A Note From Daniel
Taylor and I have know each other since highschool and have recently found a similar interest in powerlifting and strength training in general. We did a podcast on my YouTube channel The Mainstream Media where we discussed many different aspects of fitness as well as finance.
In this article Taylor breaks down a general outline of what a good program can incorporate and how you can go about making one.
Check out the podcast here!
This article was written by: Taylor Craig
The Fundamentals
One thing that we didn’t get to talk about in all that much detail during the podcast was some general programming guidelines, so I want to cover some of the basic considerations when choosing or designing a program here. Once you pick your basic exercises, the main things to think through are frequency, volume, and intensity.
In terms of building muscle and general fitness, heavy compound movements are always better than isolation ones.
This gives us 6 basic movement patterns: squat, deadlift, and horizontal and vertical dimensions of both pushing and pulling (most commonly bench, overhead press, pull-up, and row, but including variations is fine too). We basically cover all major muscle groups with these 6 exercises.
What about Frequency?
In terms of frequency, while a common approach is to hit each body part once a week, there is research that suggests that twice a week is considerably more effective.
It’s hard to really destroy a body part so much that it takes a full week to recover, and the protein synthesis spike that you get from training decays after 2 days or so, so usually there isn’t much point in doing less than twice a week.
This automatically rules out the so-called “bro splits”–we want to pick something more like a push-pull-legs, or even a program where we cover the whole body in one or 2 workouts. This also means we probably want to be in the gym 4-6 days a week, as it’s hard to hit everything twice in just 3 sessions.
Volume
In terms of volume, we definitely want to be doing at least 8 sets of each exercise (or some variation) per week. This is the big reason to move on from, for example, a 5×5 program–5 sets on the bench press 3 times every 2 weeks is not really enough volume. More volume is usually better for muscle growth, so maybe we should suggest at least 5 sets per movement per session, for ten sets per week.
It might sound weird to talk about numbers of sets without specifying a weight or number of reps. In my opinion, if you are doing at least 3 reps and fewer than 15, the rep range you use probably only makes a marginal difference in the results you see–the strength vs size debate is overblown.
The more important thing is that you are always lifting within 3 reps of failure, and regularly within 1-2. Regularly getting close to failure on heavy movements is essential for seeing results.
What Works Best For Me
In terms of actually scheduling these sessions, if you can do 6 days a week then push-pull-legs is a pretty solid bet. For me, the toughest part about scheduling is figuring out what to do with squats and deadlifts, because I don’t like doing them on the same day.
Right now I usually end up doing two days of squats and one day of deadlifts, but some people do light squats and heavy deadlifts one day and then flip it the other day. On the other hand, I have found it easy to just alternate upper body pushing and pulling, but some people find something else that works for them.
The important thing is to get the volume and frequency in, and just use whatever muscle pairings you find let you get the most good work in.
Once we have all these parameters set, the main thing is to force yourself to progress. Adding weight is the most obvious way, but adding reps can be a good way to break plateaus.
Something else that is important to do is to gradually increase volume over, say, 1-2 month cycles–volume is the key driver of muscle growth, and increasing volume will force your body to adapt. Staying accountable to measurable progress, combined with working hard, is the only surefire way to see consistent results.
Daniel Deadlifts 