Strength Training Template For Life

I have over 14 years of lifting under my belt. I am a two time powerlifting state champ and a state record holder. This is a good summary of all lifting knowledge one needs to accomplish their fitness goals. I hope it is easy to follow and maybe a bit comical. This article primarily addresses strength training and only briefly touches on diet/cardio.

I have had many people ask me to write them workout plans over the last few years and instead decided to write up something more holistic to give them something that can be relied upon for years to come. Writing out a list of exercises along with a set and rep scheme would only benefit you for a few weeks. I have decided to endeavor on a much more worthwhile task.

My goal is to provide a general plan that hits on all the main points I have learned through my roughly 14 years of experience in the gym. The things I did right and the things I did wrong. I’ll start with a graphic that I stumbled across approximately a year ago that I think is the holy grail of gym advice summarized into a single picture.

This entire plan will simply draw on ideas from this graphic so get comfortable with it and know it by heart. Basically if you can’t do the stuff at the foundation then steps above will be meaningless, you will see what I mean as we go on. I’m going to start at the bottom and work my way up through this pyramid. Remember a lot of this is meant to be general advice and none of the this advice must be followed absolutely to get huge. The human body is too complex a machine to speak in absolutes my friends. Anyone who says their workout regimen is the best ever or you must follow it to get big is simply a fool. There are many roads to Rome.

Adherence

Everyone is so stressed about their rest periods, exercise selection, and having the perfect plan that Arnold used that sometimes they get too stressed and don’t even make it into the gym. The absolute most important thing is to get on a schedule where you don’t miss your workouts. Get a plan that fits your schedule and that you enjoy. It’s hard at first but its gets really easy. I am so addicted to the gym that if I am not in there for 48 consecutive hours I start to really feel like something is off. It is like any habit, just do it for long enough and you don’t even have to motivate yourself to get in there anymore, it will just happen. The two crucial temporal milestones that I noticed in both my lifting career and have read about other people experiencing are at the 6 month mark and the 2 year mark. These are also important relationship milestones oddly enough. If you can consistently make it into the gym 4–5 times a week for 6 months then the hardest part is over and it is now solidly a part of your daily routine. Or 2–3 times a week it doesn’t matter, whatever you can adhere to is the most important. If you can keep going until the 2 year mark it will literally be more difficult for you to take a day off than to go to the gym. Obviously there have been times that I have not lifted over the past 14 years. But I can honestly say that I have never been out of the gym for longer than 2.5 weeks. This was for a few extended European vacations. Once you get out of the habit for a number of weeks it will be exponentially harder to get back into it. Obviously I had some serious injuries as well but was always able to intelligently work around them and do PT as well. So just be consistent and get the in the gym. Even if I’m decently hungover I’m still going to make it to the gym because it’s such a habit.

Volume, Intensity, Frequency

Before you read on, if you are not familiar with the above three terms then take 10 minutes and go google them until you are. It is this guide’s goal to provide general rules that can be used for decades of a lifting career so I will be speaking generally on this topic as it can be quite technical and will probably be the longest section but bear with me. Volume is most generally how many sets and reps you do, try to keep your volume between 8–20 truly difficult working sets per muscle group. I like to stay between 6–12 reps per set. 12 rep sets for stuff like arms and 6 rep stuff for squat bench and deadlift. That’s not to say I never do 15 rep squat sets or curl the 55s for 6 reps either. Obviously you can do 3–15 reps but getting too low is exponentially more dangerous without well trained spotters and 15 reps really isn’t that useful for muscle growth most studies show. Focus on 6–12 rep sets.

Warm up sets are not working sets. There is no strict definition but basically a working set is where you are either somewhat close to failure or you actually hit failure. I generally try to train right below the failure threshold as this can be a very dangerous place where form tends to break down and literally every one of my injuries occurred. Feel free to train to failure all you like but just keep the form safe and also don’t do forced reps too frequently or you will get burnt out. I spend 2% of my time, 4 hours a week, working out and get to be swole 100% of the time. That’s a good trade.

