Hybrid Easy Strength

How to Design a “Hybrid” Easy Strength Program

     If you have read even an inkling of my writings—especially over the last 20 years—you know that I’m a fan of high-frequency training (HFT).  Now, I must admit that this wasn’t always the case.  If you read my early articles for IronMan magazine—from, say, 1994 to the end of that decade/century—I often recommended infrequent training done for relatively “high-intensity” and (fairly) low volume.  But my views on training frequency, volume, and intensity shifted when I started powerlifting seriously in the late ‘90s and began to use the more frequent training regimens from (predominately) Eastern Europe and the heavy/light/medium system of Bill Starr.  Before trying these regimens, I often had trouble gaining muscle and just weight in general.  While using these methods, however, I had trouble not gaining weight even when I didn’t want to!

     Not everyone will get those same results from utilizing HFT programs.  There are plenty of lifters who get good gains from either high-volume routines or high-intensity programs.  But as the years go by, and as I witness the effects of high-frequency training for a lot of lifters, the more I believe that the majority of lifters would do better on high-frequency programs compared to high-volume or high-intensity.

     HFT sometimes gets a “bad rap” because lifters do it improperly.  This is usually because a lifter will do the same high-volume or high-intensity program that he is currently doing and simply increase the frequency of the training.  That kind of HFT will NOT work.  No, for HFT to produce the results it’s capable of generating, it has to be programmed properly.  There’s the rub.  A lot of lifters find HFT more difficult to program.

     For a program to be successful, you must learn to how to properly manipulate the variables of volume, frequency, and intensity—whether or not “intensity” is understood to be the amount of weight lifted in a session (this is the “traditional” way that it is understood by strength coaches and performance athletes) or whether it’s thought of as the effort exerted in a set (which is how most bodybuilders, and, thus, your average trainee understands it).  Two of the variables can be high—or at least one high and the other moderate—and the remaining variable must be low.  (Or all the variables must be moderate.)  This is, as I have argued elsewhere, the reason that “bro split” training (or “Frankenstein training,” as Dan John calls it) is so popular.  It’s incredibly easy to program.  You train a bodypart once per week (maybe slightly less, maybe slightly more, but roughly once a week) with lots of volume and plenty of intensity, then give it a lot of rest before “hitting it” again.  Most of your successful bodybuilders—at least here in America—are successful, I believe, because they respond well to this type of training.

     HFT is a bit more “dicey” to program.  But it doesn’t have to be.  Enter easy strength methods of training.  If you’re familiar with Dan John’s “40 Day Workout” or my “30-Rep Program,” then you know what kind of training that I’m talking about.  Earlier this year, I wrote an essay entitled “Train Easy, Repeat Often” which is a summarization of different kinds of easy strength and easy muscle programs and training ideas.  I’m not going to get into all of the details of those programs, but you can click on the links above if you’re unfamiliar with them.  (And if you aren’t familiar with them, then it might serve you well to go ahead and click those links and then return to this essay once you’ve familiarized yourself with the methodology.)

     I have spoken with several lifters who have one “problem” with easy strength methodology, even when it produces good results for them.  They miss the feel of doing a really hard training session or a highly voluminous one.  But I don’t think that should be an issue.  There’s no reason that you can’t do predominantly easy strength workouts with occasional high-volume or high-intensity workouts (sometimes both) thrown in when needed/wanted.  When I suggest this to lifters, the usual follow up question is then, “how do I do that?”

     I think you have a couple of options.  First, you can simply throw in a “hard” workout on occasion in place of your usual day of training, perhaps once every couple of weeks or so.  The 2^nd option would be to do an entire week of harder sessions after a few weeks of easy strength workouts.

     Using my 30 Rep Program as an example template, you might do something such as this if you were to use the 1^st option:

Week One:

Day One:

• Squats: 2 sets of 5 reps

• Bench presses: 2 sets of 5 reps

• Deadlifts: 3 sets of 3 reps

• Sandbag carries

Day Two:

• Front squats: 2 sets of 5 reps

• Overhead presses: 3 sets of 5, 3, and 2 reps

• Barbell curls: 2 sets of 5 reps

• Farmer’s walks

Day Three: off
Day Four:

• Squats: 3 sets of 3 reps

• Power cleans: 5 sets of 2 reps

• Overhead presses: 2 sets of 5 reps

• Sled drags

Day Five:

• Front squats: 3 sets of 5, 3, and 2 reps

• Snatches: 5 sets of 2 reps

• Dumbbell rows: 2 sets of 5 reps

• Sandbag carries

Day Six:

• Squats: 2 sets of 5 reps

• Bench Presses: 2 sets of 5 reps

• Power cleans: 3 sets of 3 reps

• Farmer’s walks

Day Seven: Off

Week Two:

Day One: HARD WORKOUT

• Squats: 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps

• Bench presses: 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps

• Deadlifts: 5 sets of 3 reps (straight sets)

• Sandbag carries for 2 hard, nearly all-out sets

Day Two: off

Day Three: off
Day Four:

• Bottom-position squats: 3 sets of 5, 3, and 2 reps

• Power cleans: 5 sets of 2 reps

• One-arm dumbbell overhead presses: 2 sets of 5 reps (each arm)

• Sled drags

Day Five:

• Overhead squats: 3 sets of 3 reps

• One-arm dumbbell snatches: 5 sets of 2 reps (each arm)

• Chins: 2 sets of 5 reps

• Sandbag carries

Day Six:

• Squats: 2 sets of 5 reps

• Dumbbell bench presses: 2 sets of 5 reps

• Power cleans: 3 sets of 3 reps

• Farmer’s walks

Day Seven: Off

     If you want to go with the 2^nd option, then do the 30 Rep Program as originally written and after, say, a month of training, do a week where you do only 3 workouts—just 2 might be even better for a lot of lifters—but all of them hard.

     One of the good things about throwing in these hard workouts on occasion is that they allow you to gauge your results.  If you are stronger each time that you use them, then you know that your easy strength program is working.

     Keep in mind that I’m using my 30 Rep Program as an example.  The same sort of hybrid program would work no matter what form of easy strength (or easy muscle) workouts you are utilizing.