By the time you're looking at follow-up programmes, you should start reading about periodisation, and why sticking with any one programme indefinitely limits further development.
Stronglifts / 3x5 programmes are a good initiation. Once you're initiated, you want to understand the stimulus / response / rest / nutrition relationships, and identify what your specific training and fitness goals, needs, and limitations are.
That's what you end up building a programme around.
The problem with beginners -- in any field -- is that they tend to develop One True Religionism. If you've been doing nothing, then doing virtually anything is better. But that virtually anything can progress in response only up to a point.
That's where the complications come in.
The key point is that your goals determine your methods.
Though the basics remain, for strength: full-body, compound, freeweight movements, with training frequency, set, rep, and inter-set rest intervals selected to address your specific goals.
Similar principles drive other elements of fitness: cardio (if that's your thing), skill-based activities, etc.
They can even be generalised to other domains of life.
Stronglifts / 3x5 programmes are a good initiation. Once you're initiated, you want to understand the stimulus / response / rest / nutrition relationships, and identify what your specific training and fitness goals, needs, and limitations are.
That's what you end up building a programme around.
The problem with beginners -- in any field -- is that they tend to develop One True Religionism. If you've been doing nothing, then doing virtually anything is better. But that virtually anything can progress in response only up to a point.
That's where the complications come in.
The key point is that your goals determine your methods.
Though the basics remain, for strength: full-body, compound, freeweight movements, with training frequency, set, rep, and inter-set rest intervals selected to address your specific goals.
Similar principles drive other elements of fitness: cardio (if that's your thing), skill-based activities, etc.
They can even be generalised to other domains of life.