re: Pen and Paper Strength App

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Do i need any equipment other than a weight bench, dumbbells, and a bar?

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I'm gonna assume you know you'll need weight plates as well, but yeah, that's all you need. A weight hanging belt so you can add weight to dips and chin-ups, if you want to do them that way. Plus, a place to do chin-ups/pull-ups/dips

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Can i do all the exercises myself alone without a spotter?

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That question is really best answered by you, but I always work out alone and I never bench press without safeties in place. So if you work out alone I'd suggest doing the same with your bench press, everything else can be done without a spotter. Same with squat, set the safeties appropriately and learn how to dump a squat bar. You shouldn't need to do this, but stuff happens so it's best to be prepared.

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Is Grasshopper a good into to weightlifting and strength building?

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Yes, it's good. It's not great, but it's not horrible either, so I'd say it's good. You will get to do all of the major compound barbell movements and many other popular movements as well. If you put an honest effort into it you should definitely increase your strength as well as your technique in the movements.

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Any tips or advice for starting out?

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I'd recommend taking a day or two and devote that time to finding your MAXES on the 1)Deadlift, 2)Squat, 3)Bench Press, and 4)Press. It you don't know how to find out your maxes, that is an additional thing you need to learn how to do and it's a topic that gets overlooked a lot in my opinion. If you don't know, just say and I'll give you a quick run through on what I'd do in your situation. If you do know how to find your max, then the next tip I'd recommend is to use 90% of your max as "Training Max" for the actual weights you'd be lifting day to day. When I ran this program, once I got into the second month and the workouts went from being 3 a week to 4 a week, I had to cut down on the weights I was lifting because it was too much to recover from when using 100% of my Max.

The creator of these programs advocates using a training max in this way, if 90% is too much, use 85%. If 90% is too light, use 95%. If you can get by using 100% of your known max that's fine, but if you're new to weight lifting that is unlikely. Also, if you have Instagram, you can visit the PPSA IG page and he has a HELP section at the top that you can click on and it runs through lots of tips he has for beginners.