Overview
These are training programs for folks who can commit to 3-6 hours a week of training. That’s a total duration inclusive of cardio and mobility and so on.
This is the goldilocks zone for most people and unlike the minimalist programs I don’t need to add in caveats and disclaimers about the drawbacks of minimalism.
Who will this suit?
- Beginners who have just run through The Starter Program,
- All intermediate lifters (arguably the bread and butter audience)
- Advanced trainees who can only put in a few hours of training per week. Now folks here may find this insufficient volume to make long term progress, but that would be true regardless of the exact program if you are limited in time and an advanced trainee. For the parameters of this time constraint, you’ll find this is an effective way to maintain gains and troubleshoot weak points.
Regardless if your goal is health, muscle gain, fat lost, and/or athleticism, this will probably be a good fit (one caveat noted below). It might be best described as ‘general training’ in the gym, with a bias towards hypertrophy. A hypertrophy oriented approach is always a fairly good bet if you aren’t sure of your long term fitness goals at this stage.
This may not be the best option if you are a high level athlete and training to get better at that specific sport – in that instance you will need something more customised and specific.
Training – in the gym
There are two distinct training blocks I recommend.
A year long training block at 3x a week.
A year long training block at 4x a week.
For most people, this will likely achieve the goal of getting 80-90% of results with a fairly reasonable time investment of 3-4 hours a week.
Training – outside of gym
Let’s go in order of priority.
- Hitting approximately 8000 steps daily. This is one of the most researched topics in fitness and one of the least controversial. If you’re reading this page you’ll already know the benefits. It’s simple – get your steps in as your first priority.
- 2-3 minutes of mobility work daily. You read that right, the long term goal here is to make this a daily routine 365 days a here. This is probably best done as a morning routine, and can take anywhere from 2 minutes if you’re in a rush to 10 mins if you have the time to spare. Again, something is always better than nothing here.
- Intentional cardio. This one is a bit more conditional than the first two points. We are looking to reach around 2 hours total weekly of physical activity at a higher exertion than walking. This may include:
- A physically demanding job
- Any sports you play
- Low intensity steady state cardio. With this, ideally go for approximately 30 minute bouts of cardio.