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Instructions

📘 These programs are adapted from the second edition of our book, The Muscle and Strength Pyramid: Training. This will help you perform versions of the programs regardless of your equipment constraints or injury history, overcoming exercise limitations.

👉 Make sure you click "File" > "Download" or sign in with your Google account and click "File" > "Make a copy."

To get the most out of these programs, subscribe to our free 15-day Transformation Kickstart email course. You'll learn how to customize, progress, and troubleshoot. We also cover the nutritional side of things.

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Exercise Selection: Exercises listed in grey are drop-down menus. You need to save your own version of the sheet as above to unlock this functionality.
Choose exercises you can perform confidently with good form, pain-free, with a full range of motion, for which you have equipment access. You should see options for almost all cases.
👉 Here's our guide to exercise selection.

Choosing a Program: You'll see the programs listed in tabs at either the top or bottom of this sheet. You have three choices to make.

1. Novice or Intermediate? — If you can increase the load you use for the majority of your exercises every training session, then I would classify you as a novice trainee. If you need to alternate training intensities and volume and split your training into blocks to progress (this is called periodization), consider yourself an intermediate trainee. If in doubt, try the novice programs first.
2. Powerlifting or Bodybuilding? — If getting strong in the barbell lifts is your primary goal, choose a powerlifting program. If you're after aesthetics and strength, pick one of the bodybuilding programs.
3. How Many Days Per Week? — Choose based on what your schedule allows for and what you prefer to do. The total training volume is the same in each; fewer days = longer workouts.

How To Choose The Load You Lift Initially: Perform a few warm-up sets, then choose a load you are confident you'll feel comfortable performing all the sets and reps listed. The first set will be easier than the subsequent sets as fatigue builds.

Progression: After the first session, add load in steady increments each session. For compound movements that use a lot of muscle, consider increases of 10 lbs each session. Other exercises might need to progress in 5 lb or 2.5 lb increments.
👉 When you get stuck, here's our guide to progression.

Rest Periods: Rest for as long as needed to recover enough to perform your next set. As a rough guide, this will be 2–3 minutes for any big compound movements and 90–120 seconds for those that use less muscle.

Training to Failure — RIR and RPE: We need to train hard enough for our sets to be effective, but we don't want to train to failure too often, as this can hamper recovery and growth. Reps in Reserve (RIR) refers to how many reps you should stop short of failure for the first set. An RIR of 2 means you should stop when you feel able only to perform two more reps, and an RIR of 3 means you should stop when you can only perform three more reps. (RPE is similar, but slightly more granular, and mainly used in Powelifting. The scale counts inversely from 10. An RIR of 2 is an RPE of 8, and an RIR of 3 is an RPE of 7.
👉 Here's our guide to RPE and RIR in Your Training.

%1RM: I've removed the "percentage of 1-rep-max" recommendations in favor of RPE guidelines instead. Too many people found them confusing.
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