The Best 3-Day Olympic Weightlifting Program
Olympic weightlifting programming can seem like a mystery, and if you are short on time, even more so.
With limited time to train, you need to make sure that you don’t do a single wasted rep, exercise, or training block.
Whether it’s because you need to fit in other workouts like CrossFit or endurance into your training, because you have a stressful job but need to make time for yourself, or because you want to have enough time to spend with your family, being efficient with your time is important.
In this article, I’ll walk you through the exact three-day-per-week training split we use in our OlyStrong 3-Day Program to make sure you only do the training that has the highest return on investment, your time.
Olympic Weightlifting Priorities With Limited Time
When it comes down to it, there are only a few priorities that ACTUALLY matter when you have a limited time to train.
Frequency
Strength
Hypertrophy
Frequency of Olympic Lifts
The biggest barrier to improving your snatch and clean & jerk is your skill with the movements.
People who train the lifts more frequently will have more opportunities to develop mastery in their technique, won’t need to re-learn the movement, won’t need as many warm-up reps, and won’t need as much volume to make progress.
With only 3-days per week to train, we need to practice both the snatch and clean and jerk every session, or as close to that as possible. This can be done by modifying the weight and volume of each session to make sure you can recover from each workout while still making progress. You can also modify the variation of the lifts to be more specific to the competition lifts, or more specific to your technical weaknesses, or find a blend of both, but I’ll go over that more in the training split portion of this article.
Gaining Strength for The Olympic Lifts
While we compete in the snatch and clean and jerk, weightlifting is still a strength sport. At the end of the day, if you can’t squat it, you won’t snatch it.
Gaining strength for the olympic lifts is incredibly important, and it’s important to make sure that you are prioritizing the most important strength exercises. There are really only six lifts to choose from…
Back Squat
Front Squat
Strict Press
Push Press
Snatch Pull
Clean Pull
Each of these are important, but with only 3-days per week to train, it can be hard to fit all of this in, so it helps to rank each one by how important it is for you.
The Back Squat is the strength exercise you could lift the heaviest on, and all other lifts will be limited by what your back squat is, so this should be the number one priority if you have weak legs.
The Front Squat is the strength exercise that supports the clean the most. Without a big front squat, it will be challenging to make progress on your clean. So, if you have a big back squat, but your front squat is nowhere close to your back squat, and you clean and front squat are very close together, then the front squat should be your main priority.
Now, if you’re fairly balanced in your strength levels, then I would recommend doing one day of back squats and one day of front squats each week. This will cover the majority of your squat strength needs.
The Strict Press is an upper body strength exercise that is often neglected by weightlifters, but for those with a weak upper body and a strong lower body, this should be your main upper body exercise. I recommend doing this at least once, if not twice per week.
The Push Press is a mix of power and strength for the upper body, and is more specific to improving your jerk, but will build less muscle than the strict press as the majority of the work is done with your legs rather than your arms. One way I like to train both the strict press and push press is to use the Top-Set Drop-Set Method where I’ll work up to a heavy top set of 1-5 reps for the push press, then perform my drop sets of 5-12 reps on the strict press to capitalize on the hypertrophy benefits.
The Snatch Pull is a leg strength exercise that is specific to improving your pull strength for the snatch. Many people use it as a technique exercise, which is fine, but I’ve found that it works best when done in the 3-5 rep range with weights heavier than you can snatch. This only needs to be trained 1x a week, and if you have a strong pull, it can be optional, or it can be used in complexes with 1-2 snatch pulls followed by 1-2 snatches, however, there will be fewer strength gains and more technique gains with this approach.
The Clean Pull is to the clean what the snatch pull is to the snatch. It will help improve your pull strength for the clean and is likely the second heaviest weight you could use of all six of the strength staples. The clean pull is a little more broad in the ways you can apply it. You can use it as a strength exercise like you would for the snatch, 3-5 reps with heavier weight than you can clean. You can also use it as a substitute for back squats if you are dealing with an injury that prevents you from squatting heavy, as it will help keep your lower body feeling strong. You can also use it as a technique exercise by performing it slower, with lighter weights, or in complexes with 1-2 pulls followed by 1-2 cleans. This, like the snatch pull, likely only needs to be trained 1x a week. I recommend performing the clean pull once a week and the snatch pull once a week for the best results.
