Bodyweight Training Using the Heavy-Light-Medium System

A Simple 3-Days-Per-Week, H/L/M Bodyweight Regimen

     I received an email the other day asking me if I was going to write another part of my Bodyweight Training and Beyond series.  I wrote Part 3 of that series back in January, and mentioned at the end of it that I would soon do a 4th part.  I have yet to do so, however.  I have a tendency to get on “kicks” where I cover a certain topic for several different essays or for weeks on end before moving on to something else, and I haven’t written that much on bodyweight training of late.  I wrote back to the reader that, yes, I do plan on writing another part to that series, maybe even several.  I’ve made quite a few notes on isometric training along with “dynamic tension” that I plan on including in the next part.  The reader also had a request.  He asked if I had a suggestion for how to design a 3-days-a-week workout using only one’s bodyweight.  He has a chinning bar at home, but nothing else.  I wrote him back a simple, but result-producing plan for increasing his chins, pushups, and bodyweight squats using a “heavy-light-medium” framework a la Bill Starr.  Once I hit “send,” I realized that the workout might be good for an article unto itself.

     For anyone who wants to increase the number of pushups or chins you can do, there are several different methods and routines that produce results.  This is just one of them, but it’s simple to implement, easy to program, and produces results at least as good as anything else you can find for building bodyweight strength-endurance.  It’s probably not for bodyweight enthusiasts who can already do a lot of work on bodyweight exercises and already have a tremendous work capacity.  But it might work well for them, as well, assuming they don’t mind really pushing up their volume to a high level.  If you’re looking for a routine that you can do at home with minimal to no equipment, however, I think it’s a good regimen for you to consider.

     You will train on 3 non-consecutive days a week, such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, using Hindu squats, pushups, and chins.  You will use a heavy-light-medium template based on the total volume of each day, so the “heavy” day will have the highest volume, the “light” day the lowest, and the “medium” day will be in between the other two.

     You can do the exercises in whatever order that you wish.  I would start with the Hindu squats, just to get the toughest movement out of the way.  Others might prefer to keep the hardest exercise for the end.  Whatever works best for you is fine—and whatever you just want to do.

     On the heavy day, on each exercise, start the workout by warming up with a couple of light sets.  So, if you have a max of 20 reps on pushups, you might warm up by doing 2 sets of 5 reps.  You don’t want your warmup to fatigue you whatsoever.  It should just “prime” your body for your first work set.  After warmups, do 1 hard, but not quite all-out set.  Stop your first set a rep or two shy from complete muscular failure.  If you can do 20 pushups, then you might do 18 or 19 for your first set.  Now, take the number of reps you did on that first set and multiply it by 7.  That will be the total number of reps that you will do on that exercise for the heavy day workout.  So, if you did 19 reps on your first set, you will do a total of 133 reps for the workout.  Do however many sets it takes to get your total reps.  On each set that you do, stop the sets before they get hard.  Rest a couple of minutes between each set.  Your heavy day pushup workout might look like this:

1x19, 15, 13, 12, 10, 10, 10, 12, 8, 8, 8, 6, 2 (133 total)

     Of course, your Hindu squats will be more voluminous and your chins less so.  If you can only do 5 chins to start with, you would do a total of 35 reps on the heavy day.  If you can get 50 Hindu squats, you would do 350 for the heavy session.

     On the light day, take the number for your first set on the heavy day and multiply it by 5.  That will be the total for the light day.  So, if you did 19 pushups on your first heavy day set, you would do a total of 95 reps at the light workout.  Don’t try to get 19 pushups to start with.  Stop each set a couple reps shy of failure (at least) and you might take even longer to complete all 95 reps, making it an easier workout than the heavy session.  The light workout for pushups might look like this:

1x12, 10, 10, 8, 8, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4 (95)

     On the medium day, take the number for your first heavy day set and multiply it by 6.  For our hypothetical 19-rep pushup, you would do 114 pushups on the medium day.  Use the same principle as the light day, taking each set a couple (or few) reps shy of failure until you get your rep total.

     At the next heavy day, again, begin the movement (after warmups) by doing 1 hard set, trying to beat your reps from the previous week by at least 1 rep.  So, if you did 19 reps on your first set the previous week, you would shoot for 20 reps here.  Again, multiply that rep total by 7 for the total number of reps for the remainder of the pushup workout.  In this case, 20 reps would now be 140 reps total.

     You would multiply, again, 20 by 5 for the light session and 20 by 6 for the medium workout.  The beauty of this program is that, over an 8 to 12-week training cycle, you will reach the point where your light day is “heavier” than your heavy session when you started it.  If, for example, at the end of 12 weeks, you’re doing a set of 35 reps for your first pushup set, your rep total on the light day will be 175 reps (and your heavy workout 245).

