No Awards For the Longest SSLP

by Carl Raghavan, SSC | September 23, 2025

Why ought to I trouble with the Beginning Power Linear Development
(SSLP)? Why follow one thing easy, fundamental, and normal? In spite of everything,
there’s no award for being the longest survivor on SSLP, proper? In
10 years we’ll all be superior anyway, proper?

Mistaken. Let me clarify.

It may take far
longer than a decade to develop into superior – for those who even make it
there. Most individuals stop lengthy earlier than that time, promoting their plates,
squat rack, and SBD singlet inside 5 years. As Mark Rippetoe
famously mentioned, “Most individuals by no means even get previous intermediate
programming.”

Being “superior”
isn’t about how lengthy you’ve skilled or how a lot you carry. It’s
about how shortly you may nonetheless adapt to emphasize. If it takes you a
12 months so as to add 5 kilos to a carry, then you definately’re superior by way of
progress fee. However this system you’re working should be
“intermediate” in construction. The error is assuming that simply
logging ten years of coaching makes you superior. It doesn’t. You
may not even be alive in two.

I’ve been coaching for over a decade, and I’m nonetheless making
progress with intermediate programming. I’ve squatted and
deadlifted over 600, pressed effectively over 300, benched over 370, and
energy cleaned over 260 – on coaching constructed on intermediate
rules. Time alone doesn’t transfer you ahead. Consistency and
effort do.

So why begin with SSLP?
As a result of mastery begins with the fundamentals. Whether or not you’re studying a
language, cooking, enjoying an instrument, or choosing up a sport—you
start with fundamentals. You don’t stroll into public talking in
Cantonese, try a croquembouche, carry out Liszt, or pole-vault
seven meters on day one. You begin easy. Lifting is not any totally different.
SSLP is the place you construct the inspiration.

If analogies about meals
don’t persuade you, let’s speak cash. Think about a financial savings account
that grows 5% three days per week. You’d guard that account along with your
life, proper? You’d milk it for each penny. However for those who believed the
fable that “in 10 years we’ll all be millionaires,” you may
pull your cash early and miss the actual progress. That’s what occurs
when folks abandon SSLP too quickly.

SSLP retains the
variables fastened whereas turning up the warmth 5 kilos at a time—till
you’re cooked. Your job is to get well: eat, sleep, and carry with
good type. It’s a system grounded in logic, not shortcuts. These
who skip the grind for simpler, volume-heavy, RPE-based programming
are kidding themselves. Laborious work beats intelligent programming when
you’re nonetheless weak.

Consider coaching like
strolling. At 3 mph for 2 hours a day, you’ll cowl 22,000 miles in
a decade. Stroll 4 hours and also you double that. Stroll eight and also you’ll
log almost 88,000 miles. The velocity and consistency of your effort
decide the vacation spot—not the belief that “time” will
get you there.

Right here’s the reality: you
have to burn for progress. Constructing confidence, self-discipline, and
intelligence underneath the bar takes years of errors, trial and error,
and studying from each good and unhealthy influences. A robust neighborhood –
and good teaching – helps you get there. No one builds a lifter
alone. Spouses, mother and father, physios, coaching companions, robust gyms, and
the lifting tradition round you all tip the scales in your favor.

There are not any awards for
sticking with SSLP. You’re proper about that. However the superb print is
this: quitting when shit will get laborious is simply giving your self permission
to be a coward. Do you actually need to be the man who cashed out early
– strolling away from assured progress since you obtained impatient?
Or worse, whining that it obtained robust, so that you program-hopped like a
bitch. The basics exist for a purpose. Begin easy. Keep
constant.

Progress doesn’t come
from wishing for a neater manner. It comes if you understand simple
doesn’t work. That’s if you uncover part of your self you
didn’t know existed. Wouldn’t you want to fulfill that individual? I
certain as hell do.