On influencers.

It’s tragic how someone can watch “Youtube Fitness” for years and years and have no idea how to make their own program and yet, daringly, still be highly opinionated about training.

How much do you really know about training?

Programming? Sets and reps? Progression? Variations? Effort? Volume and intensity? Mindset? Training splits?

Influencers don’t care. They want you to stay small, buy their supplements, training plans and drugs; or at least to siphon viewer retention from you. This is why they make drama videos, give useless form tips and think neurotically about gimmicky exercises.

“This one thing is killing your gains!”

“This guy is definitely not natty, everyone is on steroids!”

“You’re doing it wrong!”

“It’s not about how much you lift.”

They are teachers LAST, if they can be called teachers at all. For them information is something to hook you with — nothing but a silent promise made by their perfect instagram photos and their pharmaceutically-obtained physiques.

They’ll leave you worse off — stressing about little details.

Trust me, it’s not a bench problem.

One of the strange mentalities that watching too much fitness content induces is the idea that some slight error can reduce your gains from 100 to 0 — the idea that something is “killing your gains.”

For example, imagine your bench press is plateaued. What do you do in this situation? What you DON’T do is blame it on range of motion or some small technical queue or, even worse, blame it on the movement.

Not benching is not the solution.

The bench press is time-tested, that’s what I like about it, it let’s me know I’m the one doing something wrong. And let’s not pretend like we’re physically disabled, “just not built for the bench,” or that our shoulders are made out of paper.

All you have to do is check a few boxes: Am I doing enough volume (should I add another chest exercise) ? Am I doing too much volume (less likely)? Am I not eating enough (extremely common)? Is progression occurring in other forms (reps getting easier, form improving)? Are my shoulders or triceps a limiting factor?

By being smart, by knowing yourself and you art, this is how you solve these types of problems, not by trying to avoid the issue (i.e. program hopping, changing the movement, etc).

Blaming the bench press is like when people blame the computer for not doing what they want. Do you think it has a will of it’s own or something?

Your pectoral muscle just woke up one day and decided “enough, I’ve adapted to pressing in a horizontral forward motion and will not grow anymore even if it kills me.”

That sounds ridiculous…

Because it is!!!

Another example:

“What if the bench press hurts my shoulders?”

Again, that’s not a bench problem, that’s a programming problem. You’re probably not doing enough vertical pressing, training your rear delts or just bench pressing too often. If you bench twice a week, use a soft variation like reverse grip, close grip or incline bench on one of those days to stop your shoulder from developing overuse. You can also just lower the weight and do higher reps on the second day.

The point is: being methodical and working hard trump any “optimal” whatever nonsense that is probably not as optimal as advertised.

tl;dr: it’s not a bench problem, it’s a you problem.

There is no silver bullet.

The answer is almost always simpler. If you’re a beginner to pre-intermediate, 70% of the time you’re not training hard enough or not eating enough, the remaining 30% of the time you just have to adjust your program. As you become intermediate, it flips the other way around, becoming 30-70. And as you become more advanced, it becomes even more about keeping your training on point since we can assume an advanced trainee is training hard.

Knowledge is important in training.

You need to know what you’re doing.

You stick to the basics at first.

But you also have to go through trial and error.

See what’s worked for other elite naturals (Alex Leonidas, Hersovyac, Geoffrey Verity Schofield, Natural Hypertrophy, Adam Powe, etc.) and learn from them, see what they did wrong and avoid it.

It feels like calisthenics bros get better information about hypertrophy than your average lifter. Those guys are pushing themselves, not even eating that much, and just that is enough to mogg the average gym goer into oblivion.

There is no silver bullet. Remember this always. Training isn’t about gimmicks or fads or exercises, it’s about effort, principals and consistency.

It always boils down to planning (programming), execution (your effort inside the gym) and nutrition (are you eating enough?).

1. Execution

We have to start with execution because it’s the biggest point at which people fail.

