How to Design a Heavy/Light/Medium Program

 

 Heavy/Light/Medium Training

Part One: The Basics of Program Design

     This past week, I received an email from a reader asking if I would write an article on how to design a heavy, light, medium program.  It was a bit serendipitous, as I had been gathering together some of my past articles on just that very subject with the intention of putting together an e-book entitled “The Heavy, Light, Medium Manifesto” (or something such as that; I’m a little “iffy” on the title at the moment).  You see, April of this year will be 10 years since Starr-man (as Bill Starr was sometimes affectionately known) left for that grand weightlifting gym in the sky.  And I have been thinking that what better way to honor the man than to put together a book covering every aspect of his lifting wisdom that I can think of.  His heavy, light, medium system had the single greatest impact on my personal training than any other method.

     Last year, I wrote an essay entitled “The Strongest Shall ALWAYS Survive.”  The title is a simple homage to Starr’s classic strength training book “The Strongest Shall Survive.”  But I wrote that essay to highlight Starr’s training wisdom as it can be applied to all lifters and different modes of training, not just his heavy, light, medium system.  I often do something similar in other articles, where I apply some of Starr’s insights across varied systems of training.  

      This essay—and whatever ones that follow—will be specifically about how to use Starr’s heavy, light, medium system.  We will cover the basics of how to program each day, the importance of understanding workload in programming design, and a few other things.  In future essays, we’ll get into more specifics, such as how to use the system for more specialized training, how to adapt it specifically for powerlifting or weightlifting, how to use it for bulking, or how to use it to bring up a weak bodypart or lift.

     For the remainder of this essay, we will look at the major tenets of the system.

 

Overview

   If you’re around my age, then you know Starr from all of his many training articles that appeared in (primarily) IronMan magazine and MuscleMag International throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s.  If you’re a decade or two older than me, you may know him as the editor of Strength & Health in the ‘60s.  I must admit that, at first, I didn’t read Starr’s articles.  Being a teenager in the 1980s, I mainly read the shiny, glossy articles “written” by a lot of the top bodybuilders.  (In case you’re unaware, almost NONE of those articles were actually written by the bodybuilder in question, whoever-the-hell that bodybuilder might have been.)  Or I read the articles and essays written by the popular bodybuilding writers of the day, such as Greg Zulak or the outstanding Gene Mozee.  Mozee is still one of my favorites, I must admit.  Starr’s articles, or so I thought at the time, were only for weightlifters.  It wasn’t until the mid to late ‘90s, when I had taken up strength training and powerlifting with full force, and no longer thought of myself as a bodybuilder but, rather, as a lifter, that I began to read Starr.  And read him I did!  Luckily, because I had hundreds of magazines crammed full of his voluminous works, I had plenty to read.  I think it’s fair to say that I became a true Starr disciple.  I never met him personally.  I really wish I had, as our time working for different magazines often overlapped.  But I still considered him my primary mentor.  I still do to this day.  Although some of the principles I use converge from Starr’s—I have been almost equally influenced by Russian-style training and, to a lesser extent, the methods of Westside Barbell—when designing a heavy, light, medium program for anyone (me included), it’s almost exactly as Starr would have created it.  (If there is one big difference in my H/L/M programs, compared to Starr, is the fact that I employ some days devoted entirely to speed work if I’m training advanced powerlifters or fighters.  This is an admitted influence from Westside Barbell.  But it’s not something that we will cover in this article, as it’s not a technique needed by anyone when first designing an H/L/M program.)

     Before we get into the specifics of his methodology, I want to clarify something.  Starr’s heavy, light, medium training, for those who only think of it as “basic” 5x5 training, is often thought to be a simple workout of linear progression relying on basic barbell work and full-body training.  While there is some truth to such thought, it simply doesn’t understand the full depth and breadth of Starr’s training vision.  Starr’s H/L/M training is a true system of lifting that can be used by a lifter throughout his entire lifetime.  For the remainder of this essay, we will cover the basics of this system.

