Basic Novice Barbell Training Program

This is a basic barbell training program for novice lifters who need to focus on whole body strength.  The program is similar to Starting Strength (www.startingstrength.com.  Buy the book.  It is worth it.) and other basic barbell programs that have been used for decades to introduce people to basic powerlifting programming.  It is a proven, effective way to gain a significant amount of strength.  This is a prototypical powerlifting program.  As such, it does not have a ton of variety, nor does it have lots of metabolic conditioning exercises.  In this case, lots of variety would be counterproductive for a novice lifter because it would result in unnecessary complexity that would make delivering consistent, measureable progressive overload more difficult.  This program is not about "muscle confusion."  Incidentally, muscles do not become "confused."  Also, excessive metabolic conditioning interferes with strength and muscle gains.  Training is always about compromises.  The focus of this program is gaining strength, so very  little metabolic conditioning is included.  This type of programming requires patience and consistency.   If you can muster the patience and consistency to stick with it for 6-8 months, the payoff will be significant.