For lifting, it’s all about quantity over quality. Since recovering from progressive-overload is so difficult (it requires lots of sleep, calories, and protein), smart programming is the key to continually making progress with your lifts.

Track sets, reps, and weights lifted for every exercise

  • The only way to ensure that you are progressively overloading your muscles is to track the sets, reps, and weight lifted for each exercise you do. This way, you can easily verify that your numbers are going up.

Minimum Effective Dose

  • Recovery is where muscle is built, so overload the muscles as little as possible to stimulate a growth response, and then chill.
  • It’s better to start with too little lifting and gradually add in more volume, rather than starting with too much and never growing.

Pick a training split that makes sense for you

  • Full-body: lift 3-4 x/week with a day off between every lift. Every lift will hit the entire body, all the muscles, hence the name “full-body”. This stimulates the maximum growth response, since each session prioritizes big compound lifts.
  • Upper-Lower: 3-4 x/week, alternate doing lower body (squat, hinge) or upper body (push, pull) lifts. Easier to get more leg isolation and upper isolation exercises in.
  • Push-Pull-Legs: 3-6 x/week, each workout focuses on one of the three categories and includes a lot more isolation lifts or compound variations.
  • Bro Split: focuses on one muscle group per workout, e.g. Chest, Back, Legs, Arms, Shoulders. Lots of upper body volume, this tends to be overkill for most lifters unless you just do 1-2 lifts per workout.

Good basic programs

  • Stronglifts 5x5 - The staple for newbies everywhere, but honestly great for any lifter. Great way to make gains if you respond well to high volume. E.g. alternate A and B every time, lift MWF, e.g. week 1 MF: A, W: B, and week 2 MF: B, W: A.
    • A: Squat 5x5, Bench 5x5, Row 5x5
    • B: Squat 5x5, OHP 5x5, Deadlift 1x5
  • Wendler 5/3/1 - Very simple program with one heavy set per lift per week, great way to make gains for people who respond well to low volume.
    • A: Squat 5/3/1, Lunges 5x10
    • B: Bench 5/3/1, Chinups 5x10, Triceps 5x10
    • C: Deadlift 5/3/1
    • D: OHP 5/3/1, Rows 5x10, Biceps 5x10
  • KBoges 50/75/100 - Even simpler than Wendler with a similar philosophy – two warm-up working sets per lift and one heavy all-out set. e.g.
    • M: Squat 50/75/100, Pushup 3x, Pullup 3x
    • W: Bench 50/75/100, Pushup 3x, Pullup 3x
    • F: Deadlift 50/75/100, Pushup 3x, Pullup 3x