Today's Market-Ticker post by Karl Denninger (which you should read every day) is especially insightful when applied to what we do here at Starting Strength. It is a guest post by Benjamin King: Misleading Aphorisms.

He discusses “aphorisms,” defined as “a concise statement of a principle.” Further, he asserts that “Correlation is not causation” is a powerful aphorism that is seldom kept in mind in 2025, and indeed may be intentionally ignored when making an argument in one's favor. In our situation, correlation and causation track together, as an increase in muscular bodyweight drives an increase in strength, and vice versa. In contrast, the complexity of the program (the number of exercises in the program) and the strength results of the program are unrelated.

Our concern here is strength training and “physical culture” – the intentional application of stresses to the body for the specific purpose of affecting physical improvement. This includes all forms of exercise, as well as Bodybuilding and Physique Display. Let me again clarify that physique display is not our primary concern, but that our methods of barbell training for strength produce the fastest and most efficient improvement in physical appearance possible, for both men and women.

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The reason for this is simple, and unarguable:

1. Bigger muscles look better on a human body than smaller muscles, to people of all cultures.

2. Muscles produce the force of contraction that allows accommodation of the organism to the environment. This is why all animals have muscles.

3. A muscle adapts to producing more force by growing in cross-sectional area. The weight on the bar is a direct measure of the force you have to produce to lift it.

4. Therefore, if you train a muscle to produce more force over time – incrementally and progressively – that muscle will get bigger to facilitate this adaptation. This process is called “hypertrophy.”

5. Thus, the aphorism: If you get stronger you will look better, since hypertrophy will have occurred.

It has become fashionable in what are still referred to as the Exercise Sciences to advocate for the performance of higher-repetition sets of perhaps 5 sets of 8-15 reps to produce hypertrophy. Perhaps this is necessary if you are training isolated muscle groups on exercise machines, but that is neither necessary or productive. Ask an 800-squatter if he really thinks leg extensions made his squat go up.

But if my previous argument is correct – and the evidence of the past several decades shows that it is – getting stronger produces hypertrophy, because there is no other mechanism by which a chronic increase in muscular strength can occur. Once lifting technique is efficient, increases in load are the result of an increase in force production, due to an increase in muscle size/cross-sectional area, which is due to handling progressively heavier training loads.

If you are a novice trainee, 5'10” at 175, and you train your deadlift from 135 up to 405 using sets of 5 reps that increase in weight every workout, eating and sleeping to best facilitate recovery, your bodyweight will have increased to 215-225 with little if any increase in bodyfat. The only trick is to take appropriate incremental increases each workout, eat enough of the right food to recover between workouts, sleep enough to recover between workouts, and don't miss workouts. The complete program is detailed in Practical Programming for Strength Training, 3^rd Edition.

And just in case you think this is an overly optimistic projection, we have experience with tens of thousands of trainees that demonstrates that it's the normal response to a progressively increasing barbell strength training program. All you have to do is stick with the program and not get side-tracked to lighter weights and single-joint exercises by the “exercise science.”

And you will look better, to yourself and everybody else.

Most of you have discovered this for yourselves, so most of you know that heavy sets of 5 work much better than lighter sets of 15 reps for hypertrophy, even though higher reps/lighter weight are being sold as the key to hypertrophy. Strength comes from size – 405 x 5 requires more strength than 275 x 15, and 405 x 5 makes you bigger than 275 x 15, as anyone who has done it both ways knows. You may have gotten bigger than you were by just doing 275 x 15, but in the absence of 405 x 5 you don't have a reference between the two approaches.

So, the question is simply this: How complicated does programming for a novice need to be to result in strength and physique improvement? Not complicated at all – it just has to be heavy enough to result in a force production increase. Sets of 5 reps accomplish this, while sets of 12-15 do not.

Most people prefer the way lighter weights “feel,” both during and after the set, and that explains most of the confusion. A “pump” is pretty cool, I'll have to admit, but it doesn't indicate that long-term hypertrophy is being produced. Getting hot, sweaty, and tired may make you feel like you have accomplished something, even if the numbers on the bar tell you otherwise.

In contrast, PR sets of 5 are hard as hell, they make you tired, and a 5-pound PR is just not that big a deal to anybody but you. But if you make a 5-pound PR two or three times a week – meaning 5 pounds more than the previous workout, as opposed to what you feel like you can do today – do the math on that for 9 months of training and see what you think. You will have gotten much stronger, and bigger. The numbers do not lie, and the numbers – not your feelings – must dictate your training loads.

Keep your head clear on this: you can't get bigger without getting stronger. So the best way to get stronger is always the best way to also get bigger. Good size comes from good strength. Causation agrees with correlation this time. Don't make it more complicated than necessary – there'll be plenty of time for complicated programming later, when more complexity is necessary, but the simpler you can keep it the better it will always be.

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