I know that one of the primary frustrations that BBM and Starting Strength both have is people not doing the program, but hear me out.
I’m a 23 year old, 200 lb, 5’11, 37 inch waist guy, trying to drop to 175 and a 32 inch waist. My lower body carries more muscle mass (and fat) and strength than my upper body and they look kinda disproportionate. I’ve been trying to even this out. And because I’m primarily going for lower body strength and not hypertrophy, I wondered if I could just do squats and deadlifts in the 4-6 rep range and increase the weight every workout or every other workout, but follow the upper body prescription as written. Or, are 7 and 10 reps not going to cause enough of a hypertrophy response for me to worry about since the weekly volume is still fairly low? Are there other good reasons to do the lower body portion with the prescribed rep ranges?
I’m already running about 2-3 miles twice a week to start with for my endurance and cardio training.
Is any of this worth worrying about since I’m on a caloric deficit? I was hoping to squeeze some noob gains out for my upper body even though I’m on a deficit.