Minimum Lifts, Maximum Perfection

On Striving to do Fewer Things Better

     In my recent Go Heavy or Go Home essay, I discussed Pavel Tsatsouline’s “7 rules of Russian training.”  The last of the rules is “You must strive to do fewer things better.”  In this essay, we will look at the importance of this rule and some various training strategies to accomplish it.

     I often write about the different reasons that lifters don’t get the results out of their training that they’re looking for.  Not using the right movements, following so-called bro-split routines that are also coupled with too many machine and cable exercises, along with jumping from program-to-program are just a few of the workout ideas that I’m apt to rail against.  For these reasons and some others, there are a lot of average gym-goers—even ones who have been “training” for years on end—who don’t look like they lift.

     The best programs often involve doing just a few movements but doing them well.  This is striving to do fewer things better.  What follows are some various programming ideas for this strategy.

3 Movements, 3 Days a Week

     I often recommend full-body workouts combined with 3 days per week of training.  Most of the programs that I write about or suggest use a handful of exercises at each session, give or take one or two.  However, here I’m going to suggest limiting your movements to just three at each workout and, in fact, no more than 3 throughout running a program.  Training in this manner allows you to focus more on the lifts that you really need in order to get bigger and stronger.  You will learn the lifts that you do select better with these minimalistic routines and, in the process, learn more about your body than you even realize.  This kind of training is the key to mastery.

     My first recommendation is to do a regimen that utilizes some kind of squat, overhead press, and a quick lift.  For the sake of discussion, we’ll use the back squat, the military press, and the power clean.  At each training session, you will do each of these lifts and only these lifts.  I know I’m repeating myself here, but it needs to be reiterated.  Often, I have written a program such as this, only to get an email asking me if it’s still the 3-lifts-per-day routine if the reader adds in bench presses and barbell curls.  I kid you not.  No, that is not the same.  That would be 5 lifts.

     Doing 3 lifts also allows you to recover enough from each session, and ensures that your lifts will continue to go up (and up) during the course of 6 to 8 weeks of running it.  Here’s what this program looks like:

Monday - Heavy

Squats: 5x5

Military presses: 5x5

Power cleans: 5x5

• For each movement, work up over 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps until you reach one max set of 5 reps.  If you get 5 reps on the last set, add weight at the next Monday session.  If you only get 3 or 4 reps, stick with that weight until you do get all 5 reps.

Wednesday - Light

Squats: 5x5

Military presses: 5x5

Power cleans: 5x5

• On the light day, do 3 progressively heavier sets until you work up to the weight used on your 3rd set on Monday.  Stick with that weight for your 4th and 5th sets, as well.

Friday - Medium

Squats: 5x5

Military presses: 5x5

Power cleans: 5x5

• For the Friday session, work up over 4 progressively heavier sets until you reach the weight used on your 4th set on Monday.  Use that same weight on the 5th set, too.

     This program is simple, sure, but it’s way better than most lifters would give it credit for.  It will also produce better results than most multi-split, multi-day routines ever could.

     Stick with it, as mentioned, for 6 to 8 weeks.  8 weeks is probably best.  As the weeks progress, don’t just increase the weights on your 5th set of each movement.  Slowly, you should start increasing the weights used on the other progressively heavier sets, as well.  For example, someone who can squat 225 for 5 max reps when starting out, might have Monday sessions that look like this for the first 5 weeks:

Week One: 95x5, 135x5, 175x5, 200x5, 225x5

Week Two: 95x5, 135x5, 175x5, 210x5, 230x4

Week Three: 135x5, 155x5, 185x5, 210x5, 230x5

Week Four: 135x5, 155x5, 195x5, 215x5, 235x4

Week Five: 135x5, 175x5, 195x5, 215x5, 235x5

     This also means that the light and medium days, as the routine progresses, will also see increases in workload.  By the end of the program, you’ll be utilizing heavier weights on your Friday sessions, for example, than on Mondays when you started.

     If you’re a powerlifter, then you need to learn the powerlifts.  I know that sounds so simple that it’s obvious, but from what I’ve seen over the years a lot of lifters miss the obvious.  If you’re not bench pressing more than your bodyweight and squatting and deadlifting double your bodyweight then you have little use for anything other than doing the powerlifts.  Learn the powerlifts.  Please.  Before you start doing board presses and other partial movements of any of the 3 lifts and all sorts of assorted assistance movements.  Yes, once you get strong, you will need to do some additional work for your triceps, lats, and front delts to improve your bench press, and some auxiliary movements for your lower back, abs, and hamstrings for your squat and bench press.  But the first thing you need to do is get good at the powerlifts.

