You are the second person to recommend starting strength to me. I've already been doing strength training for 2 years, but I'm wondering it it's worthwhile to go back to the start (if the guy's claims are realistic then I would be overtaking my current strength level in a few months). Do you have any thoughts on this? (I realize I'm being kind of vague, if you want me to be more specific about my situation I can be.)
Starting Strength is an amazing book for reference. I think the main take away from the book is Rippetoe's analysis of proper lifting technique--although I believe his comments on progression and exercise programming are VERY insightful. The entire book is amazing.
He talks about proper hand placement on the bar, body position, and mentions various methods to observe yourself and know if you're doing the lifts correctly or not. He also mentions useful and useless equipment; as well as useful and useless lifts. This is something a beginner needs, but a...
I've just read the Four-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss. It seems on the face of it like ridiculously valuable material, if true - like what the completed version of Michael Vassar's proposed reboot of dietary science would look like at the finish point if dieting turned out to be more susceptible to Munchkinism than in my wildest dreams. Ferriss also talks the rationalist talk quite well in this book, much more so than in Four-Hour Workweek; he cites the experiments and occasionally says things like "I spent a lot of money on this and I expected it to work and it didn't work at all" or "I tried this and it seemed to work and I have no idea why it worked and I think it was probably a placebo effect."
Does the LessWrong hivemind have an opinion about 4HB? Has anyone tried it and found that it doesn't work, or that it does work, or that it works but not as well as Ferriss thinks it should work?