I’ve been lifting for 13 years now and have tried and completed quite a few programmes over the years. There’s a lot of competing programmes out there and many of them are great in their own way. What’s important is to choose a programme that suits your goals and needs at the time and it’s fine if these change as you mature as a lifter and evolve in both strength and size.

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What are your goals?

The first thing to do, when choosing a programme to follow is to be clear about what you’re trying to achieve. Are you trying to bulk up and gain size? Are you focusing solely on increasing your strength and your max lifts? Are you looking for overall fitness to just make you a healthier and better human? Are you looking and using a gym programme to subsidise your performance for a specific sport? Are you looking to look good on your next beach holiday?

Once you’re clear on what you’re goal is you can start to look at programmes focused on achieving those goals. And these goals will change over time as you mature and also as you achieve them. You might want to initially add some bulk and size, and then move on to increase overall strength and power. This is why most people don’t stick religiously to one programme for years on end (although some people do).

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My top 5 programmes

I will cover each of these in more detail but will provide a general overview here. You can also go off and do your own further research. All suggestions assume you are not a complete novice and have got good technique.

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German volume training (GVT)

German volume training or GVT is a great programme for building size and bulk. It’s a known, trusted and proven programme that will deliver. Probably not suitable to a complete beginner due to the sheer volume involved and it does require a decent base of strength.

The gist of GVT is 10x10. That’s ten sets of ten reps. The most common lifts for this are the classic compound barbell lifts; squat, bench press, overhead press, bent-over row and deadlift.

I’ve personally had great success with this programme over the years and tend to revert back to it every couple of years either in-between programmes or as a bit of a reset. Due to the sheer volume, it’s suggested you don’t do more than 12 weeks at a time on this and the programme needs to be accompanied with a meal plan and diet to ensure you’re getting the right amount of calories and ratios of macronutrients to both recover and grow.

20-Rep Squat Programme

Another volume programme designed to add size and bulk. This is a tough programme and not for the faint-hearted. This programme will build both physical and mental toughness and will prepare you to mentally endure future tough training sessions. This is great for beginners to get to a decent level of size and strength before following on to a more focused programme. It’s also good for intermediate lifters who need to get back to basics and want to build some mental toughness.

The programme is fairly simple. You just do one set of 20 barbell back squats. It’s usually followed by non-20 rep exercises that focus on the rest of the body with a more standard set/rep protocol.

You’ll need some new jeans after this and also need a diet and calories similar to GVT to ensure you can keep up recovery and growth.

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Stronglifts 5x5

A classic and probably one of the most widely used and best-known gym programmes. There are many versions of this with the history dating back to lifters such as Bill Starr and Reg Park (one of Arnie’s inspirations) using the 5x5 protocol.

The variations tend to differ in whether you go progressively heavier with each set, how many warm-up sets there are and if you keep the same weight for all sets and again if you do either 3 or 5 ‘working’ sets.

In 2007 a guy from Belgium called Mehdi popularised a version called Stronglifts and this is the one I’m referring to here. Although he didn’t invent the programme, he did a great job in popularising it and has a great website and app that have proven to be a valuable resource to anyone wanting to learn more about it including downloadable spreadsheets.

The stronglifts programme focusses on the core lifts; Squat, Bench, Overhead press, Deadlift and Bentover row. For most of the lifts, the protocol is to have a few warm-up sets followed by 5 working sets at the same weight. This differs for the Deadlift where you work up to just 1 working set of 5. The workouts are split into two days, A and B and it’s performed 3 times a week.

I’m personally very grateful to Mehdi for the work he’s done and have used both the app and the spreadsheets many times. This is a great programme for most levels of lifter and I’ve personally had a lot of success with it.

Squat Every Day

See my article on this here: https://medium.com/@Coffee.Whisky.Barbells.and.B/the-magic-of-daily-heavy-squatting-e0d9dfef1d0c

This is a programme populated by Cory Gregory. I first heard about it on the Barbell Shrugged podcast and decided to give it a try. If you’ve read my article on it, you’ll know I’m a big fan and had great results on it.

The concept was initially popularised by Ivan Abadjiev, coach of the Bulgarian National weightlifting teams in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Abadjiev believed that other weightlifting systems (ie “The Russians”) relied too much on assistance exercises that were not directly relevant to improving the snatch, clean and jerk. He had his athletes perform those movements to near or actual maximum multiple times per day. The only assistance exercise used was the front squat which was also trained to maximum multiple times per day. The Bulgarians applied this system and were very successful with it, winning multiple World and Olympic titles.

In the US this system was adopted by coaches who either trained with or were heavily influenced by the Bulgarians such as John Broz of Average Broz Gym, Dave Spitz of California Strength, Max Aita of Juggernaut Training Systems and countless other weightlifting and powerlifting coaches. After hearing the results from Cory Gregory, world record holder Travis Mash of Mash Elite Performance has also praised the system.

Personally, I refer to this programme as one of the best I’ve ever done and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m not following this programme anymore since I’m more focused on learning the olympic lifts but in a way, I still do squat every day since both the clean and the snatch involve squatting. Furthermore, even after I stopped squatting every day, I still started every single gym session with squats. Furthermore, the strength gains I saw, especially in the front squat have given me a great base to get my olympic lifting started from.

Hatch Squat Programme

The Hatch Squat Programme was developed by Olympic weightlifting coach Gayle Hatch for intermediate and advance weightlifters who are looking to improve their squat numbers. The programme focuses both on the front and back squat with two sessions per week and a fairly high volume.

Personally, I’ve actually only done this programme for a limited amount of time but have had great feedback from other people and will be doing this programme in the future.

Conclusion

You may have noticed a theme here. And the theme is squatting. This article wasn’t meant to be focused on squat programmes, but what happened whilst writing it is that I realised that all the success I’ve had in lifting, and also my training partners, has come from the moment I started squatting more. If you’re not squatting a lot and heavy, then you are seriously missing out on both strength and size gains. Squatting heavy will not just develop powerful legs, it’ll develop overall strength and size. My biceps and triceps have gotten stronger and grown over the last few years and funnily enough, I’ve not done and ‘arms day’ in years. If you have a powerful strong squat, you will also have overall strength.

If however all you care about is big biceps, then ignore this article and go stand in front of the mirror at the gym doing curls in the squat rack.

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