Gaining Muscle for Olympic Weightlifting
There is largely very little difference between gaining muscle and gaining strength for olympic lifting.
The exercises that build the most muscle - the back squat, front squat, strict press, and clean pull in particular - are also largely the ones that will also build the most strength for olympic weightlifting.
However, if you want to maximize muscle growth beyond whatever muscle you build as a byproduct of strength training, you’ll need to focus on doing additional hypertrophy training. Traditionally, weightlifters will call this accessory or auxiliary work. Accessory work is largely comprised of isolation exercises with one of two focuses:
Complimentary Accessory Work
Supplementary Accessory Work
Complimentary Accessory Work
Complimentary accessory work is any exercise that trains a movement pattern, plane, or muscle group that is also directly trained with traditional weightlifting programming.
These exercises are typically chosen to add extra volume to a weak point that a weightlifter might notice in their technique. For example, if a lifter has a hard time keeping their hips low in the first pull, then they might need to focus on building more muscle in their quads and lower back. So at the end of a workout, they may perform 3-5 sets of split squats and back extensions to further take those muscle groups to failure and build more muscle.
However, only focusing on muscle groups that are directly related to improving your olympic lifts isn’t the best approach. While it will speed up your immediate progress, it does help to make sure you train the areas that are not trained through normal weightlifting programming as well. That’s where supplementary work comes in.
Supplementary Accessory Work
Supplementary accessory work is any exercise that trains a movement pattern, plane, or muscle group that is not directly trained through traditional weightlifting programming.
Weightlifting largely consists of sagittal plane movements and biases the quads, lower back, upper back, and shoulders. When choosing your accessory work, the same rules apply - choose exercises that will help your specific technique breakdowns.
For example, if you are able to keep the bar close during the pull, but are incredibly unstable in the bottom of the overhead squat, or frequently miss snatches behind, then it may be a good idea to incorporate more chest accessory work like dumbbell bench press or chest flys 1-2x per week.
Another example could be that you are able to stay over the bar in the second pull in the snatch, but in the clean, you tend to get behind the bar at heavier weights. You might not have a technique issue, you might actually just have weak hamstrings that cannot maintain position during the lift. In this instance, performing clean grip RDL’s and hamstring curls after your workout 1-2x a week could not only help you build more muscle but also improve your technique.
Choosing the right accessory work for your specific needs can be tough. Check out our free Accessories101: Guide for Weightlifters for the most effective accessory work, tested with our lifters over the last ten years!
The Training Split
Now that you know exactly what areas you should focus on, what is the best way to organize this into a training program?
The first step is finding the right training split for the week. Organizing your training into a week makes it easy to organize it into a month, 16-week cycle, and so on.
I’ve found that the best training split for three days a week has a high frequency of olympic lifts, strength work every session, and accessory work that targets the upper body, core, and lower body every session. This means that your workouts will be fairly long, roughly two hours depending on how long you rest between sets. You can then remove portions of the workout in reverse order of the way they are listed in order to prioritize the olympic lifts first, strength work second, and accessory work third.
Below is the exact split I use in our OlyStrong 3-Day Weightlifting Program. This can be done on MWF, MWSa, TThS, or any variation you choose that ideally has at least one day of rest between workouts. Now, I know that if you are short on time to train, you don’t always get to choose the days you train. That is ok. Training at all is more important than picking the most optimal days to train.
Day One: Volume Olympic Lifts, Back Squats, and Full Body Accessories
The first day of the week is when we practice both the snatch and clean & jerk with higher volume and lighter weights. This can be done through traditional doubles or triples between 70-85% of your 1 rep max, or you can use my preferred method, On-The-Minute Training. Either way, this is where you can get the most technical practice and set the pace for the week ahead.
