

The point of starting strength is also to do it until your beginner goals are done. At that point you are strong. What you do from there is up to you, and I doubt Rippetoe would care. If you add cardio and focus less on strength at that point, that's not a problem. The point he's always hammering in is to "get strong first". Strength lasts. But it does take time to build up.

That was informative, thanks.

Yes, I got stronger than ever in my life through Starting Strength. For me, someone who had never really done any kind of serious weight lifting, the gains seemed impossible. Being at a certified gym was very useful because you could watch others do the work while you were resting and learn from the corrections and advise they were receiving from the coaches. It was also very useful because being told you could actually lift the weight you just failed to move off the ground meant you didn't quit --something that can easily happen on your own if you don't know what you are doing. This is where I learned just how much of "I can't move this" is actually in your head.

The other thing it did for me is remove the pain and the barriers of the many failed attempts over the years. I just didn't know what I was doing. Lifting just 150 lbs off the ground without any notion of proper technique was at times painful and impossible. That's how I ended-up at a Starting Strength gym.

And yet, just as you mention in your note, I was getting fat. I was stronger than 99% of the people I came into contact with on a daily basis (including at my regular gym) and yet, I was putting on fat. This is why I walked away. The coach kept telling me that we would start addressing that once we got to a high enough plateau of strength. I wasn't comfortable with continuing along that trajectory.

My thinking at the time was to slim down and restart from a better BMI. I had a less-than-ideal BMI when I started. I don't think this helped. I also needed to learn how to eat better. Your dietary needs change with age and we don't always make optimal adjustments. Aside from that, a change of focus to a balance between a moderate strength gain slope and healthy body metrics seemed like a better idea.

I am now about 10 lbs from where I want to be to restart. I hope to get there within the next three months. Diet only, no heavy exercise at all other than some walks and going rowing a couple of times a month. I needed to understand how to modulate body metrics with food rather than insane exercise regimes that are simply not sustainable in the long run.