Bill Starr’s First Book
If you are unfamiliar with this book, it is a shame it had a huge concentric circle through all of S&C. This was a proverbial leap from niche based aspects of training such as weightlifting, powerlifting, or bodybuilding and crossed over into direct performance training.
If you are unfamiliar with Bill Starr he was considered one of the first true S&C coaches. He started as coach and writer at York Barbell and Strength & Health magazine. If you ever read any of the books from the time, these publications were speaking to a very small but loyal group. Which created a sense of intensity that you do not see with today’s writings. You had to be authentic about what you were writing, because the people reading these magazines were fringe outsiders.
Bill Starr’s Early Writings
What Starr did was push the boundaries of performance training. He documented this through first his writing in Strength and Health, and his own writings with Strongest Shall Survive and Defying Gravity. It was extremely progressive to blend this approach of Weightlifting, Powerlifting, and Bodybuilding into an integrated system. He took the best of siloed off worlds and made them practical with high level athletes.
Bill Starr’s Second Book
What Strongest Shall Survive created was a system to get three total body lifts a week of the Starr’s primary lifts: Squat, Bench, Deadlift. In my opinion the genius of it stems from his organization of the lifts. Each Day starts off with the ‘Heavy’, progresses to the ‘Moderate’, and finishes with the ‘Light’ version of each one of the exercises. The Heavy version is the one with the highest ability to externally load such as back squat over front squat.
Each day follows that order of Heavy, Moderate, and light with each of the three Squat, Bench, and Deadlift following that order. The idea is that you stress the three patterns equally throughout the training week along with ensuring optimal training intensity-volume during the session. You have to admit this was an ingenious thought that has stood the test of time.
Starr was aware that there was a potential for structural imbalance and suggested that there should be supplemental work. Working upper back with vertical/horizontal pulling, knee dominant posterior chain, lower leg, and direct arm work to the program. Even with the potential for neglect in certain areas, it was still a tremendously comprehensive program.
The other ingenious part was the simple usage of the 5×5 set and rep scheme. Starr did not place intensity constraints on the program. He instead placed constraints on external loading. The athlete going through the program is instructed to perform at the best of their ability on each exercise. The mechanically weaker exercise auto-regulates the amount of load one could use to avoid overtraining. Combine that with a very sustainable three day training program and athletes can practice and play at a high level without fear of overtraining.
This could feel as if it were cruel to review this book considering it is out of print. Part of the reason for writing this is to stir up interest so we can push to get back in print. The fact that we as an industry cannot constantly rely on classics is a disappointment. Young coaches would greatly benefit from this resource. It would skip a lot of steps we have to retroactively fix later.