     Unlike the 3 movements in our first program, you shouldn’t do the powerlifts 3 days per week.  I have an easy-to-apply method: squat 3 days per week, bench press 2 days a week, and deadlifts just once.  Simple as that. 

     A powerlifter needs more maximal strength than someone just attempting to build muscle.  So, instead of doing sets of 5 reps all the time, you also need some triples and singles.  A good workout program would look like this:

Week One:

Monday - Heavy

Squats: 5x5

Bench presses: 5x5

Deadlifts: 5x5

• Do this day just like the 3 lifts from the first program.

Wednesday - Light

Squats: 5x5

• That’s right, just squat on this day.  Do this one the same as the light day from the first program, working up to the weight used on your 3rd set of squats from Monday.

Friday - Medium

Squats: 5x5

Bench presses: 5x5

• On both lifts, work up to the weight you used on your 4th set from Monday for your last 2 sets of 5 reps.

Week Two:

Monday - Heavy

Squats: 3x5, 3x3

Bench presses: 3x5, 3x3

Deadlifts: 3x5, 3x3

• Do 3 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps, followed by 3 progressively heavier triples, working up to one all-out triple on each lift.

Wednesday - Light

Squats: 5x5

• Do these the same as week one, working up to your heaviest set of 5 reps from Monday, and then stick with it for your final 2 sets.

Friday - Medium

Squats: 3x5, 2x3

Bench presses: 3x5, 2x3

• For this session, do the same workout as you did on Monday, but eliminate your final set of 3 reps, so here you will do 3 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps and 2 progressively heavier triples.

Week Three:

Monday - Heavy

Squats: 3x5, 2x3, 3x1

Bench presses: 3x5, 2x3, 3x1

Deadlifts: 3x5, 2x3, 3x1

• In week 3, do 3 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps followed by 2 progressively heavier triples and then 3 progressively heavier singles, working up to one heavy, near max single.  Your last single should be around 95% of your absolute 100% maximum single.

Wednesday - Light

Squats: 5x5

• Do this the same as in week 2, by working up to a weight used on your 3rd set of 5 reps from Monday and sticking with it for your final 2 sets.

Friday - Medium

Squats: 3x5, 2x3, 2x1

Bench presses: 3x5, 2x3, 2x1

• This will be the same as Monday’s session, but simply eliminate the final near-max single from Monday.

     Use this program for 9 to 12 weeks doing three to four 3-week blocks.  At that point, you might then add in an assistance exercise or two, especially on any of your lifts that are not increasing in the same manner as your others.  For instance, if your squat and deadlift increase easily but you are having trouble increasing your bench press, you might need some extra triceps work or you might want to add in a couple of sets of board presses at the end of your heavy and medium days.  Other than that, you can continue to use this program as long as it’s working.  When it comes to powerlifting, sometimes if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

     If you have already been using some of the lifts above for an extended period of time in either of the first 2 workouts I’ve discussed so far, then it might serve you well to do 3 completely different movements, ones that you aren’t accustomed to doing.  For example, if you did 8 weeks of squats, military presses, and power cleans, you would do well to do another 6 to 8 weeks of front squats, one-arm dumbbell overhead presses, and power snatches.  But at that point, if you did a training cycle of snatch-grip deadlifts, weighted dips, and weighted chins, you would get a lot of benefit out of that routine because of how completely different snatch-grip deads, dips, and chins are from the squats, overhead movements, and quick lifts.

     It’s also good if you can change up the set/rep methodology, so here’s a great routine that would work well at this point:

Monday - Heavy

Snatch-grip deadlifts: 10x3

Weighted dips: 10x3

Weighted chins: 10x3

• Here, you will be doing straight sets.  Do a few progressively heavier warm-ups and then do 10 sets with a weight you would use if you were doing just 1 all-out set of 6 reps.  If you manage to get 3 reps on all 10 sets on any of the movements, add weight at the next Monday session.

Wednesday - Light

Snatch-grip deadlifts: 4x3

Weighted dips: 4x3

Weighted chins: 4x3

• Unlike in our first programs, here you will use the same weight as you did on Monday, but your day will be “light” because of the workload, which will be half of the heavy session.

Friday - Medium

Snatch-grip deadlifts: 7x3

Weighted dips: 7x3

Weighted chins: 7x3

• You guessed it, yet again you will use the same weight as your other days, but you will only do 7 sets on each lift.

     If you wanted, you could spend the next year (or even two) of training and do all of the above programs in 8-12 week blocks.  Of course, you don’t have to, but I assure you that it would be a better training plan than most of the crap your fellow gym-goers are doing.  Keep in mind, too, that my suggestions above just skim the surface as far as different set/rep sequences.  For some other ideas, check out these articles: 5x5 Training Variations and Skill Training as Size Building—search through the blog for a myriad of other training strategies.  However, there are some other paths and other ways to skin the minimalistic muscle-building cat, so let’s look at those now.

