Grease-the-Groove Workouts and High-Frequency Training for Mass and Power, Losing Bodyfat, or Just Getting BIG!

An “Easy” High-Frequency Training Program for Plenty of Size and Strength + Some Other Tips and Workouts for Transforming Your Physique

     I began training in martial arts more than 40 years ago, when I was around 10 years old.  By the time I was a teenager, it was my life.  (In many ways, it still is.)  I was at the dojo just about every day of the week but I also trained at my home every day.  However, when I was around 16 or 17—I’m not really sure of the exact age; I just remember that I could drive by that point—I only started going to the dojo about once per week.  Sometimes just once every two weeks.  I’m pretty sure that a lot of my fellow karatekas—especially those who had known me for many years—thought I had become lazy or that something was “wrong” with me or that I no longer took my martial training very seriously or even cared about it anymore, for that matter.  But I had a reason for it, though I didn’t really completely understand the “why” at the time, though I have some thoughts on it now.  I went once or twice per week, typically on the nights that I knew we would be doing kumite or sparring.  I bet the other practitioners just thought I wanted to come on that night because I liked to fight.  That was partially true, sure, but it wasn’t the reason for my apparently lackluster attendance.

     I only went to the dojo once per week (or less) because I found that I was continually getting better.  One hard training session of one or two hours per week was all that I needed for constant improvement.  Why?  Well, in case you’re wondering, this essay isn’t going to turn into some defense for hard, really infrequent HIT-style training program.  Not at all.  Because the truth was that, in spite of going to the dojo so infrequently, I was training all of the time.  Just not with lengthy training sessions.  From the time I got up in the morning until I went to bed at night—especially during the summer and once I graduated from high school—I was doing some kind of martial arts.  I stretched periodically throughout the day.  I constantly worked on kicking, blocking, and punching techniques.  I did katas periodically—probably 10 to 30 depending upon the day.  Looking back on it, I was doing a karate version of grease the groove training.  It allowed me to constantly improve without ever burning out.  I didn’t understand the science of it back then.  I just knew that it worked.  I wasn’t “working out” in the way we generally think of what a “workout” is—hard, tiring, soaked in sweat by the end—but instead it was “skill training” and doing multiple “practice” sessions.  In one week, it amounted to a lot of training.  I got better despite the fact that I was just “taking it easy.”  You can do the same thing with your lifting sessions.  In fact, it’s the key behind some of the most effective strength training programs on the planet, such as Sheiko powerlifting routines, the programs named after the legendary Russian strength coach.

     By training a lift frequently with sub-maximal weights, you master the lift and get stronger despite the fact that you aren’t really “trying” that hard.  It’s a sneaky way to build an enormous amount of strength.  I discovered that it can also build quite a lot of muscle.  The really frequent training with the “big” lifts really adds up as far as volume throughout the course of a training week and then an entire training cycle.  When I first utilized Sheiko over 20 years ago, for example, I had one problem with it: I was gaining too much muscle.  That might seem like an odd complaint if you’ve been hammering away at hard and infrequent workout routines and have struggled to gain weight despite eating as many calories as you can and doing everything else “right” in your training and in your life in order to build muscle.  But it’s true.  And to top it off, I was not eating many calories.  I think my body said something like (you know, if it could talk): “Holy crap!  If you’re going to do this much volume every week on squats, deadlifts, and bench presses, then I better gain some weight so that I can handle all of the workload.”  Or something like that.

     If you have been struggling to gain some size and strength and you haven’t tried high-frequency, grease the groove training, it might be just the thing you need for the hardgainer moniker to become a thing of the past.  It’s funny because, when I was young, I was always labelled a “hardgainer” both by myself and other lifters.  I might have weighed 135 pounds soaking wet when I graduated high school.  I ate everything I could, trained with the major compound lifts, but just found it hard to gain weight (of course, all of that martial training might have had something to do with it, as well).  Twenty years later, when I was big and incredibly strong and would tell friends, co-workers, or other lifters the kind of HFT routines that I used, they would often tell me that it probably only worked for me because I was an “easy gainer.”  They assumed that I just had good genetics and that all of that high-volume, high-frequency Russian training must only work for the genetically gifted.  Yeah, funny.

     Think about the typical kind of program that a trainer might recommend for a so-called hardgainer.  It might be something such as 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 5 reps (perhaps 6 to 8 reps if they’re only after hypertrophy) on a few basic exercises—squats, deadlifts, bench presses, rows or chins, and barbell curls.  You train hard, rest a few days, train again, and repeat.  It’s on the right track.  And I think that for some lifters, it might be what they need.  As I’ve written before, I’ve known quite a few “low volume lifters” who, purely and simply, respond better to less work.  But that’s also not most lifters.  There are also high-volume guys who respond best to an insane amount of work.  In order to make gains, they need heavy, highly voluminous workouts repeated frequently.  Again, though, that’s not most lifters.  Most are in between those extremes.

