Starting Strength

I'm still refining my voice and purpose in Enjoy Nature's Bounty... it is intended to be about more than just eating naturally provided foods (as natural as we can get now)! I want it to also be about enjoying what nature gave YOU, aka your body. Diet is an important part of being healthy, but so is physical activity. I am a firm believer in using your body weight and free weights rather than machines in the gym. Machines improve your ability to use that machine and not much else.

My husband and I have been doing Crossfit, Primal Blueprint, and Never Gymless workouts for a while now. The Crossfit gym we used to be members of (the cost became prohibitive) piqued our interest in weightlifting. When we left the gym, we started to build up our home gym to support a weightlifting and crossfit workout habit.  We now have a squat rack, bench, two Olympic bars, weights, dip station, two kettlebells, and a few other small  items. I have a weight rack on the way that will allow us to properly do presses.

We felt like our weightlifting abilities weren't such that we could easily and effectively do the Crossfit WODs (workout of the day) that involved lifting. So, we decided to do the program suggested by Starting Strength, by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore. We do lifting 3x a week and rest the other 4 days. Those rest days are sacred as we are really working hard during these weightlifting exercises. Each day we increase our weight for each movement by 5-20 lbs, depending on the movement.

Here's our current schedule with two different workouts, called A and B.

A Workout
Squat
Bench Press
Deadlift

B Workout
Squat
Press
Chin-up/Push-up (Alternate grips each time the workout is done)

We alternate these workouts each week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This Wednesday we are starting on our 9th day with an A Workout.

I had a few set backs as we have large increments of weight for my abilities. We ordered a package of fractionals from Iron Woody that allows me to properly increase my weight and make gains without breaking down my form. So far we've make great improvements in our weightlifting and form! We will follow this program for as long as it continues to work. Once we can no longer add weight and improve our limits, we will start back with running, Crossfit, and our other favorite exercise methodologies. I will post some of my stats soon.

Interested in Starting Strength yourself?  Starting Strength (2nd edition)
Also, check out their website for a wealth of resources at their Starting Strength Wiki.