Go Heavy or Go Home

Some “Secrets” to Heavy Training and Continued Progress

     There are a lot of pithy sayings out there for lifters, strength athletes, and just casual gym-goers.  Almost everyone, even folks who have never picked up a barbell a single day in their lives, has heard (or read) the phrase “no pain, no gain.”  When I started training in the ‘80s, and I’m pretty sure it became even more popular in the ‘90s, a common saying was to “go heavy or go home.”  There’s some truth in these, and other sayings, but also some misinformation.  Pain isn’t always good, for example.  Heck, that phrase—no pain, no gain—has probably caused just as much harm as help.   Maybe not to the same degree, but you could argue that “go heavy or go home” has also caused the derailment of more than a few workouts and routines.

     Context is important.  Pain can be good, but it can also be decidedly bad.  You should never train through an injury, for instance, and if a lift causes pain, it’s best to stop doing it.  On the other side of the coin, you shouldn’t be afraid to push your body at times and do a really hard workout—when it’s called for.

     “Heavy” is the same way.  If you’re after size or strength, or a combination of the two, you most certainly need to train with some heavy weights.  No ifs, ands, or buts about it.  But heavy often goes along with “hard” and the casual trainee, too many times, thinks that a workout is only “good” if they trained as heavy as they can on whatever lift and whatever rep range they’re shooting for, and pushed their bodies to the absolute limit.

     You need to know when to “go for it” and when to back off.  Most of my workout programs involve heavy training—I’m particularly fond of the “sub-maximal effort” method when seeking both size and strength that involves doing multiple sets of low reps.  Too many lifters, however, just go to the gym and use only the “maximal effort” method, where they spend each workout training up to an all-out max set of whatever reps they’re doing.  This leads to burnout, usually rather quickly.  Oh, it works for a couple workouts (maybe 3 in a row, max) but then their weights start treading down.  And down.  Oh, and down.  Heavy lifting coupled with “smart” training is what a lifter needs.

     “You must lift heavy” is the first of Pavel Tsatsouline’s seven “Russian rules” for lifters*.  If you only knew it without the accompanying 6 maxims, you wouldn’t understand the context.  The other 6 are:

• You must limit your reps to 5.

• You must avoid muscular failure.

• You must cycle your loads.

• You must stay tight.  Tension is power.

• You must treat your strength as a skill and “practice” with the iron rather than a “workout.”

• You must strive to do fewer things better.

     In many ways, they are nothing more than an extrapolation of Russian researcher Zatsiorsky’s advice to “train as heavy as possible as often as possible while remaining as fresh as possible.”  Follow those 7 tips, keep Zatsiorsky’s phrase in mind, and train with nothing more than free weights on the “big” movements, and you wouldn’t need anything else to guide you on your mass-building journey.  Most lifters want something more concrete, however.  If that’s the “how” then they want to know the “what.”

     You can tackle the “what” with several options.  One of the simplest, but also result-producing ways, is with the “3 to 5 method.”  Train 3 to 5 days per week.  Use 3 to 5 lifts at each session.  Do 3 to 5 sets on each lift.  Do 3 to 5 reps on each set.  Rest 3 to 5 minutes between sets.  (Pavel’s advice on rest times, for example, is that he wants you to rest long enough that your muscles “forget” the last set.)

     A good week of workouts using this method might look like this:

Monday

• Front squats: 3x5

• Military presses: 5x3

• Weighted chins: 5x3

• Power snatches: 5x3

• Barbell curls: 3x5

Tuesday

• Back squats: 3x5

• Bench presses: 3x5

• Power cleans: 5x3

Wednesday

• Deadlifts: 5x3

• One-arm dumbbell overhead presses: 5x3 (each arm)

• One-arm dumbbell rows: 3x5 (each arm)

• Barbell curls: 3x5

Friday

• Front squats: 3x5

• Weighed dips: 3x5

• Power snatches: 5x3

• Weighted chins: 5x3

Saturday

• Back squats: 3x5

• Bench presses: 5x3

• One-arm dumbbell power snatches: 5x3 (each arm)

• Snatch-grip deadlifts: 5x3

• Barbell curls: 3x5

     But the 3 to 5 method is just one approach.  There are many others.  A powerlifter, for example, would do well by training the bench press and the squat even more frequently and with more sets, but eliminate some of the other movements.  The squat will build the deadlift, so you can just deadlift once per week—at the absolute most, 2 days.  A good week of workouts for the powerlifter might look like this:

Monday

• Squats: progressively heavier sets of 5s, followed by triples.  Take your sweet time doing progressively heavier sets of 5 reps.  As soon as they start to get hard, switch over to triples and continue with progressively heavier triples until they get hard.  Then stop.  This kind of training is the key to really frequent training.  It’s the “practice” approach Pavel suggests over the “working out” one.

• Bench presses: 5s then triples, following the same method.  Do this on every single lift and workout that follows.