     If you’ve struggled to make gains on either low-volume, low-frequency (but really intense) “hardgainer” programs but you’ve also found that you don’t respond well to the high-volume stuff that the biggest bodybuilder in your gym grows from, might I suggest that a high-frequency, grease the groove routine is just what the mass-building doctor prescribed.  (The muscle-building doc, in this case, being me.)

     Take the “average” hardgainer routine as described above and do this: increase the frequency of the workouts but decrease the “intensity” of the sets.  Here’s a program so simple (but also so high-frequency) that a lot of lifters would discount it outright.  But it might just transform you into a beast, so don’t be one of “those” lifters.

Workout A - Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

Squats: 5 to 7 sets of 3 to 5 reps.  Do a few progressively heavier sets and then do a few “straight” sets with the heaviest weight.  Select a weight on your last sets where you have several reps left in the tank.  It should feel, well, downright “easy” compared to what you’re probably accustomed to.

Thick-bar deadlifts: 5x3.  Finish the session with 5 straight sets of 3 reps.  Again, none of the sets should be hard.

Workout B - Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday

Bench presses: 5-7x3-5.  Same format as the squats.

Weighted chins: 5x3-5.  Same as the deadlifts from the 1st session.

Barbell curls: 5x3-5.  Yep, same as the chins.

     If you wish, throw in some steep incline sit-ups or the ab wheel at the end of Workout A for 1 or 2 sets and a set or two of some kind of loaded carry at the end of Workout B.  Other than that, don’t do anything else.

     As the workouts and weeks progress, slowly add weight to your workouts.  Don’t force it.  You should just naturally feel like doing more work.  You might train with the same weight for a couple weeks in a row until you reach that point—that’s perfectly fine.  One day, you show up at the gym and everything just feels light.  You say to yourself: Well, I guess Sloan was correct.  Time to add some weight.  It’s as simple as that.  Don’t overcomplicate it.

     If you don’t like the lifts, then select some other movements, but just make sure that they’re same but different lifts.  You can do front squats or bottom-position squats instead of back squats, power cleans or power snatches instead of the deadlifts, incline presses, dumbbell presses, or weighted dips instead of the benches, a rowing movement instead of the chins, and dumbbell or EZ curl bar curls instead of the barbell curls.  But that’s about it.  No machines or cable movements.  Not in this program.

     What about other goals?  What if you have no desire to be as big and strong as humanly possible?  What if you want (or need) to lose some bodyfat, get lean, or you’re just one of those “I train to lookgoodnekkid” types?  Can this same approach work for other goals?  Sure, it can.  Just as it did with my martial training.

     I think a lot of folks struggle to get lean or to build an aesthetic physique because they assume—even if they “buy in” to the easy strength, HFT approach for mass and power—that, in order to get ripped, one must “kill it” in the gym with arduous, hard, high-rep workouts or tough-as-heck HIIT sessions.  But I think you can take the grease-the-groove model and make it work for getting lean.  Don’t get me wrong, you do have to undergo some reasonably tough workouts, in the sense that you need to do enough at a session that your body has a reason to drop some fat.  But you don’t have to train ‘til you drop or have to be lying in a pool of sweat (maybe blood?) at the end of your workouts.

     To get lean, the other good thing with HFT is that you don’t need much equipment.  A barbell and a few plates or a couple pairs of kettlebells or dumbbells, and you’re good to go.  Complexes work well here, too.  Grab a pair of kettlebells and do the following:

Double kettlebell clean + double kettlebell front squat + double kettlebell overhead press: Do 1 rep of each lift without setting the kettlebells down.  Rest a few seconds, do 2 reps of each lift.  Rest a few seconds, do 3 reps of each movement.  I think you can see where this is going.  Continue until you reach a hard set and stop.  Don’t do anything else.  You’ll be done in 10 to 15 minutes or so—20 minutes once you’re in stellar shape.  Repeat one or two more times in the day.  You could do this little monster first thing in the morning upon waking up and before hitting the shower.  Do it again when you get off work—maybe even at your lunch hour if you have time—and then again after dinner.  I think twice per day would be enough for most trainees, but if you only do it once a day, that’s fine, too—do what you can; remember, this is getting lean without really trying.  Train as many days in a row as you are capable and don’t take off until you feel as if you could use it.  Don’t try to force more sets/reps.  Slowly over the coming weeks, without really trying, you’ll be getting 20 complexes.  That would be 210 reps on each lift for a total of 630 reps.  By the time that happens, it’ll be time for something new.  Oh, and don’t use ‘bells that are too heavy.  Start the training with a pair of kettlebells where you could get 20 reps of the complex at the very first workout if you were just doing one incredibly hard, all-out complex.  Remember: coax extra sets/reps; don’t force it, and you’ll do fine.  Lean with little effort—maybe that should be the title of an essay, now that I think of it.

