Mark Rippetoe a.k.a Rip is the one who made "the novice effect" popular. According to Rippetoe the novice effect consists in insanely fast strength and mass gains observed in beginner lifters. He likes to use his boy Zack Evetts as an example. Below you can read one of the most delusional statements ever made by a weightlifting "coach".
"We have a member here at WFAC who gained 55 pounds in 11 weeks. I shit you not. Zach Evetts started with us here in late August of 2009 and by November 12 when I weighed him and measured his bodyfat he had gained a total of 55 pounds of bodyweight and a little over 31 pounds of lean body mass (LBM). This calculates to a LBM gain of 2.84 pounds per week, approximately the rate of growth seen in young farm animals. Little baby pigs grow about this fast, and lots of people make money by raising baby pigs.No, Zach was/is not taking steroids; being an extremely broke 20 year old college kid, he can barely afford his gallon of milk a day. And yes, he gained about 24 pounds of fat, none of which you can see very well and all of which will come off very easily when it becomes an issue."
The truth however is extremely painful for the Rippetoe monkeys to understand. Yes, it's true that when you are a beginner you are adding weight to bar fast but that's because you start with very light weights and your muscles as well as CNS learn to be more efficient during the lifts. Also your form improves over time. The mass gains however are simply not true and the above paragraph just speaks volumes about how moronic and blind Rippetoe is.
The truth about Mark Rippetoe's novice effect is: get to 20-25% BF fast and never take your shirt off just to look "big". That's Mr. Rippetoe's Novice Effect in a nutshell. On top of that people don't really get much stronger on his program. Let me explain.
Zack Evetts started with 145 lbs squat at about 170lbs bodyweight. He ended his "linear progression" at about 315 and 225 lbs.
Let's see:
145lbs at 170lbs BW is exactly 0.85 BW squat. He could've easily taken his squat to 200lbs at that very same bodyweight and that would've been 1.17 BW squat.
315 squat at 225 bs is 1.5 BW squat. While his squat doubled on paper the truth is that most of the "strength increase" is due to the massive weight gain. Anybody can be stronger when he/she is 50lbs heavier.
