Can I do Stronglifts every day?

This is an outline to show you why you most likely should stick to the prescribed three times a week on Stronglifts. If you want to do more to progress quicker the article shows you alternatives using kettlebells to get stronger faster. If you have any questions you can contact me directly via pascal@marathon-crossfit.com.

Why you can not do Stronglifts everyday

Stronglifts is a program for beginners. Therefore I see three main reasons why you most likely can not do it every day:

You need to improve fitness to run it every day
You need the time to make it to the gym each day
You need to learn about the perfect form to execute each day

The first point is that you might lack the fitness to run Stronglifts every day. If you are looking for information around Stronglifts chances are high that you started looking into weightlifting. There are mainly two groups who look into weightlifting. The first group is athletes who are already fit. You probably won't be able to do Stronglifts every day because of other training commitments.

The second group is people who want to get fit through lifting. This group should do Stronglifts as prescribed. Leave one day of rest between your sessions. This will help to get stronger and recover. If you train every day you have a bigger risk of overreaching and undermining your progress. Your injury risk also increases. Training the same lifts every other day is already a high load of work. More advanced lifters usually stay away from this. Improve your overall work capacity with a year of Stronglifts. After that, you can switch to other programs or consider lifting heavy every day. Andy Bolton, the first man to ever deadlift 1.000 pounds, also only trained three times a week. It is not about the quantity, but the quality of the work.

Beginners usually do not make it to the gym every day. When you start your new fitness regimen you usually have a lot of times on your hand. Most beginners start during the summer holidays or at the beginning of the year. Some start when everything else in their lives is going really well. As soon as you get back to school or work, training first gets patchy. Lastly, it will not be done at all. Rather than thinking about to train every day ask yourself the question of "How can I train on the same days at the same time consistently"? The trick is to move your three sessions a week to 5 am in the morning so you do them no matter what happens. That is more important than training every day.

The last thing is about form. The more often you train as a beginner the sloppier your form gets. By raising the question as a beginner "Can I train every day" you are already putting the emphasis on the quantity rather than the quality of the work. This is the beginner's fallacy. Beginners should put all their attention on perfecting the simplest things to the highest degree before increasing quantity. Unfortunately, it takes the time a master invested to understand this principle fully. If you are a beginner take the focus and intensity and put them into your three sessions a week rather than increasing the frequency of training. This is for another time.

When I started with Stronglifts

When I started with Stronglifts I also wanted to do everything in the shortest amount of time. Get strong like bull and big like Arnold in 30 days. This is not how it works. This is how I got injured and ingrained poor movement patterns. While you read this, take this seriously. I repeat "This is how I got injured and ingrained poor movement patterns". Be better than me and focus.

The same happened to me when I did Wender 531 and combined it with the west side method. I created my worst lower back injury to date. Stay away from greed and fast progression especially as a beginner. It is not worth the risk. An injury will set you back half a year to a year in your progression.

You can train every day

If you want to train every day there is a solution. Do Pavel Tsasoulin's Simple and Sinister kettlebell routine on all the days you are not doing Stronglifts. Simple and Sinister addresses a lot of points Stronglifts does not. Amongst them are:

Explosiveness
Static Holds
Ab training
Lower back training
Cardio
Glute activation

As the weight is a lot lower you can focus on your weaknesses and consciously improve them on these days. I find simple sinister to be at the core of developing my 100kg overhead press and improvements on my beltless deadlift and squat.