One Lift a Day Programs

     You can’t get much more minimal than doing only one lift at each workout, but you also can’t find a better way to work on perfecting a lift.  So, let’s look at some various one-lift-per-day regimens.

     I am a huge proponent of high-frequency training (HFT), which is quite obvious if you’ve read even a bare modicum of my many articles and essays, but occasionally I think it’s a good idea to do the opposite, and one of the best programs out there that involves high-volume and high-intensity but low frequency is to train 5 days per week but do only 1 lift at each session.  For this method, select a squatting movement, a deadlift variation, some kind of overhead press, a bench pressing movement, and, finally, either a quick lift or, perhaps, a curl of some sort.  A good routine might involve this:

Monday: front squats

Tuesday: bench presses

Wednesday: barbell curls

Friday: deadlifts

Saturday: one-arm dumbbell overhead presses

     That’s the what but now let’s look at the how.

     One thing that I like about this method is that you can really do whatever the heck you want.  Your options are almost limitless.  Of course, that’s also one of the problems—too many options.  So, make sure that you have a plan before you get to the gym as to what you are going to do.

     When starting out, I think the best option is to simply do ramps.  You can start by doing progressively heavier sets of 5s.  Slowly work up to a heavy set of 5 reps over many progressively heavier sets.  Once you get to a near max of 5, start doing ramps of triples.  Do the same thing with triples.  Do progressively heavier triples until you reach a near max.  Then do singles in the same manner.  Once you’ve reached your single near max, you can either stop the session, or you can do some back-off sets.  Drop back down to the weight you used on your next-to-last set of 5 reps and do 5 sets of 5 with that weight.  Or you can drop back to your next-to-last triple and do 5x3 with that poundage.

     Another option is to do ramps but instead of working up to a near max single, work up to around 90% of your absolute single max and do multiple singles with that weight—around 5 singles is ideal.

     You can also do double ramps.  In this case, do 2 sets at each weight before progressing.  This is intense, so be careful.  You might want to start with single ramps for a few weeks, then start doing double ramps on your sets of 5, but go to single ramps on the triples and singles.  After a few more weeks, you can do double ramps on all sets.

     Yet another option is to do single ramps, but when you get to the near max single, drop back down and repeat the entire workout again.  This will be even more intense than the double ramps, so don’t do this until you’ve built up the work capacity to handle it.  As with the double ramps, you might start by going back down in weight and only repeating the 5-rep sets.  After a couple weeks, you can then repeat the 5-rep sets and the triples.  And, after another couple weeks, you can then attempt to repeat the entire session again.

     Eventually, you can do both the double ramps, or repeat the session, and add in some back-off sets.  If you want an ultra-hard session—again, don’t even think about doing this until your body can handle it—you can do all of your ramps, then do the back-off sets, and then drop back down and repeat the whole thing again, back-off sets included.

     After a couple training cycles of the above method, you will want to start including some higher frequency training again.  One of the more popular training methods among bodybuilders is to do a 3-way training split such as push/pull/legs.  This is a good method for one-lift-a-day training, as well.  Just pick 3 movements for the entire program.  Once again, an overhead lift, a squat, and a quick lift would be great.  Train on either a 3-on, 1-off split or a 6-on, 1-off schedule.  So, a program might look like this:

Day One: front squats

Day Two: power cleans

Day Three: military presses

     Since you will be training twice per week—or close if you use a 3-on, 1-off rotation—you obviously don’t want to follow something quite as hard as what I suggested above, but you can still do ramps.  In fact, ramps would work great, just cut back on the amount of sets compared to what you utilized.  At first, you might want to use a set number, such as just 5 progressively heavier sets of 5s, but as you adapt you can increase the number of ramps that you do.  Even on this routine, you could reach the point that you can do double ramps or back-off sets and, yes, eventually both.  Take your time, however, in doing so.  As with all programs, don’t rush it.  Work capacity takes time.  Be patient.

     When it comes to split training, the one I suggest the most is a simple 2-way split, such as an upper/lower schedule.  You can utilize this same split for 1-lift-a-day training and just select 2 lifts.  A squat and a pressing movement are probably best.  If you’ve been doing a lot of squat training, then you might want to select a quick lift and a pressing movement, so you might choose front squats and military presses, back squats and one-arm dumbbell overhead presses, power snatches and weighted dips, or power cleans and bench presses.

     Train 6 days in a row and only take off one.  You can also simply train however many days in a row you want and then take off whenever you feel like it.  One of my favorite schedules on this kind of routine is to train 3-on, 1-off, 2-on, 1-off for 5 days per week, so you might train Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday with Thursday and Sunday off.