The general advice is that larger muscle groups can take slightly more volume than small muscle group like chest versus arms. I haven’t found this to be true in my experience and can do just about as many working sets for my arms as for my chest or legs. But the main thing when it comes to volume is to listen to your body. If you start to feel burnt out after a few weeks then lower the volume a little. If you are feeling good when you walk in the gym do a little more volume. You will get to know your body extremely well and be able to pick up on what it can handle day to day after lifting for a few years. No two people are the same, some people can handle more volume than others and not get over trained.

Intensity is how hard you push your body during an exercise, generally measured by how much weight you are doing as a percent of your one rep max. But in practical terms a good way to measure this is by how close you get to failure. If you are stopping 2–3 reps before failure this is low intensity. If you are stopping 1 rep before failure this is moderate intensity. If you only stop at failure or do a lot of forced reps then you are consistently training at a high intensity. Keep in mind that intensity and volume should be somewhat inversely correlated. 8 sets of chest where you hit failure on each one will stimulate roughly, a big roughly, the same amount of growth that doing 20 sets where you stop 2 reps short of failure.

Do what you like. Some people like higher intensity and some people like higher volume. Do whatever allows you to have fun and get in the gym. Remember adherence is more important than volume, intensity, and frequency. I like high intensity because it makes me feel like I’m getting something done and I like not having to do some many sets.

Frequency just concerns how many times a week you hit muscle groups. Since none of us are juice heads who can recover like Arnold I strongly recommend hitting body parts either once a week or twice a week. Twice a week is better for the first 6–12 months of your lifting career. So if you do twice a week then 4–10 working sets per muscle group in a workout and if you do once a week then do 8–20 like I said earlier. Remember again this is general advice and listen to your body. If you feel like you are recovering well then do some more if you feel overtrained and exhausted then pull back a little bit. Honestly you can do 3 times a week if you like short workouts just keep the volume near my recommendation for a weekly basis, and monitor how you feel and if you are getting stronger and gaining muscle. Again do whatever helps gets you in the gym so you meet priority one: Adherence.

Progression

All right this is a super important part so listen up. This is how you actually get stronger and gain muscle. If you lift the same weight for the same sets and reps every week you’re going to be small forever. There are 4 general ways to progress more weight (intensity), more reps per set (volume), more sets (volume), and using stricter form.(effectively intensity) Now your form should be as perfect as possible for every rep you do unless you want to tear your labrum or have a bulging disk like me. Remember fitness is a journey that will pay dividends for the rest of your life. No one rep at the end of any set is worth a high risk of injury. I don’t care if you’re about to bench 225 for a set of 5 for the first time, don’t get hurt by sloppy form it’s just stupid. All of my injuries were sustained in the first 4 years of my lifting career when I lifted like a moron. Now I continue to pay the price through chronic pain as well as limitations on what exercises I can perform due to those injuries. For example, I can no longer do skull-crushers because they aggravate my elbow tendinitis too much, and I love my skull-crushers. So listen to aches and pains on your body. Address chronic injuries swiftly. Work around them not through them.

The second and third methods, more reps per set and more sets all will eventually violate the guideline set out above to stay around 8–20 working sets of 6–12 reps. So really the only option in the long run is to increase the weight. Which honestly is what we gym bros are looking to do anyways. Now in your first 6 months you will likely get stronger each and every workout. But these newbie gains subside fast so enjoy them while you can. I maybe will hit a PR on an exercise once every 6 months now, or less frequently on some exercises. Increase the weight slowly and always maintain form. You will see almost no physical results in the mirror unless you get stronger. Your body can’t justify slapping more metabolically greedy tissue onto your frame unless it thinks your very existence depends on it. The body has no reason to grow if you don’t continually overload it with more weight. That’s just the way it is. Take it up with Darwin.