     The best way to think of Starr’s H/L/M methodology, I believe, is to realize that it is, essentially, a weightlifting stratagem adapted for the athlete or the casual lifter.  The subtitle of his “The Strongest Shall Survive” book is “Strength Training for Football,” to give you an idea.  It’s not a powerlifting program, although it might be more successful for powerlifters than a typical powerlifting program.  And it’s not a bodybuilding program, though, once again, it might be more successful for hypertrophy than the average bodybuilding program.  For powerlifters, for instance, it will not only build up your powerlifts, but it will also build up your strength on a host of other lifts, in addition to working all of your stabilizing muscles and building up your GPP (general physical preparedness).  I believe such an approach allows the powerlifter to make continual progress over a longer period of time, even if, at first, other programs might cause the powerlifts to soar higher in a shorter period.  You can take up a Smolov squat program, for example, and make astounding gains over a 4 to 6-week period.  But it can’t be kept up because of the toll such an approach takes on your body.  You can’t do anything else but the Smolov program.  And for bodybuilding training, it’s much the same.  It will keep you gaining mass after other hypertrophy programs have petered out.

 

Workload: Understanding Heavy, Light, and Medium

     At its most basic level, Starr’s program is a 3 days a week, full-body routine where one day is heavy, one day is light, and the other day is medium.  That’s also, probably, the extent of many lifters’ knowledge of it—and also where confusion sets in.

     Heavy, light, and medium are determined by the total workload of each training day and not necessarily how much weight you use on a particular lift.  Workload being weight lifted multiplied by number of sets multiplied by number of reps.  You need to ensure that you calculate this for all of your exercises on each training day.

     One of the most common mistakes that lifters make is to do too much assistance work on their light days, often for very high reps.  Because the weights utilized on these movements are “light,” the lifter thinks that it slots fine into the light training day.  But lighter movements for high reps really punches up the workload, often to the point that the light day ends up significantly heavier than the other days.  The lifter then can’t figure out why the program isn’t working.

     When you first take up this training, make sure that you calculate the workload of each workout throughout the week.  Do this for at least the first few weeks that you’re on the program.  After that point, calculate it occasionally just to make sure that you’re not overdoing it on some days.

     On average, the light day should have no more than 80% of the workload from the heavy day, and the medium day should have no more than 90% of the workload.  At first, you may want to keep the workload less even than what you think you are capable of.  If your light day at first, for example, is only 50% of the heavy day’s workload, that’s fine.  You can slowly push up the workload of your light and medium days as you adapt to the program.

 

Understanding 5x5

     The “base” set/rep format—at least when first you start the program—is 5 sets of 5 reps.  These are to be done—once again, at least at first—as 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps.  It is not 5 “straight” sets of 5 reps performed with the same weight.  (Starr’s system actually uses multiple set/rep combos, but for the sake of this first essay, we will just discuss his 5x5 method.)

     You may, or may not, get the last set of 5.  Your final set of 5 reps should be really hard.  You will either get a very tough 5 reps, or you will miss it and end up getting 3 or 4 reps.  If you manage 5 reps on your last set, then you add weight at the next heavy workout and attempt 5 reps again.

     Let’s say that you have a 5-rep max on your squat that is around 315 pounds, then your sets on your heavy day might look something such as this: 135x5, 205x5, 225x5, 275x5, and 315x5.

     On the light day, you would still do 5x5 on the squats, but Starr’s general advice—and one I adhere to—is to stop doing progressive sets once you reach the weight utilized for your 3^rd set on the heavy day.  Stick with that weight on the 4^th and 5^th sets.  So, your light day for squats might look like 135x5, 205x5, 225x5x3 sets.

     For the medium day, stick with 5x5 again and work up to the weight utilized on your 4^th set of your heavy day.  Now, your sets might look like this: 135x5, 205x5, 225x5, 275x5x2 sets.  Another method for the medium day—and this is the most common way that I utilize it—is to actually train heavier on the medium day by doing your last set, or your last couple sets, with triples instead of 5s.  If our hypothetical squatter managed to get 315 for 5 reps on his heavy day, then he might use this format: 135x5, 205x5, 225x5, 295x3, and 325x3.  On the following heavy day, our lifter would attempt the last set of 5 with 325, the weight utilized for the triple.

     The above is the example for squats, but what about other movements?  Which brings us around to our next subject.

 

Exercise Selection

      Exercise selection is the one thing that could be different from the outset for different lifters, depending upon your goals.  However, everyone should utilize squats along with an upper body pressing movement and a pulling movement of some sort.

