Today’s Market-Ticker post by Karl Denninger (which you should read
every day) is especially insightful when applied to what we do here
at Starting Strength. It is a guest post by Benjamin King: Misleading Aphorisms.
He discusses “aphorisms,” defined as “a
concise statement of a principle.”
Further, he asserts that “Correlation is not causation” is a
powerful aphorism that is seldom kept in mind in 2025, and indeed may
be intentionally ignored when making an argument in one’s favor. In
our situation, correlation and causation track together, as an
increase in muscular bodyweight drives an increase in strength, and
vice versa. In contrast, the complexity of the program (the number of
exercises in the program) and the strength results of the program are
unrelated.
Our concern here is strength training
and “physical culture” – the intentional application of
stresses to the body for the specific purpose of affecting physical
improvement. This includes all forms of exercise, as well as
Bodybuilding and Physique Display. Let me again clarify that physique
display is not our primary concern, but that our methods of barbell
training for strength produce the fastest and most efficient
improvement in physical appearance possible, for both men and women.
The reason for this is simple, and unarguable:
1. Bigger muscles look better on a
human body than smaller muscles, to people of all cultures.
2. Muscles produce the force of
contraction that allows accommodation of the organism to the
environment. This is why all animals have muscles.
3. A muscle adapts to producing more
force by growing in cross-sectional area. The weight on the bar is a
direct measure of the force you have to produce to lift it.
4. Therefore, if you train a
muscle to produce more force over time – incrementally and
progressively – that muscle will get bigger to facilitate this
adaptation. This process is called “hypertrophy.”
5. Thus, the aphorism: If you get
stronger you will look better, since hypertrophy will have occurred.
It has become fashionable in what are
still referred to as the Exercise Sciences to advocate for the
performance of higher-repetition sets of perhaps 5 sets of 8-15 reps
to produce hypertrophy. Perhaps this is necessary if you are training
isolated muscle groups on exercise machines, but that is neither
necessary or productive. Ask an 800-squatter if he really thinks leg
extensions made his squat go up.
But if my previous argument is correct
– and the evidence of the past several decades shows that it is –
getting stronger produces hypertrophy, because there is no other
mechanism by which a chronic increase in muscular strength can
occur. Once lifting technique is efficient, increases in load are the
result of an increase in force production, due to an increase in
muscle size/cross-sectional area, which is due to handling
progressively heavier training loads.
If you are a novice trainee, 5’10” at
175, and you train your deadlift from 135 up to 405 using sets
of 5 reps that increase in weight every workout,
eating
and sleeping to best facilitate recovery, your bodyweight will have
increased to 215-225 with little if any increase in bodyfat. The only
trick is to take appropriate incremental increases each workout, eat
enough of the right food to recover between workouts, sleep enough to
recover between workouts, and don’t miss workouts. The complete
program is detailed in Practical Programming for
Strength Training, 3rd Edition.
And just in case you think this is an overly optimistic projection,
we have experience with tens of thousands of trainees that
demonstrates that it’s the normal response to a progressively
increasing barbell strength training program. All you have to do is
stick with the program and not get side-tracked to lighter weights
and single-joint exercises by the “exercise science.”
And you will look better, to yourself and everybody else.
Most of you have discovered this for yourselves, so most of you know
that heavy sets of 5 work much better than lighter sets of 15 reps
for hypertrophy, even though higher reps/lighter weight are being
sold as the key to hypertrophy. Strength comes from size – 405 x 5
requires more strength than 275 x 15, and 405 x 5 makes you bigger
than 275 x 15, as anyone who has done it both ways knows. You may
have gotten bigger than you were by just doing 275 x 15, but in the
absence of 405 x 5 you don’t have a reference between the two
approaches.
So, the question is simply this: How
complicated does programming for a novice need to be to result in
strength and physique improvement? Not complicated at all – it just
has to be heavy enough to result in a force production increase. Sets
of 5 reps accomplish this, while sets of 12-15 do not.
Most people prefer the way lighter
weights “feel,” both during and after the set, and that explains
most of the confusion. A “pump” is pretty cool, I’ll have to
admit, but it doesn’t indicate that long-term hypertrophy is being
produced. Getting hot, sweaty, and tired may make you feel
like you have accomplished something, even if the numbers on the bar
tell you otherwise.
In contrast, PR sets of 5 are hard as
hell, they make you tired, and a 5-pound PR is just not that big a
deal to anybody but you. But if you make a 5-pound PR two or three
times a week – meaning 5 pounds more than the previous workout, as
opposed to what you feel like you can do today – do the math
on that for 9 months of training and see what you think. You will
have gotten much stronger, and bigger. The numbers do not lie, and
the numbers – not your feelings – must dictate your training
loads.
Keep your head clear on this: you
can’t get bigger without getting stronger. So the best way to get
stronger is always the best way to also get bigger. Good size
comes from good strength. Causation agrees with correlation this
time. Don’t make it more complicated than necessary – there’ll be
plenty of time for complicated programming later, when more
complexity is necessary, but the simpler you can keep it the better
it will always be.
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