The following is a post by Gary Gibson, a friend and contributor on the Starting Strength forums.

At 5’10″ and a little over 160 lbs, I used to cling to the absurd notion that I was somehow past quick “newbie” gains. You see, about 15 years ago I graduated from college at my full adult height and weighing only around 130 lbs. This looked as frighteningly malnourished as you imagine. I wondered why women didn’t take me seriously as a potential mate even though I had a dazzling smile and a razor sharp eight-pack.

I spent the next decade squatting deeply, but with poor form. My overall programming was even worse and I fell under the sway of nonsense like HIT and partial-rep training. About five years ago, I convinced myself that I “just wasn’t built to squat and bench press” and dedicated myself to the deadlift, various overhead presses and chin ups. I also got into learning the full versions of the Olympic lifts even though I was only about 150 lbs with a shaky 245-lb squat to legal depth.

About three years ago, I recognized my scrawny nonsense for what it was when I had a confrontation with a much larger guy in my construction job and had to back down because I realized that I was grossly outsized and outmatched, despite being able to full squat snatch my own bodyweight.

Over the next few months, I started taking the squat seriously again and got it up to 315 lbs while I hit a bodyweight of 160 lbs. About a year after that I entered my first powerlifting competition and squatted 347 lbs with just a belt and knee sleeves in the 75 kg class. I thought I’d done pretty well considering how light and weak I had always been. I convinced myself that I couldn’t possibly gain much more weight and that at best I’d get a bit stronger in my current weight class and then that would be it.

By this time I’d read Starting Strength and started frequenting Rip’s online forum. I kept hearing about this GOMAD stuff, but just didn’t think it applied to me. After all, I’d been training properly for at least a couple of years and had gotten over three wheels on the squat! But Rip told me something that really stuck with me: “At your height you have to weigh 198 at least to be a competent powerlifter.”

198? Just didn’t seem possible. But I’d been bitten by the powerlifting bug and really wanted to get as big and strong as I could. So I started buying several gallons of milk at a time and dedicating myself to drinking a gallon each day.

I’d gotten as high as the mid-170s with a 405-lb squat, but then I cut weight for what was supposed to be my third meet in December 2009. This decision came after a lot of deliberation. At my level, getting bigger and stronger should supersede making weight classes. Ironically the meet got canceled because of a snowstorm that crippled the entire region. I got down to 164, but I lost a lot of strength. This proved to be a perfect chance to prove the power of GOMAD and squats.

A week after the meet cancellation I embarked on a program of volume squats and bench presses, fueled by GOMAD. Almost exactly one month later I am 20 lbs heavier than that low of 164 and my 5RM squat has become the weight I use for sets of five across. Let me make that clear: I was 164 lbs last month with a max squat of around 370; one month later I’m 184 lbs and am on track to a max squat of around 440. Will I actually squat 440 or more? Well, I could barely squat 335 for five last month and last night I used that weight for six sets of five…and the cycle isn’t even half over. You can keep track of my progress by reading my log on the Starting Strength site.

To be big and strong I need to weigh at least 200 lbs at this height with a final goal around 220. I wonder how many other skinny minnies are malingering in gyms across the world, crying about skinny wrists and hard gaining. Funny thing is, I still don’t look “big”–and I’m far from 70’s Big–despite a 20% increase in overall mass. I have to shake my head in disbelief when I imagine myself at 5’10″ and 150 lbs and thinking that that was Just Fine. 150 lbs is just fine…if you’re 5’4″. If you’re a male of the average 5’8″ to 5’10″, you need to weigh around 200 lbs if you want to be strong. You need to squat, eat big, and drink your GOMAD.

If you’re starting out at 150 and under, then the eating big and the GOMAD can be scary and uncomfortable. It’s going to seem like your gut’s getting way to big for your skinny little limbs. But stick with it. Once your gut is full and round, your body will take this as a sign that it has the reserves to support growth. You will not grow if your body “thinks” it is in permanent semi-starvation mode. So eat big, drink your GOMAD and keep upping your squat.

I was completely annoyed on the Letter of Intent Day comments how a lot of you posted numbers that you wanted to hit in training as opposed to posting competition goals. The whole point of Gant’s post was to commit to competing — and barely any of you did that! Well, now I’m going to piss a lot of you off, because I have to inform you that You Are A Coward. Some times the truth hurts. Coward.

The other day I was talking to a cute gal, and she said that she was skeptical of competing because she was afraid of losing. She was just being honest in our conversation (perhaps she was opening up to me like a flower?). In any case, I set her straight by informing her that competing isn’t only about winning, especially in your first try. She agreed, but it may have just been my charm.

In any case, avoiding competition makes you a yella-belly-coward. Gant, who has been in more competitions than Michael Jordan, gives great insight when he says that competing will help you learn about yourself. There is a reason that sport builds character, and this is probably the most enduring quality about competing.

A lack of competition is never a good thing. Our society likes to coddle people, and those people make it a habit to do very little for themselves. This concept becomes embedded deep in their primitive brain, and there is the expectancy of someone else to provide goods, services, and even money. This type of person becomes frightened into doing anything out of the ordinary and accomplishing things on their own. They get scared of taking risks.

Sport is an obnoxiously appropriate way to safely exercise your ability to put yourself out on the line and to risk something. Fearing failure is identical to being a failure.

Competing in sport forces you to experience things that you otherwise may not. In life, you may purposely place yourself in safe situations in which you can’t fail. People do this all of the time, but the most successful people in history didn’t become successful by being safe and conservative.

Sport and competition are not always rosy endeavors. I’ll remind you that I just bombed the piss out of my weightlifting meet on Saturday. I spent three months of hard training in preparation for that meet, and I failed in all of my goals. What, you think I’ll just give up because I don’t want to be embarrassed in front of a bunch of people at a meet again (and technically lots of people on the internet, since my life is sort of on display on this website)? I tell my trainees this all of the time: when shit goes wrong you figure out what variable is to blame, and fix it the next time it comes up.

And by the way, had I actually totaled at that meet, I would have been the 105 kg Texas State Champ…by default. I was the only open competitor. Stef held the distinction of being in first and last place in the women’s 53 kg class. Are you trying to tell me that there weren’t any 53 kg CrossFit girls living in Austin, TX that could have lifted in the meet?

People who like to call themselves CrossFitters are notoriously annoying for not competing in anything at all. They claim that they are competing while training, which is comical. Sure, there are some who actually compete — I mentioned yesterday that Dutch had brought some people to the meet, and this is good. However, plenty of “CrossFitters” love to claim the status of being an “elite athlete” while not even participating in any kind of sanctioned competition (even though the CF creed states something like “regularly learn and play new sports”). It just doesn’t sound intelligent to claim that you will beat everyone at their own sport when you don’t even partake, that’s all. It seems that the fear of risk and failure permeates us all.

And that is the point. Look, if you aren’t a collegiate or pro athlete, you already know you aren’t the best in the world. Especially if you are older than 30 years old — you aren’t suddenly gonna become awesome in something. Intuitively you know that you are, at best, mediocre in the grand scheme of things (unless you try and invent your own sport, which is silly). Suddenly you realize that the thing that you fear the most is taking a risk into the unknown.

I want you to compete, because you will be better off after doing it. Most of you will not do exceptionally well in your first time, and this is supposed to happen. A virgin ain’t no Casanova, okay? Think very carefully in what you want to compete in this year. If you are on 70’s Big, then you are strength training. This not only prepares you, but gives you direction in what you could try competing in first. Go ahead, click on the comments, and make yourself accountable to taking a risk. Or you could just be a coward.

You’ll thank me later.