You will not be looking good in the 4 months SS takes. Body composition is a long term project. SS and similar programs are to strengthen the substrate so you have something to build on.
If you want to look good, do starting strength for several months to build a base of strength, then switch to something geared more towards body-building (warning: I haven’t tried this myself yet; also, depends somewhat on how much more muscular you want to look).
Another point is that body fat percent matters a decent amount for how “buff” you look as well, although there’s a tradeoff where you won’t build muscle as quickly if you’re starving yourself.
Also, what you wear has a reasonably large impact on how muscular you look, at least when you’re wearing clothes.
Another point is that body fat percent matters a decent amount for how “buff” you look as well, although there’s a tradeoff where you won’t build muscle as quickly if you’re starving yourself.
I’ll add that there’s a considerable opportunity cost in reaching the low body fat levels necessary to achieve a “ripped” appearance. When I made it a goal to hit seven or eight percent body fat, it was a project that not only occupied about a couple hours every day and imposed harsh limits on what I could eat, it led to my being preoccupied with my body condition even at times when I was working on other things.
When I was young I as instantly doing body-building, as SS was not on the table and it worked well. Of course, I never tried any real world heavy object manipulation. It was purely looks. I think if I tried to do that, the complete lack of squats and deadlifts (just leg presses for quad size) would have made me injure the stabilizer muscles, but I am not a pack mule, I never need to actually use strength.
Starting Strength recommends three sets of five reps at 90% of your maximum lift, each with a few minutes’ rest between, as the best programme for building strength. For increasing muscle mass (which is what makes you look good, and is surprisingly not as correlated with strength as it would appear) you want something like six to eight sets of ten to twelve reps, at 60-80% of your maximum lift, with 60-90 seconds rest in between.
Effectively, the more time your muscles spend under load, the larger they will get, assuming your diet provides enough protein and calories. I don’t know of a program, but anything you can stick to is good. I use the same routine as I did for strength (SS’s A/B workouts, plus barbell curls). I still recommend a few months of Starting Strength to get your weight up to begin with.
No, body building and not weight lifting is the solution to that. That means basically adding some isolation exercises to SS and doing higher rep counts like 5 x 8 or 5 x 10.
This is really not complicated. Getting big is a different goal from getting strong, and there are specialized disciplines for both. Of course they overlap a lot.
This is also a solution to “I am underweight/too skinny, how do I get bigger?”
Is SS for looking good, or for practical strength? I know they correlate, but optimizing for one doesn’t necessarily mean optimizing for the other.
You will not be looking good in the 4 months SS takes. Body composition is a long term project. SS and similar programs are to strengthen the substrate so you have something to build on.
If you want to look good, do starting strength for several months to build a base of strength, then switch to something geared more towards body-building (warning: I haven’t tried this myself yet; also, depends somewhat on how much more muscular you want to look).
Another point is that body fat percent matters a decent amount for how “buff” you look as well, although there’s a tradeoff where you won’t build muscle as quickly if you’re starving yourself.
Also, what you wear has a reasonably large impact on how muscular you look, at least when you’re wearing clothes.
I’ll add that there’s a considerable opportunity cost in reaching the low body fat levels necessary to achieve a “ripped” appearance. When I made it a goal to hit seven or eight percent body fat, it was a project that not only occupied about a couple hours every day and imposed harsh limits on what I could eat, it led to my being preoccupied with my body condition even at times when I was working on other things.
When I was young I as instantly doing body-building, as SS was not on the table and it worked well. Of course, I never tried any real world heavy object manipulation. It was purely looks. I think if I tried to do that, the complete lack of squats and deadlifts (just leg presses for quad size) would have made me injure the stabilizer muscles, but I am not a pack mule, I never need to actually use strength.
This sounds reasonable. I’m guessing bodybuilding programs are more controversial than Starting Strength. Or is there a clear winner there too?
Thanks for the informative comment.
Starting Strength recommends three sets of five reps at 90% of your maximum lift, each with a few minutes’ rest between, as the best programme for building strength. For increasing muscle mass (which is what makes you look good, and is surprisingly not as correlated with strength as it would appear) you want something like six to eight sets of ten to twelve reps, at 60-80% of your maximum lift, with 60-90 seconds rest in between.
Effectively, the more time your muscles spend under load, the larger they will get, assuming your diet provides enough protein and calories. I don’t know of a program, but anything you can stick to is good. I use the same routine as I did for strength (SS’s A/B workouts, plus barbell curls). I still recommend a few months of Starting Strength to get your weight up to begin with.
No, body building and not weight lifting is the solution to that. That means basically adding some isolation exercises to SS and doing higher rep counts like 5 x 8 or 5 x 10.
This is really not complicated. Getting big is a different goal from getting strong, and there are specialized disciplines for both. Of course they overlap a lot.