If there is one area in programming where most people get “stuck” it’s as an early intermediate trainee. When I answer questions via email, answer questions on the Starting Strength Programming forum, or design custom programs for clients, I’d say a good 80% of the time these trainees are having issues/difficulty with the first few months of intermediate level programming.
There are a few reasons for this.
First and foremost is that there is no clear cut “program” that is going to work for every individual trainee at the intermediate level. The further and further along one gets in their training career the more individual factors start to come into play that influence program design / program selection. Age, attitude, physical ability, aptitude, genetics, goals, etc start to play a more significant role at the intermediate level and they play a major role at the advanced and elite levels.
Thanks to Mark Rippetoe and the Starting Strength program, we have a pretty good blueprint for what works optimally at the novice level. Through 30+ years of experience and analysis, Mark has put on paper something that coaches and trainees can use that works with just about everybody. With only a few minor modifications here and there for each individual, we (the overall community of strength/fitness professionals) haven’t really come up with anything that works better than the Starting Strength linear progression for those initial gains in strength and muscle mass. Maybe in the future, we come up with something new and improved, but I haven’t seen it yet.
Do other programs work for novices? Sure. But with novice trainees we are looking for our program to deliver one thing above all else – speed. What I mean by speed is – rapid progression. Novices are capable of getting very strong very fast. More precisely – novices are capable of creating new performance increases about every 48-72 hours. Any program that asks for a display of increase performance at a slower rate (for example – once per week) is less than optimal. So it doesn’t mean that other programs don’t work – they just work slower. Why make gains slowly when you can make them quickly?
As a novice, specific goals are not factored into program design as they are at the intermediate and advanced levels. Because any specific goal is first predicated on laying the basic foundation of general strength and increased muscle mass, it isn’t necessary to worry about the specific until we have addressed the general. And the Starting Strength linear progression is, to date, the best general strength training program available.
However, as many of you reading this article will acknowledge, those easy novice gains don’t last for long and the insanely simple programming model of the Starting Strength linear progression has a shelf life. In about 3-9 months you are done with that program. It won’t work anymore.
And now we’re much stronger, but we’re paralyzed by a litany of choices on what to do next. As we laid out in Practical Programming for Strength Training, there are lots of options available to intermediate trainees. And much to the frustration of trainee and coach alike, sometimes we try something that looks good on paper and it simply doesn’t work in practice. What we planned on doing for the next 6 months doesn’t last for 6 weeks before we are stalled out, burned out, and stuck!
Unfortunately there is no intermediate or advanced program that works for everyone in the way that the Starting Strength program pretty much works universally for novices.
So here’s a few helpful guidelines to follow for those of you who are no longer novices, but haven’t quite figured out how to master intermediate level training to keep progress going.
#1: Read the F*cking Book!
I know that many of you reading this have a copy of Practical Programming for Strength Training (PPST3) floating around your house or office somewhere. I also know that a large number of you skipped right over the first half of the book and jumped right into the sections on specific programming examples. As some say, you skipped over the fluff and went right into the meat and potatoes. Big mistake. The “fluff” in PPST3 is designed to give you a big picture overview and a broad understanding of how programming works at the novice, intermediate, and advanced levels. You need to know this stuff if you are programming for yourself.
You also need to read the book correctly! What I specifically mean by this is how some people read the “programs” section of the book. None of the programs in PPST3 or in the new book The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40 (BP40) are meant to be prescriptive for any single individual. They aren’t cook books. They are illustrative examples of how a specific type of program might look in operation.
But each of those specific programs in the back of the book are meant to be modified and tailored to the individual. But you won’t be able to modify the programs at the back of the book correctly, if you don’t have a clear understanding of the information presented in the front of the book!!!
This is the crux of the problem for many of the clients I consult with.
#2: Identify Your Individual Goal and Train for it Appropriately
I basically break clients/trainees down into 4 different categories and then the programs I design for them are based on these goals.
- Pure Strength
- Physique/Aesthetics/Mass
- Performance/Sport
- General Health/Fitness
Pure Strength
These could be competitive lifters in the strength sports, or just a guy in his garage that really wants to put up some big numbers on a core group of barbell lifts. But the ultimate goal is the same – weight on the bar. In general, these lifters are going beyond what they need to do for the purposes of general health and fitness which doesn’t require a 600 lb deadlift. These lifters want to put up big numbers because…..well, they just want to. Mainly because being really strong is really useful and really cool.
But for pure strength training, the focus of the program is only on a small assortment of competitive lifts and maybe a very small pool of assistance or supplemental movements that aid in the performance of those lifts. No other factors are interfering with the acquisition of more weight on the bar.
An early intermediate trainee who is training for pure strength needs a blend of both volume and intensity with the main barbell exercises.
For this purpose, I really like the good ole’ Texas Method. The Texas Method is a lifters program. It’s hard. Brutally hard. But it works really well. And it’s described in detail in PPST3 so I’m not going to rewrite the protocol here.
I like the standard 3-day method (especially for powerlifting) because it is so easy to manipulate and adjust. And I like having the mid week light day for most early intermediate trainees.