I’m not talking form, although that is obviously important, I assume your form is good enough. I stress that good form if often better than perfect form i.e. locking your elbows during a row stops your from using your upper back, precisely what you want to train. Trying to be too perfect with your form also stops you from progressing and adding weight and being motivated and trying hard.

I’m talking EFFORT and VOLUME.
Most people don’t do enough of BOTH.

This is the most important part of training but there’s not much I can say to be honest — this is a realm beyond theories and words, it’s something you have to learn with experience.

The most I can do is throw in a couple of YouTube classics such as that video of Ronnie Coleman training or Tom Platz or Dorian Yates or any of Bugez’s training montages in hopes of inspiring and motivating you.

2. Programming

Programming (as in training program) is not rocket science. There’s a few principles and guidelines that you should follow, nothing too complicated, mostly intuitive stuff.

General Rules

1. Have at least one rest day;
2. Superset exercises.
3. Follow a training split;
4. Aim to hit each muscle group twice a week;
5. “Mirror” your days (more on that later);
6. Include all the time-tested basic movements;
7. Use volume that you can handle.

Supersets

The most basic tool that you need to understand is supersetting — aka. alternating between two lifts.

Classic examples include bench press and pull-ups; hammer curls and pushdowns, curls and extensions or skullcrushers; dumbbell presses and dumbbell rows, etc. You’re good as long as you don’t need to be in two places at the same time. Even if you are a specific station / machine you can always bring a dumbbells or do calisthenics (it’s free).

And, as a rule, never superset the same muscle group.

Pros:

• Saves a lot of time.
• Allows you to fit more into your program.
• Stops your program from looking like a shopping list.
• Makes training more exciting.
• Lets you train abs, forearms and neck when you have time instead of at the end of your program (never).

And you don’t have to look like that gif of Thanos every set.

Example:

1. Bench Press 3x6-10 + Pull-ups 3xAMRAP
2. Incline DB Press 3x8-12 + DB Rows 3x6-10
3. Weighted Sit-ups 3x8-12 + DB Pullovers 3x8-12

If we did these exercises one after the other this program would take 90 minutes to 2 hours to complete, by supersetting you can easily complete it in under an hour.

And it would be silly not to do this since it costs nothing and doesn’t hinder performance. Your also not inconveniencing anyone since your not using more than one type of equipment.

Note: Some people use a plus sign to indicate supersets and others use x.a) x.b).

Training Splits

There are a few training splits you might want to consider:

• Upper Lower (UL)
• Push Pull Legs (PPL)
• Full Body (FB)
• Legs Torso Arms (“Arnold Split”)

Each split can be altered, improved and changed depending on your needs.

Generally speaking upper lower is done twice for 4-5 days total (+1 if you have an arm day), Full body is done thrice for 3/4 days total (+1 if you have an arm day), PPL and Arnold are done twice for 6 days total.

Basically, you have options to fit your schedule.

Be it two hours a day for 3 days a week on Full body or 90 minutes 4 times a week on Upper-Lower or an hour six times a week, it adds up to the same amount of time and hopefully volume.

When I could only train 4 days a week, I did UL.

Now that I can train more days a week but have limited time on some days, I do the Arnold Split.

Different splits have different pros and cons and are suited best for different lifting styles. You kind of just have to experiment and figure out what works for you in this regard. There is no perfect split, only the best one you can up with for yourself.

Mirroring Your Days

Told you I would come back to it later!

When, for example, you are doing PPL 6 days a week, you are repeating the Push Pull Leg pattern twice, this means you have Push 1, Push 2, Pull 1, Push 2 and so on.

When this happens, the course of action is simple, you take the first three days, copy and paste them and change things up. On Push 2 you do Incline Bench instead of Flat Bench. On Legs 2 you start with Deadlifts instead of Squats. On Pull 2 you focus on rowing instead of pull-ups. You get the gist.

I know this seems simple but it’s very important.

This keeps your progression steady, prevents overuse injury and it let’s you hit your muscles “from more angles.”

