Just re-stressing how not-crappy
Starting Strength is..
GaijinPunch wrote:Bummer. What from?
Heart defect.
A surprisingly high number of young folks die from random organ failure; it seems like cause of death #10 at MyDeathSpace.
The older guy, so they say, died from pushing too hard and then going into a cold stop.
Also: BryanM, what's your opinion on not being fat in the ass? I do squats, but I'm fucking tall and lanky. Getting the 90 degree angle is pretty hard. I tried stiff legged dead lift, but I just don't "feel it". I swapped that out for lunges this week and now my ass is killing me.
Being slightly bent at the waist at the top of the squat is important; the bar is supposed to be on the top half of your shoulderblades, not the top of the shoulder or the spine. Balance will be way better; necessary to get below 90 degrees. I'm somewhat lanky myself, and I bend a little bit more than people in most example pics.
(Here is a sad story about the squat from my foolish youth. On a smith machine (the Devil, and a pointless invention), I would actually spend (waste) time squatting a little over half a ton. Since this was to a 90 degree bend and no lower, the only thing I was really accomplishing was maybe making my femurs denser. The sadistic thing was; I was doing 12-16 reps a set. Since I now train in sets of 4 to 6, that means the shitty routine I had actually should have called for
more weight. More than half a ton. Don't try stuff anything like what I did, any newbies reading this. Read all of the FAQ I linked to before.
Don't be ashamed of using what you might think is "low" weight; the huge manhulks you see in there will actually respect you more if they see you spending your time wisely.)
Anyway, leg presses are the only thing you can realistically do to build ass muscle. So, The Squat, lunges or leg press machine are your only true options.
There are squeezing and spread machines that are supposed to work the gluteus medius and sartorius, and you can do goofy crap with cables... but they're a waste of time.
I'd encourage you to give the squat a serious chance though; use an empty bar to find the right form, then put some load on and go as low as you can go.
Someone doing sets of the squat correctly, with untrained legs, will end up wanting to crawl around on the floor with their arms for the first week. I've read the pain from training comes from the muscle pushing against blood vessels and nerves; thankfully (or not, since growth starts to taper off) that diminishes a lot after that first week.
One last question. If one is too wussy/overweight to do a pullup, how would you go about working your way up to being able to do one?
If you're overweight, losing weight would help the most.
There are cable pull down machines that simulate the motion. You could do 3 sets of 5 (with a weight you can handle 5 of, pulling the bar down to touch your chest) every other day, adding 5 pounds when you can do 13-14 reps correctly.
As counter intuitive as it seems, I should suggest bench pressing. The pullup is almost nothing else but your upper back, with a little bit of biceps thrown in.
It's just a very effective upper body exercise.
I always neglected my legs a bit since I hated doing squats so much. Lunges feel MUCH more comfortable to me, the movement seems more natural and it indeed seems to stimulate more muscles. I also always got a bad feeling in my joints from doing squats, but none at all from lunges. Right now it´s my absolute favourite excercise 
.
. Crazy stuff, I would get vertigo though....I think. I wouldn't like to freeze up in fear halfway up a sheer rockface.