     When training so frequently, your poundages will naturally wax and wane.  You can either just do ramps and work up to whatever you feel like each day—the Bulgarian method—or you can also follow a more regimented heavy-light-medium schedule.  On the light days, work up to 80% of what was used on the heavy day and on the medium days, work up to 90%.  As with the 3-day routines above, you will reach the point where your medium days, and eventually your light days, are heavier than your “heavy” days when starting on the program.

Train for the Pump

     Occasionally, even for serious strength athletes, it’s good to train like a bodybuilder.  I have long believed that the best way to do “pump” training is with one-exercise-per-bodypart routines.  Instead of doing 3 or 4 exercises for each muscle group for 3 to 4 sets each, bodybuilders looking to gain size would be better off simply doing 1 exercise for 8 to 12 sets and nothing else.  This is exactly what many of the old-school bodybuilders did.  In the off-season, when building size, they would use 1 or, at the most, 2 exercises for each muscle group, and then they would only do multi-exercise routines pre-contest.

     This kind of training wasn’t popular at all when I first started training in the ‘80s.  The only writer that I knew who wrote about it was probably Vince Gironda in the pages of MuscleMag International.  Even though I wrote about it in both Ironman and MuscleMag in the ‘90s, it didn’t become popular again until Charles Poliquin wrote about it in his “German Volume Training” article for Muscle Media 2000.  I think that article came out in ‘95.  Poliquin came up with a catchy title and it, well, caught on.  I didn’t care much for GVT, not because it’s not a good way to train, but because, for one, I doubt the German weightlifting team ever really trained like that, and, two, as just mentioned, I wrote about the exact same training a year or two before in Ironman.  But at least bodybuilders re-discovered one of the best workouts out there for hypertrophy.

     Select movements that work on areas that you need improved.  Most bodybuilders probably need more upper chest size, for example, so they would be better off using incline movements instead of flat exercises.  The incline bench press, then, is probably a good selection.  For your back, do you need wider lats or more mid-back thickness?  So, you might choose wide-grip chins or close-grip bent-over rows.  The point is to select movements that will improve your weak areas.

     Although 10x10 is the most popular set/rep scheme, I think for a lot of lifters it can lead to both overtraining and undertraining.  If you have the work capacity to handle 10x10, then do it.  But for a lot of bodybuilders, it induces too much soreness (the overtraining part) and then leads to needing too many days off before training again (the undertraining half).  So, I like either 6x6-8 or 8x8 to begin with.  You can train twice weekly on such a scheme.  Once you’ve adapted to the workload, you can go to 10x10 or something more intense.

     A good program might be this:

Monday and Thursday:

Front squats: 8x8

Standing calf raises: 6x20 (your calves could probably use higher reps)

Tuesday and Friday:

Incline barbell bench presses: 8x8

Wide-grip chins: 8x8

Wednesday and Saturday:

Behind-the-neck presses: 8x8

Barbell curls: 8x8

Rope pushdowns: 8x8

     Start by using a weight on all of the movements where you could get double the reps if you were just doing 1 all-out set.  In other words (aside from calves), you would use a weight where you can get 16 reps.  When in doubt, start with something lighter than you think.  You can always increase the weight at the next session, so a 20-rep weight might be even better to start.

     Simple but highly effective.  8 weeks of this kind of program after a few months of all of the other routines in this article is great for your body.  This is the approach that Tommy Kono used to become both Mr. Universe and possibly the greatest weightlifter of the 20th century.  He would do a full-body routine most of the year similar to one of the 3-days-per-week programs above then switch over to pump training for a short training cycle after his weightlifting competitions.

Final Thoughts

     After almost 4,000 words, I’ve really just skimmed the surface of striving to do fewer things better.  If you’ve never done any of these kinds of workouts before, then follow one of the routines here exactly as I’ve suggested.  As you learn more about your body and start mastering the lifts you’ve chosen, you can start changing things up.  There are many set/rep combinations that can be used outside of what I’ve discussed here, from various ladder training methods to Hepburn-style workouts of multiple singles or doubles to other approaches that use high sets coupled with low reps.

     Strive for maximum perfection on only a minimum number of lifts.  It’s one of the keys to becoming a great lifter.  Besides, your body will thank you by getting leaner and growing larger and stronger.  All you have to do is get to the gym and do it.

     I hope you enjoyed this article.  If you did, then please consider purchasing one of my books.  You can find information on all of them at the My Books page of the blog.

     As always, if you have any questions or comments about this essay, or anything else, then leave them in the “comments” section below or shoot me an email for more private correspondence.  I typically get around to answering my emails within a couple of days.