The Time Tested Basics

1. Bench Press / Dips
2. Barbell Squat
3. Deadlift
4. Barbell or Dumbell Overhead Press
5. Pull-ups and/or BB/DB Rows
6. Barbell Curls / Incline Curls / Preacher Curls
7. Skullcrushers / Tricep Extentions

I would highly recommend that all of these movements (or a soft variation) are placed in your training program. It’s important that you have an unavoidable standard for each muscle, a staple lift you can always rely on both as a measurement and a source of progress.

Look, sometimes my arms get bigger and my incline curl stays relatively the same, maybe my form is improving or I’m controlling the weight more. What’s true is that my working weight for incline curl and my upper arm measurement have stayed pretty one-to-one.

When I was curling the 17.5 kilos I had 14in arms and now that I’m curling the 20 kilos comfortably I have 15in arms, closing in on the 16in arms as I get closer to curling 22.5 kilos regularly.

The same is true for most basic barbell lifts. They serve as extremely good measurement tools and tools for stimulus.

Yes, you can optimize them to an extent with different grips, variations and rotations, but at the end of the day, strength is strength and if you’re not getting stronger at something, given that all other variables are equal, something went wrong in the process.

3. Progression Schemes

Linear Progression

Linear Progression consists of increasing the weight systematically (week by week, for example) as your method of progress whilst keeping reps and sets the same.

Think 3x3, 3x5, 5x5 and the likes.

This isn’t very useful to most bodybuilders as we want to go to failure often. Keeping the reps the same forces you to keep reps in reserve.

It’s preferable to let the progression occur as a byproduct of the training instead of trying to force it periodically.

2.2 Double Progression

Double progression adds one more step: first you add reps then you add weight, as opposed to linear progression where you just added weight over time.

You might have seen a program that has something like:
Flat Bench Press 3x6-8

This means you start with a weight you can hit for 6 reps on all sets, hopefully. So, for example you hit 80kg for 6 reps, 6 reps, 5 reps. Next time you might hit 80 kilos for 7,6,5 than 7,6,6, than 8,7,5. Once you’ve hit 8 reps on the first set, you increase the weight on all sets.

It’s that simple. If you want to bench more weight predictably instead of kind of just winging the weight and trying to beat the books than this is what you were looking for your entire life.

What if I go below the rep limit?

Don’t fret if you occasionally go below the rep limit. If, for example, you bench 5 reps on the last set, which is below the rep limit according to what I previously set, it’s not really a big deal. However, on some extremely fatiguing exercises where you are going heavy — Incline Curls, Weighted Pull-ups, Weighted Dips, etc. — you might want to stop at 2 sets if you can’t do another set above the rep range.

This has helped me tremendously with progression.

Trust me, knowing where you stand, knowing your limits, knowing when to stop, will help keep the ball rolling and progression steady.

Rep ranges.

Choosing your rep ranges is pretty important and certain exercises jive better with wider rep ranges. For example, I like to do 4-10 on Incline Curls. Why? Because it’s a very hard exercise to progress on. Curling 20kg for 8 means you can probably do a set of 4 with 22kg but your likely not gonna be able to another set, this is why in this context it is useful to add more reps before progressing.

Every exercise has it’s peculiarities, you also have your own preferences, so trial and error is the way to go if you want “optimal” rep ranges.

Dynamic Double Progression

Dynamic double progression is the same as double progression but instead of increasing the weight on all sets, you increase it on individual sets at a time. Continuing from the previous example, instead of going from 80kg x 8,7,6 to 82kg for 3 sets, you only increase to 82kg on the first set and remain on 80kg on the second and third set.

I recommend starting with just regular double progression and sticking to it.

Conclusion

For the most part, I think I covered everything I wanted to cover.

When it comes to nutrition, I’m very much in favor of bulking and cutting, tracking your weight on a scale instead of counting calories and doing whatever it takes (within reason) to reach your calorie and macro goals.

I might make a live step by step guide where I make a training program from scratch in the future. For now, that’s it, thank you for reading!

You are now ever more knowledgeable about training!