But there are some drawbacks to the 3-day Texas Method. As I already stated, it’s really hard. It’s difficult to recover from. If you aren’t a competitive lifter or very serious strength trainee you probably don’t have the mental fortitude to make it work over a long period of time. If you are over 40 years of age (or hell, even over 30), you might also have some difficulty with the program. The other drawback is that the workouts take a long time. Again, if you aren’t super serious about this shit, you may not have 2 hours of training time for a heavy volume day.
So there is the 4-day Texas Method (also described in PPST3) which shortens the workouts and makes recovery easier. Instead of 3 full body workouts each week, you have 2 upper body workouts and 2 lower body workouts. If you are 30+ years of age, I’d probably opt for the 4-day Texas Method in most cases.
After many months of the 4-day Texas Method, you might need to switch to a 4-day Heavy/Light routine. Its very similar in structure to a 4-day Texas Method, but only has you performing each lift heavy/hard 1x/week rather than 2x/week.
If you like the 3-day a week / full body format, but are limited on training time or if you are 40+ then a Heavy-Light-Medium program makes sense. HLM programs are easier to recover from than a Texas Method program.
(Extra Help? A simple and easy to follow HLM template is used in my Garage Gym Warrior Program )
So to clarify for pure strength athletes:
- 3 Day Texas Method – brutally hard, but very effective and simple to program. Best for serious lifters under 30.
- 4 Day Texas Method – still very hard, but shorter workouts make recovery more manageable.
- 4 Day Heavy/Light – logical next step when progress on 4-Day Texas Method becomes too difficult.
- 3 Day Heavy-Light-Medium. Easier to recover from the 3-day Texas Method. Better for lifters who are over 30.
Physique/Aesthetics/Mass
For those whose primary purpose in training is a massive overhaul in their physique, then we need to do a few other things other than just train the main lifts heavy. We need more volume, particularly some higher rep type of volume work, and we need a few more exercises.
Make no mistake, if you want to get bigger you still need to keep getting stronger. But you need to keep the pure strength work in balance with the training you will do for your physique. You can’t just take an already brutally hard program like the Texas Method and pile on a bunch of assistance exercises and higher rep work on top of everything else. Its just too much.
This is where split training becomes necessary. It can be a very basic split of upper/lower body spread out over 4-days per week or something even a little bit more specific – arranged by body part. Split routines get a bad rap as being “all fluff” or “just for the guys who are juicing” or “bullshit from the bodybuilding mags” and sometimes this is true. But the devil is in the details.
A good split routine, built around the foundation of the heavy barbell lifts, is, in my opinion the best way to train for physique. There really isn’t another practical layout for a routine that needs to address the big lifts plus the development of all the smaller muscle groups.
Split routines will generally have an athlete training 3-5 days per week. In my KSC Method for Power-Building program I have the program organized into 5 different workouts. 3 for upper body, and 2 for lower body. In the program, you can train Monday-Friday like this:
- Monday – Chest/Biceps
- Tuesday – Lower Body (Deadlift focused)
- Wednesday – Shoulders/Tricep
- Thursday – Upper Back (lats, traps, etc)
- Friday – Lower Body (Squat focused)
Or you could train 2 days on, take Wednesday off, and then 3 days on with Sunday off.
Performance/Sport
Sport athletes have a balance they must walk too. Conditioning for their sport and practice/game play of their sport compete for recovery resources with the weight training program. For this reason, we should also probably avoid trying to train on the most demanding barbell programs. Again – it probably won’t work.
So I’m not a fan of trying to run through the Texas Method while competing in/training for sports.
Sport athletes don’t need all the specific body part work that a physique athlete needs either, so split routines aren’t really the best approach either.
In my opinion, a 3-day per week Heavy-Light-Medium program is best. This allows athletes to stay focused on just the primary barbell exercises, while limiting some stress.
Plus, an HLM program is very flexible. You can organize it around your sport, and even select exercises you think might help you with your sport. For instance, I’ve used something like this for athletes who compete in shot put and discus in the past:
- Monday – Heavy Squat, Medium Press (Push Press), and Light Pulls (Power Snatch)
- Wednesday – Light Squat, Heavy Press (Bench Press), and Heavy Pulls (Deadlift)
- Friday – Medium Squat, Light Press (strict military), and Medium Pulls (Power Clean)
General Health/Fitness
In my experience, this is largely the goal of many of my personal training clients over the years, most of whom are 45-75 in age.
For this demographic, they aren’t really interested in pulling a 600+ lb deadlift or benching 405. It’s about maintaining a high quality of life and feeling great outside of the gym. For these people, strength training may or may not be a passion like it is for some of us. It’s viewed more as “something I need to do to stay healthy.” Kinda like eating your vegetables as a kid.
So I don’t really want them to commit to a strenuous 3-4 day per week program. They’ll burn out mentally and physically. A two day per week full body program will get the job done. They’ll still get the results/benefits of getting stronger and making some aesthetic changes to their body, but they’ll easily recover from the workload and feel good outside the gym too.
Something as simple as this can be effective for a long period of time:
- Monday – Heavy Squat, Press, Chin Ups
- Thursday – Light Squat, Bench, Deadlifts
In our new book The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40 we have TONS of examples of 2-day per week programs appropriate for trainees in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and even 80s.
