Slush Edition – Starting Strength Weekly Report February 12, 2024

Brookfine

In college I did crew and I followed Starting Strength (and then Texas Method) to a 1,200 total. Since then my primary focus became the 400m sprint and from neglect my total is now likely around 700. I’d like to run the program again to build power and hopefully increase speed. Should I run the program verbatim on a high caloric surplus on top of my existing running and sprint-workouts, or are there key changes that ought to be made?

Also, given the sprint focus, would I benefit from training with shorter rests between sets and a greater focus on squatting up explosively?

Mark Rippetoe

In other words, can you train to significantly increase your Standing Vertical Jump? No. You can increase your strength, as you already know, but the explosive part of power is primarily genetics.

wal

I don’t know how you folk in Texas that run cattle supply water to your stock, but here in WA, Australia we rely on bore water. Because of environmental legislation you can only draw out so much water and there are penalties for “stealing” water as a certain amount is reserved for the environment. So bore water levels drop during the dry season when the aquifers are not replenished and so you need to drill deep to get the good water. There are some folk that help with checking bore water depth, we have few here. They use a particular method that is simple and effective. Russell Coight Fixes A Water Bore

Mark Rippetoe

We call this a “water well.” Ground water in this part of the state is unreliable or absent, so we build retaining ponds called “tanks” to catch rain water.

wal

Well you have no problems then in fowling the bore (water well).

Tanks we call dams. You have to dredge them out from time to time as they silt up.

Our water here where I live is river water that is treated and is drinkable, but is very hard, however if you run cattle or sheep most pump from the river and that is strictly policed. The government is now trying to buy back water licenses for environmental flows therefore running any type of farm whether it be cattle, dairy, sheep or grain is a real pain, as you would know cattle and sheep produce methane and grain farms use diesel and urea lots of it and the green folk are not happy.

Mark Rippetoe

And to think that we used to consider Australia to be kinda like the southern version of the United States. Hell, you can’t even consider the United States to be the United States anymore.