As you know, Heavy-Light-Medium templates are one of my favorite programming structures for Intermediate level strength trainees.
The concept is pretty simple, although the exact variables can vary quite a bit from person to person. This is one reason why people sometimes struggle with them.
People like things delivered to them “cut & dried.” Given the choice, people will always go for something EXACT rather than flexible. And I understand that, however impossible it may be to actually deliver such a thing that works for every individual.
My Garage Gym Warrior Program is an HLM model and is pretty straight forward and as “cut & dried” as it gets in terms of delivering exact exercise selection, sets, reps, and intensity prescriptions. It does tend to work pretty well for most intermediate trainees.
If you want to design your own HLM program, you have to have a starting place for volume and I’ve got a pretty good structure that has worked well over the years as a pretty good starting point.
You’ll likely have to modify over time, however, the changes tend to be small….shave off a set here or there, add a set here or there, modify intensity +/- 5-10% on any given day.
Basically I like to start off with a fixed number of sets for each day and then modify the intensity accordingly.
Heavy Day – 5 sets
Light Day – 3 sets
Medium Day – 4 sets
If you are pretty strong and can produce a lot of fatigue on each exercise, or are older and struggle with recovery you may want to hedge volume down a bit to:
Heavy Day – 4 sets
Light Day – 2 sets
Medium Day – 3 sets
On the Heavy Day, aim for one big top set in the 1-5 rep range. This is your high intensity work for the week and the main metric by which to judge progress by week to week. Following the main top set, perform 3-4 back off sets at about a 5% reduction in load from the main set for about the same number of reps.
So if you hit 405 x 5, then follow with 3-4 x 5 x 385 for the back off work. Of if you hit 455 x 3, then follow with 3-4 x 3 x 430-435 for the back off work.
On the Light Day perform 2-3 x 5 at about a 20% reduction in load from your best sets of 5 work over the last several week. So if you’ve hit 405×5 on the Heavy Day, then do your light day for 2-3 x 5 x 325 or so.
On the Medium Day perform 3-4 x 5 at about a 10% reduction in load from your best sets of 5. So based off a recent 405×5 heavy day top set, that’d be about 3-4 x 5 x 365.
This works well as a starting point and then you can adjust from there.
The other simple hack, is a solution to the “Mid-Week Pressing Problem.” Most people find the most struggles progressing whatever Pressing variation they are performing on Wednesday. For instance if they are doing the following:
Monday – Heavy Bench
Wednesday – Press
Friday – Medium Bench
They will progress fine on the Bench but perhaps struggle on the Press. An added day of Medium Pressing on Saturday works well.
You can continue to do the Full Body Squat/Press/Pull sequence on Mon/Weds/Fri but on Saturday you can go in and hit whatever Pressing variant you perform on Wednesday again for a 5-10% reduction in load for about 4 work sets. While you are there, hit about 15-20 minutes of HIIT cardio and you have a quick 40 minute workout or so on a Saturday morning and you are out the door.
If you want to add this second little “hack” to my Garage Gym Warrior HLM Program, I’ve had many clients do it and it works quite well. Aim for 4 x 5-6 (do not miss reps!) on Saturday of whatever you have chosen as your Wednesday Pressing variation and you’ll see almost immediate progress on that lift if it is feeling stagnate.