     If you’re a powerlifter, then obviously you will want to focus on the squat, the bench press, and the deadlift.  If you’re an Olympic lifter, then it should be the squat, the overhead press, and a clean and snatch movement.  If you’re an athlete—or you train athletes—then whatever exercises that you choose, they should all be standing movements.  I don’t think anyone can go wrong with squats, military presses, and power cleans as the “big 3” movements for the program, if you’re personally unsure of what three movements to select.

     Although you can, and should, squat at each session of the week, other movements should not be utilized at every session.  If you’re a powerlifter, for instance, then you shouldn’t squat, bench press, and deadlift at each session.  Instead, you should squat every time, bench press twice a week, and deadlift only once.  You would do bench presses on your heavy and medium days, with some sort of overhead pressing on the light day.  You would deadlift on your heavy day and then do a different back/pulling exercise on your light and medium day.

     This brings us around to another important element of program design: manipulating heavy, light, or medium based on exercise selection.  To build up your pulling strength, you can deadlift on the heavy day, power snatch on the light day, and do high pulls on the medium day.  If you do each one of those exercises for 5 sets of 5 reps, then no matter how hard you train each movement, they will naturally “slot” into their respective days from a workload standpoint.

     Lastly, you will want to include an assistance exercise or two (and more as you advance) at the end of each day.  As mentioned, however, make sure that you don’t “overdo” this movement and make sure you calculate the workload on any auxiliary exercises, so that you know your workload isn’t too much on certain days.  And, at first, I wouldn’t do any assistance work on your light day, not until you feel as if you’ve adapted to the program’s overall workload.

 

An Example Program

     Now, let’s put together what we’ve discussed so far, and look at an example program.

     For our example program, I’m going to list weights utilized by our hypothetical lifter.  This will allow you to see the workload of the session and allow you to better understand how a workout should be designed.

 

Monday – Heavy Day

1.      Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps; 135x5, 205x5, 225x5, 275x5, and 315x5. Workload for the lift: 5,775 pounds.

2.      Bench Presses: 5 sets of 5 reps; 135x5, 175x5, 205x5, 225x5, 250x5. Workload for the lift: 4,950 pounds.

3.      Deadlifts: 5 sets of 5 reps; 135x5, 205x5, 225x5, 250x5, and 300x5. Workload for the lift: 5,575 pounds.

4.      Weighted Dips: 5 sets of 8 reps; (our hypothetical lifter weighs 200 pounds) bodyweight x8, bodyweight+30lbsx8, bodyweight+45lbsx8, bodyweight+60lbsx8, bodyweight+80lbsx8. Workload for the lift: 9,720 pounds.

Total workload for the heavy day: 26,020 pounds.

 

Wednesday – Light Day

1.      Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps; 135x5, 205x5, and 225x5x3 sets. Workload for the lift: 5,075 pounds.

2.      Military Presses: 5 sets of 5 reps; 95x5, 105x5, 115x5, 125x5, 135x5. Workload for the lift: 2,875 pounds.

3.      Power Cleans: 5 sets of 5 reps; 115x5, 135x5, 155x5, 170x5, 195x5. Workload for the lift: 3,850 pounds.

Total workload for the light day: 11,800 pounds.

 

Friday – Medium Day

1.      Squats: 4 sets of 5 reps, 1 set of 3 reps; 135x5, 205x5, 225x5, 295x5, and 325x3. Workload for the lift: 5,295 pounds.

2.      Bench Presses: 3 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 3 reps; 135x5, 175x5, 205x5, 230x3, and 255x3. Workload for the lift: 4,030 pounds.

3.      Deficit Deadlifts: 5 sets of 5 reps; 135x5, 175x5, 205x5, 225x5, 250x5.  Workload for the lift: 4,950 pounds.

4.      Barbell Curls: 5 sets of 5 reps; 65x5, 75x5, 95x5, 105x5, and 115x5. Workload for the lift: 2,275 pounds.

Total workload for the medium day: 16,550 pounds.

 

     Keep in mind that the above program is just an example.  You may want to get stronger on different exercises, and that’s fine.

     In future installments of this series, we will go into more detail regarding all of the elements presented here, as well as specific ways to tailor the program.  We will also look at nuances that can be made to each training day, as well as ways to build elements other than just strength.

     If anyone has any questions, leave them in the comments section below or shoot me an email.  Also, if you want a certain aspect of Starr’s program covered as an article of it’s own, let me know.

     Until our next installment, good luck and good training.  Oh, and here’s to you, Starr-man!