This is where so many girls mess up and think they can get toned by just doing low weight sets of 20 reps. That does not help. If you are regularly going above 12 or 15 reps you aren’t stimulating muscle growth and are better off on the treadmill to burn some fat. Girls think if they do a few sets at 6–8 reps that they might accidentally gain 200 pounds of muscle and be the next Mr. Olympia. That is not going to happen, I wish it would. If a girl ever happens to get too muscular, which she really can’t without anabolic assistance, then she can just take a few weeks off of the gym and problem solved. Muscle only stays around if you continually force it to stay around.

I know many gym bros don’t care how much they lift, they just want to get huge. The problem is that there is no real good metric to judge if you are gaining muscle on a week to week basis then by if you are getting stronger. The scale fluctuates too much on a day to day basis. If you get stronger in the 6–12 rep range you are gaining muscle for sure. If you are getting stronger in the 1–3 rep range this isn’t as assured. It is quite difficult to gain any muscle mass without progressively increasing your weight lifted on a regular basis, assuming you aren’t on roids. The only other option is to do more volume but this has diminishing returns that pop up quite quickly as mentioned earlier. So just trust me if you want to gain muscle progressively increase the weight. Trust both the mirror and how much weight you are able to lift. These are your best indicators of progress. Don’t get obsessed with the number on a scale, it’s next to meaningless.

Exercise selection

Now remember this section is less important than the three above sections: progression, volume/intensity/frequency, and adherence. I know that sounds crazy to many of you but it is true. I’m going to focus on upper body exercise selection as that’s what the average gym bro, including myself, really cares about. First you have to visualize training your upper body in 3 primary planes as well as two diagonal planes. For example a Lat pulldown would be a back exercise in the vertical plane. A barbell shoulder press would be a pushing exercise in the vertical plane. A bench press would be a push in the horizontal plane and a dumbbell row would be a pulling exercise in the horizontal plane. A dip would be a pressing exercise in the vertical plane in the opposite direction of a shoulder press. Then there are two in-between diagonal planes. Classic examples are the incline bench which is pushing in-between the top of the vertical plane and the horizontal plane and the decline bench which is pushing between the horizontal plane and the other side of the vertical plane. The goal is to use a variety of exercises that hit the muscles from multiple planes or angles. It breaks up monotony and more importantly prevents overuse injuries from doing the same exercises too frequently. This planes/angles methodology for push/pull would have been a useful insight to me earlier in my career, but I didn’t grasp it until later.

So for example on back day, if you start with pull ups(vertical), then do dumbbell rows(horizontal) then maybe do some type of pull exercise, likely a machine, in the diagonal plane between the upper vertical and horizontal. You’ve done three or four compound exercises and likely around 12–15 working sets. I would now recommend you pick one or two isolation exercises for back. Like a Lat pullover or a reverse fly to hit some rear Delts. Remember you don’t have to do only back in a whole day just focus on getting between 8–20 good working sets per week as stated before.

A push day for me would be something as follows. Start with dumbbell incline bench then do barbell flat bench then do shoulder press. Then I would finish with a lateral raise and fly superset. See how we hit 3 of the 5 planes and then did a couple isolations, that’s the key. Then maybe my next chest workout I will do dips or decline bench to get some work below the horizontal plane. This keeps your physique balanced and more importantly keeps injuries at bay. So many guys always start with barbell bench and wonder why their shoulders are torn up all the time.

For arms the plane stuff doesn’t really apply as much. Just focus on doing a few free weight exercises and then do cables or machines, preferably cables. It really doesn’t matter just hit your volume and intensity levels that you need and you will grow. Just do lots of curling and extensions and you’ll be fine. Also you can train forearms if you want to be dedicated. Studies show the ladies care more about forearms than anything else. Baffling I know, but you gotta give the people what they want. Maybe do some wrist curls or don’t, whatever floats your boat. I get enough forearm work by doing heavy pulling exercises without straps.