     You can do something even more minimal than that.  Here’s a really minimal workout that would work:

Single kettlebell swings: 20 reps

Followed immediately by:

Push-ups: 10 reps

Rest a minute, then:

Single kettlebell swings: 20 reps

Push-ups: 9 reps

Rest a minute, then:

Single kettlebell swings: 20 reps

Push-ups: 8 reps

     Continue until you get down to push-ups for 1 rep for a total of 10 sets.  Resting one minute between supersets, you’ll be done in 10 minutes.  Once you can do that with ease, increase the workout to 15 minutes by starting with 15 reps of push-ups and 15 total sets.  Again, do this mini workout 2 to 3 times per day.  No more than 3.  If you do it only once per day, just as with the workout above, that’s perfectly fine, too; some folks might thrive best on just one, no doubt, but as I also like to say more isn't always better, but it usually is.  Select a kettlebell where 20 reps is easy.  A weight where you could get 40 reps for one all-out set, using the same logic that I suggest when it comes to 10 sets of any barbell movement—utilize a weight that you could do for double the reps for one hard-as-heck set.

     Okay, you might be reading this and saying to yourself, well, the first program here is good for size and strength and the kettlebell workouts look pretty good for getting shredded, but what if I just want to gain muscle and don’t care whether I get stronger or leaner?  I just want hypertrophy and nothing else.  Is there a way to use this grease-the-groove approach for simply building muscle?  Yep, I think there is.  Before I continue, however, let me add one caveat: Some lifters, even for only building muscle, do best with the 1st workout here.  I know that in today’s modern world, where everyone is an “expert” on building muscle because they watched a few YouTube videos, low reps are “only” for strength, but that’s simply not true.  If you have predominately fast-twitch muscle fibers, you might gain the most muscle on the barbell workout above.  Okay, with that out of the way, let’s continue…

     The most popular muscle-building—in other words, bodybuilding—workouts on the planet involve doing multiple exercises for each bodypart for multiple sets of a wide range of repetitions.  I write those kinds of workouts myself.  If bodybuilders are going to use them, then they might as well use some good ones, so I’ll continue to write them.  And for some lifters, they will need those workouts to continue to progress.  But to be blunt, many of the average trainees in the average gyms who do those workouts would be better off doing something different.  I’m not talking about your already well-developed lifters or your competitive bodybuilders or lifters who have built up a good work capacity to handle the voluminous training.  I’m talking about lifters who want to look like bodybuilders but, instead, at this moment look like nothing more than “joggers” or whatnot.  If that’s you, then you’d be better off doing something similar to the 1st workout in this essay but simply use lighter weights and bump up the repetitions a little bit.  Train with only a few lifts, get a pump, repeat often—that’s the formula.

     One of the simplest workouts you can do to build upper body muscle involves having nothing more than a chinning bar.  For 6 days a week, do 30 to 50 chins and 100 push-ups.  The first workout will seem easy.  The 2nd day, you’ll be fatigued, but you’ll be capable of completing it.  Days 3 and 4, you’re going to be sore, but you can still do the workout.  Days 5 and 6 are not as easy as the first couple days, but easier than the 3rd and 4th one.  But after a couple of weeks, you adapt and it’s pretty dang easy to make it through the sessions.  Don’t add any work.  Just get your reps in.  Do it for at least 4 weeks, but no more than 6.  It’ll run its course for most lifters by the 6-week mark.

      But lifters need more than that over the long haul.  So, try something like this:

Workout A

Barbell squats.  For your first workout, just do barbell squats.  Nothing else.  Select a weight that you would use for 20 all-out reps or so if you only were doing 1 set.  On your first set, do 10 to 12 reps.  Rest about 30 seconds and do another set.  Rest 30 seconds, do another set.  As soon as you get a “pump” then stop.  That’s the key.  Don’t do more than 6 to 8 sets total.

Workout B

Bench presses.  Do the same thing on bench presses that you did with the squats, but possibly rest even less.  Maybe just 20 seconds between sets.  Stop each set as soon as it gets hard and stop the exercise as soon as your chest has a pump.

Wide-grip chins.  Yes, you’re going to do the same thing on chins as with the bench presses.

Barbell curls.  Same ol’, same ‘ol.