• Deadlifts: 5s then triples

Tuesday

• Squats: 5s followed by triples

• Bench presses: 5s followed by triples

Wednesday

• Squats: 5s followed by triples

• Bench presses: 5s followed by triples

Friday

• Squats: 5s followed by triples

• Bench presses: 5s followed by triples

Saturday

• Squats: 5s followed by triples

• Bench presses: 5s followed by triples

     Take off on Thursdays and Sundays and do little other than relax and take it easy.  Go for some nice, leisurely walks if you wish, but other than that, don’t do anything else.  If you need it, throw in an assistance exercise or two on occasion, such as some triceps, lats, or front delt work to help your bench press and some lower back and abdominal work for your squats and deadlifts. You also might want to add a loaded carry, such as farmer walks, at the end of a couple of workouts.  Aside from that, really, don’t do anything more.

     The key to such frequent training above, and this can’t be stressed enough which is why I repeat it here, is to avoid training to failure like the plague.  You want to feel good at the end of each session.

     Your weights should naturally cycle using this method.  By the Wednesday workout, for example, you’ll be sore (or, at least, you will when you first start it), so just don’t go as heavy on that day.  Stop every set whenever they feel remotely hard, and the repetition of the frequent workouts will naturally “add up.”  The weights from workout-to-workout will “wax and wane” but before long even your “light” sessions are heavier than your “heavy” ones when you began the program.

      If you’re in search of primarily hypertrophy, then you should do some different exercises.  You can’t go wrong with bench presses, overhead presses, squats, one (or a couple) of the “quick lifts” such as power cleans and snatches, some kind of upper body pulling movement (chins), and maybe some barbell curls.  Using the same approach as the powerlifter above, a week of training might look like this instead:

Monday

• Squats: progressively heavier sets of 5s.  Stop as soon as a set approaches “hard.”  Use this same method on all of the lifts and all of the workouts, except for the quick lifts, where you can just do progressively heavier doubles.

• Bench presses: progressively heavier 5s

• Military presses: progressively heavier 5s

• Power cleans: progressively heavier doubles

• Barbell curls: progressively heavier 5s

Tuesday

• Squats: progressively heavier 5s

• One-arm dumbbell overhead presses: progressively heavier 5s

• Power snatches: progressively heavier doubles

• Weighted chins: progressively heavier 5s

Wednesday

• Squats: progressively heavier 5s

• Bench presses: progressively heavier 5s

• Military presses: progressively heavier 5s

• Power cleans: progressively heavier doubles

• Barbell curls: progressively heavier 5s

Thursday

• Squats: progressively heavier 5s

• One-arm dumbbell overhead presses: progressively heavier 5s

• Power snatches: progressively heavier doubles

• Weighted chins: progressively heavier 5s

Saturday

• Squats: progressively heavier 5s

• Bench presses: progressively heavier 5s

• Military presses: progressively heavier 5s

• Power cleans: progressively heavier doubles

• Barbell curls: progressively heavier 5s

     Don’t try to do the same number of sets at each workout and on each lift.  For bigger lifts, or lifts where you’re stronger, you should do more.  On other movements, such as curls, you will probably do significantly fewer.  Some days, you might do as many as 8 sets on squats, for instance, and on others, you might only do 4 or 5—perhaps just 3 when you’re sore and tired.  And even those numbers will be dependent upon how strong you are at the outset.  Don’t have a pre-determined number for each day, either.  Even on days when you are sore and tired, you might be surprised how strong you are on a lift.  Other days, despite feeling refreshed and “good,” you might find yourself doing less sets than you had supposed.  That’s how this kind of training works.

     Let me add one more thing before closing this essay out.  All of the above workouts contain too much training if you’re an athlete or engage in other athletic activities multiple days per week.  You should still follow the same kind of training, but reduce the number of weekly sessions.  A fighter, for example, who trains at the gym (or dojo or dojang or whatever) 5 nights a week and runs every morning should only do about 2 weight sessions weekly, 3 at the absolute most.  The exception would be if you do a lot less at each weight workout.  Charles Poliquin—may his memory be eternal—used to suggest 5 workouts weekly for the martial artist but only 2 exercises at each session.  As far as what to do at each workout, I recommend going the “easy strength” route of 5 weekly workouts but only 2 exercises for a total of 10 reps on each one.  This means you would only do 20 reps total for the entire session.

     Anyone who wants to achieve the utmost their genetics will allow in terms of size and strength must train heavy.  That’s a no-brainer.  It’s how you go about it and what you do, however, that will allow that heavy training to work for you.  Use my suggestions here and the heavy training will produce results.  It’s not that hard or complicated.  You just have to get to the gym and do it.  The heavy training awaits.

     Originally, I was going to add a more “advanced” routine to the above workouts, but I have decided to do a follow-up article on it instead.  I’m working on that article at the moment, so look for it in a couple days or so.

     If you found this essay interesting and informative, then consider purchasing one of my books.  Each one of them is packed with similar articles and a plethora of different workout suggestions and programs.  You can find more information about all of my books at the My Books page.

     As always, if you have any questions or comments about this essay, or anything else, then leave them in the comments section below.  If you prefer a more private correspondence, you can send me an email, as well.

*From his book Beyond Bodybuilding.