For legs all I do now is squat and deadlift because I hate training legs and I can do both of those in under one hour. Even after a decade of training leg soreness will always hit differently. Stairs will seem insurmountable and getting up off the toilet is a herculean effort. So just do your squats and then do some legs presses and then lunges and then if you can still walk go do some leg extensions and legs curls. Remember compound exercises are more important no matter the body part. If you go in the gym on leg day and only do isolations you are literally just spinning your wheels. You need to hit heavy compound exercises to grow, this applies to upper as well as lower body. Also, do some calf raises while you’re at it. Calves are something either gifted to you by the gods or they are not. No matter how many calf raises you do that likely will not change. But it is a worthy pursuit regardless.

Almost forgot abs. Here I’d like to dispel a few myths about abs. You don’t need to train abs to have sick abs. My abs look the best they have in my entire lifting career and I do zero ab work. The only thing that matters is having low body fat. I get tons of ab work through stabilization on the heavy squats, deadlifts, and rowing work that I do. I do recommend some ab training I just don’t personally enjoy it. The best kind you can do is any type of hanging leg raises. Start with bent knees and work till you can keep your legs straight. These are far superior for ab development from a biomechanical standpoint than silly crunches. They also won’t mess up your neck like crunches can. Also people somehow get the idea that you have to do higher reps for your abs to produce growth. Well guess what? The abs are just another muscle like your deltoids or biceps, if you put them under a microscope they will look very similar, perhaps the abs will have slightly less fast twitch muscle fibers. You can train slightly higher rep if you want but again I caution going too far above the 15 rep threshold.

Remember that exercise selection isn’t that important. It is about how much effort you exert no matter the exercises you are doing. The guy who works his ass off doing lat pulldowns will get better results than the guy lazily doing pull-ups even though the latter is a superior exercise.

Rest periods

We’re now so high up the pyramid this stuff isn’t even worth stressing over. If you are doing higher intensity you will need to rest longer. If you are doing higher volume you can take shorter rest periods. If you really need a number anywhere between 1.5–3 minutes is usually fine. But if I’m doing heavy sets of 6 on squats you can bet I’m resting 5 minutes. If I’m doing a bicep and tricep superset I’ll rest 30 seconds. Again just rest long enough so that you are able to maximally output force on your next set, that’s all that really matters. By the way I spend less than 5 hours a week in the gym so it’s not a large time investment to get in great shape. People who spend two hours a day in the gym and think they are hard core are in reality quite lazy. They aren’t getting anything done. I lift either 4 or 5 days a week but sometimes go as low as 3 depending on my schedule.

Tempo

Tempo concerns the speed with which you perform your reps. I recommend an explosive yet controlled fashion. This helps maintain form and promotes safety but also makes strength gains easier, which is important for muscular gains. The goal is to be slightly slower on the eccentric (negative) portion of the lift and then be a little more fast on the concentric (positive) portion of the lift. But remember safety above all else. We’re in this game for longevity and sustainability not so that we burn out and get hurt and can’t lift. Honestly don’t worry about rep tempo until you are more advanced just keep the weight moving at a comfortable speed.

General Advice

Make use of the internet to learn how to use correct form on any exercise. There are so many good resources. YouTube especially has a lot of good stuff. Watching a video on how to squat is 1000 times better than seeing images of a stick figure squatting.

Diet

I’m going to keep this super brief although it could easily take pages. There is also great advice online for this stuff. If you are trying to gain muscle mass eat at least 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. Also ensure that you are taking in enough fats and carbs to be in a caloric surplus so you can build anything. If you want to gain be in a caloric surplus. If you want to lose be in a caloric deficit.

Cardio

You can do it if you want to get leaner and have a healthy heart. I like to run but it tears up my knees and hips too much so I do 3 20 minute sessions on the stair-master every week. You don’t have to do it to stay lean, that can be done though diet alone but I recommend you do some cardio. 3 or 4 times a week of 30 minutes at 85% of your max heart rate is recommended by The American Heart Association. Let’s be real here, people can’t see my heart so why should I care about how good of shape it is in? That’s a wrap.