Hi all, I'm new here and new to the strength training. Having signed up for a gym recently and been doing a lot of reading. Just want some opinions on between Starting Strengths and StrongLifts 5x5, which one would be better for a beginner?

My main goals is to drop some body fat and increasing lean muscle mass on the same time. Used to run a lot (common misconception), then after some reading here realized what a mistake that is and seldom done cardio ever since.

My current stats:
Height: 157cm
Weight: 65.2
Body fat percentage: 21.6%

Gonna start with having clean diet, intend to skip off carbs directly..done that before so shouldn't be a problem. Anyway, the ultimate goal would be dropping body fat percentage to 10-12%, then only see how far can I drop it even more. So, can anyone advice me if I should follow SS or Stronglifts 5x5? For a beginner, I think isolation is out of the question right? Appreciate the feedbacks

lol. I've been here long enuff to see numerous people getting flamed for asking funny questions when the answer is just at the stickies Based on your reply, maybe i'll try SL 5x5. Moreover, SL 5x5 have an iphone app which i think will make my life easier to track the progress.

The bulk option that you mentioned, does it mean by having a clean diet and eating more than my daily calorie maintenance? I intend to plan my diet to be mainly consist of protein (chicken breast/pork cutlet), vegetables and some healthy fats such as nuts. Never tot of counting calorie, probably just eat whenever i feel hungry. Will that work? In the same time, i'll probably continue to workout hard to burn off those unhealthy fats. I was at first thinking of cutting first because most of my body fats are concentrated at my tummy area, and it's very unsightly
Can you explain more on the clean bulking part?

Hmm, true also. Based on your advice, guess I need to start to do some further research regarding calorie counting as well as how many percentage of protein/carbs/fat I should take per day.

Yeah, more than 20% of my daily calorie intake would be quite hard to handle. Moreover, like you said..my bf is already in the 20% range, so I'm not too keen to increase it further. I'll try to increase my daily calorie intake by 15% and proceed from there. Definitely not gonna bulk it by dirty food, perhaps chicken breast all the way.

I'm abit concern regarding my diet to be honest. Based on you all's advice to bulk up, I understand the need else my muscle would not grow. However, I intend to base my diet on only protein and healthy fats only onwards, omitting carbs. Is it possible to bulk up by having such a diet only? Some said need carbs as well, so I'm a little bit confuse

Sorry for asking noob question, but what's "bro split"? i think i know about split workouts where something like isolation workouts, split by days..but what's bro split?

This post has been edited by mikazzz: Sep 19 2012, 04:09 PM