After your olympic lifts, then we move on to the back squat. I recommend following a long term progression for your squats, and all your strength work. I follow the progression in our 12-Week Squat Program which uses a method called the Top-Set Drop-Set Method, which you can read more about in this article here.
After the squats we’ll then perform an accessory circuit that trains the quads, upper back, and lower back. This allows us to take the quads closer to failure after squats, while also ensuring that we have several days to recover before a very important day of training on day three. Training the upper back allows us to train an upper body muscle group that won’t affect your ability to make the most out of the pressing focus on day two. And finally, training the lower back on day one is something that could be modified to focus on the abdominals if you wish, however I’ve found that the lower back being fatigued on this day doesn’t affect training for the rest of the week as much, but feel free to pick your poison.
Day 2: Moderate Powers, Upper Strength, Snatch Pulls, Full Body Accessories
Day two is the least important day of the week when it comes to the olympic lifts. This is largely here to provide you with more frequency to practice your technique.
We’ll start the session with some moderately challenging power variations of the olympic lifts. The reason we use powers for this day is to give the legs a bit of a break after a more challenging squat day in the previous session. You could absolutely perform full snatch and clean and jerk on this day, but you would likely need to be careful with the weight selection to make sure you aren’t overdoing it. I typically program the Power Snatch and Power Clean (no jerks to allow more shoulder recovery) for 3-5 sets of doubles or triples between 75-85% of your power maxes. I’ll also frequently implement variation complexes such as a Hip Power Snatch + Power Snatch for this day to help address specific technique breakdowns. You can learn more about Variation Complexes in this article here.
After the olympic lifts we’ll move on to snatch pulls. Now, earlier I said that you can remove portions of the workouts in reverse order of the way they appear. This is one of the exceptions to this rule. The upper body pressing work that comes IS more important, however, it’s somewhat ridiculous to transition from a platform for the olympic lifts to a rack for the pressing, then back to the ground for pulls, when it makes much more sense to perform pulls following the olympic lifts, then set your bar up on a rack for presses. Keep this in mind when trimming parts of your workout. For these pulls, I'll program them for 3-5 sets of 2-5 reps between 85-120% of your best snatch. This is a large range, but the pull is a very unique exercise that has multiple benefits ranging from technique, to hypertrophy, to max effort strength, so choosing the right range for the specific phase of your training is important, but more on that in section three.
After the pulls, we’ll transition to the rack for upper-body pressing. If you have weak shoulders but strong legs, I recommend focusing on strict presses. If you have strong shoulders but weak legs, I would focus on push presses. If you are generally even across the board, then you can do a heavy push press top set, then perform higher rep drop sets for the strict press. As far as rep scheme goes, I typically follow the same rep scheme as we follow for the squats in our 12-Week Squat Cycle which you can find here!
Following the presses, we’ll finish the session with an accessory circuit that targets the hamstrings, shoulders or arms, and a bodyweight core exercise. This allows us to take the upper body closer to failure after your presses to make the most out of the session. By training the hamstrings on this day you can help shore up a common weakness through typical weightlifting programming, and it won’t be all that negatively impactful in the following workout. The final exercise is a bodyweight core exercise as I have found these are typically easy to recover from but also something weightlifters are notoriously bad at. If you can squat 400lbs but can’t hold a 30 sec hollow body hold without shaking uncontrollably, that’s probably something you should work on. But, like any accessory exercise, you should choose the ones that are most specific to your needs.
Day 3: Heavy Olympic Lifts, Front Squats, Clean Pulls, Full Body Accessories
If you are familiar with weightlifting, you know it is something of a tradition to go heavy on the snatch and clean and jerk on Fridays, or what we call Big Friday.
