How to Get Strong Only Training Three Days Per Week

One of the most common questions I get asked is “Can I get strong only training three days per week?”

The answer to that is emphatically, “YES”!

Here’s how. (p.s. if you’d rather watch and listen, check out the video below!)

Start by picking 1 upper body barbell exercise and one lower body, at our job most beginners start with bench press and front squat. At the beginning of the week, perform 5 sets of 5 reps for both movements, at a light to moderate weight. At the end of the week, try to find a 5 Rep Max, conservative at first.

Each week you’ll track the 5x5 weight and the 5RM weight, and add5lbs from what you did the previous week.

For example Monday 5x5 @45lbs and Friday 5RM at 55lbs, then week 2 would be 50 and 60lbs, and so on.

After each workout perform any number of bodybuilding, strongman, or conditioning exercises as you’d like, (this depends on the person).

On the middle day, this is where you can vary depending on the type of athlete.

• For general strength clients, we typically do a strongman circuit of sandbag carries, farmers, carries, sled drags etc.

• For high school athletes we’ll do a weekly progression of cleans, week 1: 20 reps at 70%, week 2: 15 reps at 75%, week 3: 10 reps @80%, week 4: establish a new max.

• Other athletes will have a higher intensity sled conditioning day

And that’s basically it! For all the details on warm ups and accessory work that we do to keep athletes healthy, you’ll need to sign up for our program, which can be found here!

Hope this helps!