     As with the 1st workout for size and strength, none of these workouts should even approach “hard.”  Each day, after Workout B, you should feel great because of the pump.  To set things straight, don’t do each workout until you are pumped to the absolute max.  Stop as soon as a pump is achieved, but not one where you’re “swole” to the limit—that would be too much for the frequency here.  Some days, that might take 8 sets.  On others, it might only be 2 or 3 sets.

     Train as many days in a row as you can, or want, before taking a day off.  If you train 6 days straight, then take off on the 7th.  You might train on a simple 4-on, 1-off schedule.  You might train 5 days per week on a 3-on, 1-off, 2-on, 1-off schedule.  Just train frequently, get a pump, stop the workout once you’re pumped, and you’ll succeed.  If you feel at all fatigued after a few weeks of training, reduce your workouts down to 4 for one week, and then resume the more frequent training the week after that.

     Stick with this program for 6 to 8 weeks.  Eight weeks will probably be about the limit of how long it will continue to work for most lifters.  Some can get away with doing it for 12 weeks.  If you get good results with it and want to continue, then—you probably know the drill by this point if you’ve read even a smattering of my essays and the fact that I've already mentioned it—switch over to some same but different exercises.  Use any of the lifts I suggested for our first workout above.

     This routine is best for lifters who like to train somewhat intuitively.  If you want a more “precise” or systematic workout instead of the advice to just train until you get a pump, you could also do the program as written but shoot for a certain number of reps on each lift—50 would be a good number.  Get 50 reps on each lift with however many sets it takes.  You can do 5 sets of 10 reps, 2 sets of 15 reps followed by 2 sets of 10, or whatever so long as you just get 50 total reps.

End Thoughts

     I could have added some additional workouts, but I think that’s plenty for now.  You can always come up with your own grease-the-groove program as long as you follow the basic principle of train easy, repeat often.  But whether you are after mass and power, a lean body, or nothing more than hypertrophy, you have been given some workouts and ideas to help you achieve those goals.

     One last thing.  Remember that you can’t out-train a bad diet.  Read those words again if you need to.  If you’re trying to get big and strong (or just big), you need plenty of “good” calories each and every day, day in and day out.  Eat at least 20 times your bodyweight in calories every day from good food, not junk or fast food.  Make sure you get at least 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight every day—again, don’t miss a single day.  You must be as consistent with your eating as you are with your training.  The same thing goes for getting lean.  I don’t care how many kettlebell complexes you do in a day or over the course of a week, and then an entire training cycle, if you don’t eat clean then you will NOT get lean—yeah, I can see that it rhymes but that was not my intention.  You want to try your best to preserve, or even gain, muscle mass while leaning out, which means that you also need to ensure that you’re eating at least 1 gram of protein per pound of “lean mass” on a daily basis.  You must also eliminate (or greatly reduce) either carbohydrates or fat.  If you need to lose a lot of weight, the chances are that you need to eliminate carbohydrates.  Most folks get fat in our world from consuming a preponderance of “bad” carbohydrates—simple sugars, ultra-processed food, high-fructose corn syrup, and the like.  If that’s you, then you’re probably carbohydrate insensitive, meaning that your body doesn’t metabolize carbs properly and you get an inordinate insulin spike from eating them.  Get on a high-fat, high-protein, damn-near-zero carb diet, in that case.  On the flip side of that, lifters with healthy metabolisms—despite the demonization of carbs among a good bit of “influencers” and the rest of their like-minded ilk—can get incredibly lean by greatly reducing fat.  When I started lifting in the mid ‘80s, almost every bodybuilder to a tee got shredded on a diet of 60% carbs, 30% protein, and 10% fat.  It worked then.  It can still work now.  No matter what percentage of macronutrients you consume—I always thrived on a 50/30/20 ratio of either carbs/protein/fat or fat/protein/carbs—the calories, again, need to be clean.  By that, I mean you need to eat “real” food.  Don’t get all of your calories from supplements and protein shakes.  Get them from food you actually have to cook.  The last thing for getting lean—don’t eat too many calories.  Most lifters will get shredded by consuming around 10 times their bodyweight in calories on a daily basis.  As your fat (and weight) drops, your calories must, too.  So, if you weigh 200 pounds starting out, don’t consume more than 2,000 calories daily.  When you get down to 195, it should be 1,950 calories, and so forth.  If it’s real food, then it will be enough.  It’s hard to eat that few calories when you’re eating junk and fast food.  Not that hard when it’s chicken breasts, oatmeal, rice, and baked sweet potatoes.

     I suppose I’ve rambled enough.  Besides, it’s about time for one of my daily grease-the-groove workouts.  The barbell awaits.

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