For this session, we are going to build to a heavy top set of 1, 2, or 3 reps for the olympic lifts, or for a variation complex like the 2 Cleans + 1 Jerk complex. Now, that’s not to say you should max out every week. But rather, that you do need to practice lifting something heavy regularly. However, we can manage the intensity of the session by going heavy on higher rep schemes, variations, or complexes, all of which limit our potential top end weight while addressing certain technical weaknesses or develop qualities that are lacking.
For example, a Snatch Pull+Snatch is something you could go heavy on, but not as heavy as a regular snatch, which means you can save some of your recovery for squats of you are in a very heavy phase of training for the squat. Similarly, if someone lacks leg strength or endurance on heavy clean and jerks, you could perform 2 Cleans + 1 Jerk, or a Clean + Front Squat + Jerk to help develop the leg endurance needed for those heavy clean and jerks, without needing to do those heavy clean and jerks all the time.
After the olympic lifts, we’ll then move on to clean pulls. We’ll treat these clean pulls similarly to the snatch pulls, 3-5 sets of 2-5 reps between 85-120% of your best clean. And, while clean pulls are important, they are not as important as the squats that follow, so if you are looking to trim some exercise from your program for time’s sake, you should remove these before removing the squats.
Following the clean pulls we’ll train the front squat, using the same rep scheme that we used for the back squats on day one, using the same progression from my 12-Week Squat Program. Now, you don’t need to follow our 12-Week Progression, though I would recommend using the Top-Set Drop-Set Method which you can read more about here.
After the front squats, we’ll finish the session with an accessory circuit targeting the quads, upper back or arms, and either lower back or a challenging core exercise. This is the day to go as hard as possible on your accessories as you’ll get two whole days to recover before the next workout if you are following the traditional MWF or TThSa training split. Choose exercises that are very stimulating and hard to recover from and go heavy as this will drive the most muscle growth and adaptation long-term. Again, you can find my list of most effective accessory exercises in this free guide.
Phases of Training
Now that we know the outline of our training program - the weekly training split, it’s time to flesh out the bulk of the program in its entirety.
This comes down to creating a 16-week plan, split into four 4-week training cycles. Each cycle has a specific goal, that flows well into the next cycle, culminating in a PR Snatch and Clean & Jerk at the end of the 16 weeks, with several opportunities to PR along the way.
Phase 1: Hypertrophy and Volume Phase
The first phase builds the foundation for your PR’s later in the cycle, and that is the hypertrophy and volume phase.
This is when your training will have the most amount of reps, but the lightest absolute weight.
In this four-week phase, and most four-week training cycles, I follow this structure…
Week 1: Base Week; Highest volume, lowest weight. Ex. 5x3@67.5%
Week 2: Build Week; Same volume as week 1, heavier weight. Ex. 5x3@72.5%
Week 3: Deload Week; Volume drops by 1-2 sets, weight stays the same or increases. Ex. 4x3@75%
Week 4: Perform Week; Volume drops more, weight increases. Ex. 3x3@77.5-80%
This most applies to the olympic lifts, but can be done for the strength lifts as well.
For the strength work - Squats and Presses, I start with the Max Muscle Method from my Top-Set Drop-Set Article. You’ll build up to a heavy set of three, then perform three sets of ten as a drop set. Each week, you’ll aim to increase the weight for your top sets and drop sets by 5-10lbs. This stimulates a ton of muscle growth and is often low-hanging fruit for weightlifters who may not train in this higher rep range very often.
For the Olympic lifts, you’ll have an anchor lift - the main focus for the block on day three, a volume day on day one, and a powers day on day two.
As this is the higher volume phase, your anchor lift might be a snatch triple, with the goal of PR’ing your 3RM Snatch on week four. For Clean and Jerk, you have a few options. You could do a triple clean and jerk like you did for the snatch, or you can do a 3 cleans + 1 jerk if you really need to focus on your clean, or 1 clean + 3 jerks if you really need to focus on your jerk. Either option works well! For this workout, you’ll work up to a heavy top set, but leave room to build in weight each week so that on week four you can take a crack at a PR triple.