     Just to give you an idea of what the 1st week of training might look like, here’s an example breakdown of how one might get his reps in on the program:

Monday - Heavy:

Hindu squats: 40,40,38,35,35,30,25,20,17 (40x7=280 reps total)

Pushups: 15,13,13,11,11,10,10,9,8,5 (15x7=105 total)

Chins: 5,2,3,2,5,1,3,2,3,1,2,3,1,2 (5x7=35 total—notice how the reps wave here from higher to lower and then back to higher; this works well with lower reps/heavier movements)

Wednesday - Light:

Hindu squats: 35,35,30,30,25,20,15,10 (40x5=200 total)

Pushups: 10,10,8,6,8,6,10,6,4,3,4 (15x5=75 total)

Chins: 3,2,3,2,2,3,2,1,2,1,2,1,1 (5x5=25 total)

Friday - Medium:

Hindu squats: 38,38,35,32,30,25,22,20 (40x6=240 total)

Pushups: 13,11,11,10,10,8,8,9,5,5 (15x6=90 total)

Chins: 4,2,3,2,4,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2 (5x6=30 total)

     In the 2nd week of the program, our example trainee, on his heavy day workout, might start by doing 45 reps of Hindu squats, 16 reps of pushups, and 6 chins.  Now, for this example lifter, he might need to stick with 5 reps of chins in the 2nd week before pushing up the reps in the 3rd.  In that case, his programming on the chins for week 2 would be identical to week one, but he would be shooting for 315 total reps on the Hindu squats and 112 reps on the pushups (heavy day), 225 reps on Hindus and 80 on the pushups (light day), and 270 on the Hindu squats and 96 reps on the pushups (medium day) to end the 2nd week.

     Here are a few tips, including how to adapt it to other movements:

• If you are in need of speed and power—such as a martial artist or fighter who might want to attempt this—then stop each set, including the first one, when you lose speed on your set.  Maybe you can do 20 pushups, but you can only do 12 of them using full speed and explosive power.  Then stop at 12.  Yes, your rep total will be significantly down, but you won’t have to worry about speed degradation and the decrease in workload throughout the workout (and the week) will be better for your goals, anyway.  Also, speed work is much harder on your central nervous system, so the decrease in workload will not take such a toll on your CNS.

• You can adapt this to any lifts that you want.  Someone looking for size and strength, for example, might use it on squats, bench presses (or overhead presses), and power cleans.  In that case, your workout should look more like the example for chins above.

• If you already do a lot of bodyweight training and have a good work capacity, you can use a higher volume program.  Consider multiplying your first set by 10 on your heavy day, 8 on your light day, and 9 on your medium day.  That actually fits exactly to Starr’s recommendation of 80% and 90%, respectively, for the light and medium day workloads.  Conversely, if you have a low work capacity—perhaps you’re completely new to bodyweight training or just training in general—then you might want to multiply your first set by only 5 on the heavy day, 3 on the light day, and 4 at the medium session.

• If you know you respond well to high volume, or you just want a highly challenging workout for the heavy session, you can multiply the heavy day total by 12 or even 15 times your rep number on the first set.  If you can do 25 pushups, this would mean you would do as many as 375 reps for the heavy day workout.  Because of the soreness this might produce, and the overall volume of the heavy session, reduce the volume significantly on your light and medium days.  If you do a 15x heavy session, then do only 5x the number on the light day, and 10x the number at the medium one.  If you did 25 pushups on your first set and 375 total reps on the heavy day, this would mean only 125 for the light day, and 250 for the medium day.

• You can add additional exercises if you wish, such as combining bodyweight training with kettlebell movements or some additional arm, ab, and calf exercises.  You might, for example, do a workout of Hindu squats, pushups, chins, double kettlebell cleans, and single kettlebell swings.  Or you might do a workout of Hindu squats, pushups, chins, band curls, standing calf raises, and steep incline situps.  Follow the same format for whatever additional movements you add.

• Instead of Hindu squats, you can do regular bodyweight squats, walking lunges, Cossack squats (my personal pick, especially for martial artists), or sissy squats.  Instead of regular pushups, you can do variations such as knuckle pushups, Hindu pushups, alternating tension pushups, alternating staggered pushups, or even one-arm pushups (see the link at the start of this essay for Part 3 of my Bodyweight Training and Beyond series for information on how to execute those movements).  And, of course, you can do any chin variation that you want.

     I hope this article has given you some ideas for designing your bodyweight training.  Use it exactly as written with the Hindu squats, pushups, and chins, or come up with your own variation of it based on my suggestions.  You can just use it for one exercise, while utilizing different set/rep combos for other lifts.  You might, for example, use it only for pushups at the end of a more conventional Bill Starr-style, full-body 5x5 program on squats, heavy pulls, and overhead lifts.  It’s a simple but highly effective program.

     As always, if you have any comments or questions about the routine, leave them in the “comments” section below or send me an email for private correspondence.

     If you enjoyed reading this article and want to know more about Bill Starr’s H/L/M system, then consider purchasing my book The Strongest Shall Always Survive: Lifting Lessons from an Iron Legend.  It contains everything you need to know for designing and implementing Starr’s methods.  You can find more information about it, and all of my books available for purchase, by clicking on THIS link.