What Makes a Good Strength Program?

Many moons ago, before high school, before football, I did a ton of pushups and running. Getting stronger for football meant having a big bench right? (That's a joke). So since I didn't have access to a gym yet, it was pushups galore. I also needed to be in some sort of shape, so I added running too.

That was a great start for a middle school kid. It's a great start for anyone. However there's a lot of other body parts besides your chest if you couldn't tell. I can say that as a former bench press addict. After high school football and before Olympic Weightlifting, I just did basic bro lifting. There were periods when I was benching 5 days per week. At least I got my bench up to 355. But during this time I let my lower body fall by the wayside. The next time I squatted I was sore for about a week. I deserved it.

A lot of people, mostly guys, who want to "get big" focus on building the upper body. Or when people want to "get fit" they think tons of time pounding the pavement or spending endless time on cardio machines at a gym.

If you're here, then you know strength training is important, but what do you pick? If you're going to strengthen your body, it would be wise to strengthen all of it. If that's the case, you want whatever training program you pick to cover as many bases as possible. We do this by thinking about "movement patterns" before we think exercises.

What's a Movement Pattern?

I'll tell you.

I heard the phrase from two strength coaches: Dan John and Mark Rippetoe. Think of a human being. Now think about what humans can do with their bodies. They fall into a small handful of categories.

We can push something away from us (with our upper bodies).

We can pull something towards us.

We can squat down (or at least we should be able to, at least to a chair).

We can pick something up from the ground.

We can move across space like walking.

Well that was simple. These movements cover just about every muscle in your body. Sadly, due to the popularity of bodybuilding and the desire to "just look better," people want to go into more detail than necessary and break their training into bodyparts. Isolate the bicep. Isolate the deltoids. Isolate the forearms. Isolate this. Isolate that.

For most people, this is unnecessary. To take it up a level, even if you wanted to "get a bigger chest," you'd benefit greatly by just getting your bench press numbers higher before you focused on something like chest flies.

I emphasize that point because most people are beginners. That's a good thing. When it comes to strength training, 1. most human beings aren't doing it and 2. most people would benefit from just doing the basics for as long as possible until they get bored or are strong enough to move on to something else.

That should be comforting because it will take a lot of pressure off of someone trying to figure it out. There's only a few movement categories that someone can use to get the job done.

I fell into Olympic weightlifting. It's a combination of squatting and hinging (snatch, clean, pulls). Just add some upper body moves and you're good to go. You don't have to go that far as I will show you soon. That's just one example. Just take at the list of the movement patterns and load them over time.

What Do I Do?

Huge disclaimer: Everything works.

Even if you went to Google and found a program, you'd see results for at least 6 weeks. Seriously. I don't like fighting on the internet about "which program/diet is best." It just leads to a bunch of confused people like my former self. It paralyzes you from taking action. Just try something.

The methods are plenty. The principles are few.

The short answer is this: load the movement patterns over time.

If it's a barbell, then the weight should go up.

If it's bodyweight, the reps or the progression should go up. (As an example, if you can do wall pushups for 50 reps, then doing 1000 is…nice, but I'd recommend moving on to the floor.)

The Moves

Now that we've gotten all of that out of the way, I'm just going to list a bunch of exercises for each category. Hopefully that'll give you enough information to start.

Push

• Pushup, Dips, Handstand pushups, bench press, overhead press

Pull

• Pullup, chinup, bent row

Hinge (huh? It's extending the hips)

• Deadlift, Bridge, Hip Thrust, power snatch, power clean

Squat

• Squat (lol), front squat, pistol, ATG split squat, bodyweight squat

Gait

• Walking, rucking, crawling, sled pushing, carries

Small rant about the gait part

Dan John calls this "loaded carries." That means pick something up and walk. That's included in this, but there's a ton more that can be done. Walking is the one thing that humans (should) do often. It was our basic means of transportation. It's what was earned by crawling and doing other baby movements to get stronger to get to that point. Today we don't do it enough. We don't train it back to good form enough with crawling either. At the very least walk more. If you need some repair, spend some time baby crawling or making it harder with leopard or Spider-Man crawling. If you take this path, it can be brutal (try crawling on your hands and feet for 10 minutes straight and you'll see). If it's that hard, don't be afraid to have that be your only training for a while. It'll make your core stronger and maybe even make all the other movements easier. It's your foundation to all the other fun gym stuff you want to do, so act like it.

How to Progress

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail of loading and programming. Over the span of every training session, week 2 weeks, months, things should get heavier or harder. I'll use the push as an example.

• Pushups against a wall. Then pushups on your knees. Then on your feet. Then ring pushups, then dips.

• Light bench adding weight over time.

For bodyweight movements, once you can get to 15-20 reps on a movement, you're good to go and you can do a harder variation.

For barbell, once you can get 3/5×5 reps at a weight, add more weight.

It's going to be up to you to figure out how you want to handle each progression, but following anything will help. Once you understand the principles of what your body can do, you can sniff out if the program you're checking out is worth your time.

Remember, the more muscle mass the movements cover, the better and simpler the workouts will be.

Pick Something. Stick with it.

I wanted to write this because I think there's a large group of people that get confused. We see elite bodybuilders spending all day in the gym, destroying ever possible body part and think that's what training looks like. If it's that difficult, people want no part in it.

Simplicity is boring, but simplicity wins. Boring is effective. I want you to have the knowledge of what you can pick. Once you find it, give it a fair chance until you outgrow it or get bored.

Thanks for reading!

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