On day one - the volume day, I’ll typically program the base OTM Cycle from OTM Secrets, and increase the weight while decreasing the minutes each week for both the snatch and clean and jerk. As I mentioned in the split portion, you could also do something like 5x3 for each of the lifts, but whatever you choose, day one weights should be about 5-10% lighter than you plan to lift on day three for that week.
And for our power day, the weights should also increase each week, while the volume decreases. I’ll typically program about 5% less than the top-end weight for day three. So if my heaviest lift on day three is 85%, then my heaviest lift on day two will be 80%, while still following the sample 4 week progression from above.
In this phase, choose exercises that complement the strength work you are doing well. You can choose to lean into the muscle groups you already trained and take them closer to failure by doing more split squats after your 3x10 squats. Or, you can focus on muscle groups that are often forgotten but can contribute to a stronger body in general such as doing 3x of a :30 sec copenhagen plank, but whatever you choose, make sure to progress them!
Accessories are simple to progress. Finding a way to progress each of your accessories in weight, sets, or time under tension each week is important, just like any other lift you do. So if you have split squats for 3x6 at 50lbs, the next week either try to do 4x6 at 50, 3x8 at 50, or 3x6 at 55lbs. A little amount of progress on accessories, just like with all your other lifts, compounds over time and can lead to big changes at the end of the year.
Here’s a sample week of training taken directly from my 3-Day OlyStrong Team Program:
Phase 2: Strength Phase For Olympic Weightlifting
The next phase after our hypertrophy phase is our strength phase.
This is where we start to push the weight a little more while dropping the reps slightly.
You’ll still build a ton of muscle here, but you’ll also start feeling very strong and ready to set PRs, especially in your strength lifts.
For the strength work, I normally have lifters transition into the Strength Gain cycle from my 12-Week Squat Cycle. In this phase, instead of working up to a top triple, you’ll work up to a top double. Then, instead of 3x10 for the drop sets, you’ll do 3x6. All the while, still increasing the weight by 5-10lbs each week, picking up right where you left off from the first phase.
For the Olympic lifts, your anchor lift will change, usually dropping in reps as well. If you did triples for your anchor lift in phase one, the next logical step is to do doubles for phase two. On week one, build to a moderately heavy top set, then each week try to bump that number up so that you can hit a PR double on week four. Plus, if someone is getting to the point where their new double max is close or ties their old 1RM, which happens quite often, then I’ll allow them to go for a new 1Rm, especially if they are looking technically sound.
For the high volume day on day one, I like to program the Heavy Consistency OTM progression which involves a short OTM cycle such as 1 rep every minute for 10 minutes at 70%, then 2x1@75%, 2x1@80%. Then, each week increase the weight and decrease the minutes, while still keeping the four singles at the end.
For the powers, I’ll typically just program power snatch and power clean doubles for 5 sets on week one, and decrease the sets while increasing the weight by about 2.5-5% each week. You could choose a variation complex that fits your specific technique needs if you like, such as a Hip Power Snatch + Power Snatch if you need to work on finishing your extension.
In this phase, you want to choose accessories that are going to stimulate the most muscle growth possible. This means exercises that take a muscle through a full range of motion, and with a heavy weight. The goal here is to keep the hypertrophy going, but rather than just getting it from high-rep squats and presses like we do in phase one, we need to push the accessories even harder. Just like in the first phase, find ways to progress your accessories, though I particularly prefer progressing in weight for this phase.
Here’s a sample week of training taken directly from my 3-Day OlyStrong Team Program
Phase 3: Strength Peaking Phase For Olympic Weightlifting
Phase three is a unique phase.
Now that we have built all this strength, we need to push the limits and test it, so the majority of our focus is on pushing for a new 1RM in the squats and press. I do this by having lifters build to a moderately heavy single, about 30lbs under your max or so on week one, and each week add ten pounds to your top set so that on week four, you hit a PR. You’ll still need some volume to eek out that last bit of hypertrophy, so performing 4x4 as a drop set after your top single on the first three week works well.
However, the squat and press are typically very fatiguing and require more recovery, so it’s generally a smart idea to pull back on the intensity and volume of your olympic lifts. The problem is, most people don’t like to do this, so I’ve found that going heavy on the load-limiting variations of the olympic lifts is a great way to get what you want, while also getting the recovery that you need. In this instance, your anchor lift might be a double pause snatch, and because the lift has two pauses in it, it will be inherently lighter than a normal snatch.
Now, that’s not to say we won’t go heavy on the olympic lifts at all, I’ve found it’s good to keep that in your training, but just applying some kind of qualifier that makes it harder to go heavy works just as well. One way I do this is by having lifters build to a heavy single after an OTM progression. Something like 10 mins at 75%, then 4 singles to build to a heavy top set for the day. Then, each week decrease the minutes, and increase the weight for both the OTM work and the four singles that follow. Some lifters won’t be able to push that hard due to the cardio, so they won’t have much of the fatigue that comes from attempting heavy weights they could hit while feeling fresh. However, some lifters with a good base of cardio like crossfitters may actually hit PR’s in this phase, despite all the fatigue from the strength work.
On day two, I’ll usually program the exact load limiting variation that you use as you anchor lift, but as a power instead of a full. This helps keep the weight lighter, while also helping you drill some of the positional technique that you may need to practice more.
For your accessory work, I tend to prefer pulling back the intensity of your exercises so that you aren’t over-fatiguing the muscle groups you want to feel fresh for maxing. This means that instead of using the maximum possible weight for your rep range, maybe you just leave about 10-15 pounds in the tank and make every set a manageable set rather than a challenging set.
Here’s a sample week of training taken directly from my 3-Day OlyStrong Team Program
Phase 4: Peaking Phase For Olympic Weightlifting
The final phase is what you’ve been training for for the last three months - the peaking phase.
Now that you have all this newfound strength, it’s time to convert that into PR’s on your olympic lifts.
For the strength work, I’ve found doing more pauses in your training is a great way to limit the amount of weight, and consequent fatigue you generate, while still feeling strong in your legs. I typically will program a 5x2 pause squat, and each week decrease the sets while slowly increasing the weight. It should be said that these squats will be much lighter than they have been all cycle, usually in the 70-80% range, but with an emphasis on moving the weight as fast as possible.
You anchor lift for the olympic lifts is just a heavy single snatch and clean and jerk.
Each week on day three you’ll work up to a heavy top set, and increase the weight each week until you hit a PR on week four. Sometimes you can do some moderate volume work with these heavier weights. Something like 3x1@85% on week one, 3x1@88% on week one, and 2x1@90% on week three. If you just need more practice with those top-end weights.
On day one, you’ll simply follow the base OTM Progression we started with in phase one, however for some less advanced lifters, working up to a heavy single after the OTM work can be useful, both physically and psychologically. It gives you multiple attempt to PR so if you aren’t feeling great on the day we are supposed to go heavy, that’s ok, you have more chances. And, because less advanced lifters aren’t going to be as fatigued by their PR weights as an advanced lifter is, you won’t have a hard time recovering either.
On day two, I’ll have lifters just perform 3-5 sets of one between 75-85%. This helps you feel sharp and fast, without too much volume to recover from, and without being too fatiguing that it might limit what you can do on the max day on day three.
As far as accessory work goes, I recommend taking it somewhat easy here. It might be a good idea to do more exercises that target smaller muscle groups, or even more plyometric work to help you feel fast and springy. But there’s no need to push the intensity or volume of more bodybuilding-style exercises here.
Here’s a sample week of training taken directly from my 3-Day OlyStrong Team Program
Hopefully, you found this article helpful and at the very least got a few ideas for your own training program. If you’d like to see what this looks like for yourself, then make sure to check out a free week of my OlyStrong 3-Day Program here!
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below or ask in my free discord here and you can even drop a video in the #form-checks channel for a form check!
By the way, I’ve got a free beginner weightlifting guide and a 6-week program! If you’re new to the olympic lifts, then check it out here!