Gear Third

Overview

‘Gear Third’ is a program for intermediates or above.

The goal here is of course pure hypertrophy, with an emphasis on driving up volume – that is, increasing the number of sets per muscle group – in order to achieve progressive overload.

This is a very modular program which would work equally well for guys or girls (more on that in the microcyle split).

It is also relatively sustainable. This is a 7 or 8 week block, depending on the exact split, that can be run back to back effectively twice for a total of 14 or 16 weeks.

Best results will of course be seen on a bulk or maintenance, but this is also one of the more effective programs (between Gear Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth) to run on a cut.

This methodology is heavily inspired by classic John Meadows programming. Other key influences include the methodologies from Joe Bennett and Jordan Peters, and of course the recent interpretation of exercise science results led by Stronger by Science (Greg Nuckols, Dr Wolf, Dr Pak, etc) and Renaissance Periodization (Dr Mike).

Onto the actual program.

This is an Push Pull Legs program run 6 days on 2 days off, or 5 days on 2 days off (i.e. 5x a week). This will look like this:

• Push-Pull-Legs + Arms OR Glutes + 1-2 of Push Pull Legs

Built in to the program is the classic bodybuilding push-pull-legs concept.

For Push days, we’ll always want to include some direct shoulder and tricep work.

For Pull days, we’ll always want to include some direct biceps and abs work.

The Arms or Glute days is arguably one of the keys to the programming; this is what turns it into a true blue bodybuilding program rather than a general strength or sport training program in disguise. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of effective hypertrophy training will NOT have a dedicated Arms or Glute days, including some of the options presented here. However, there are times when this will allow us to break past plateaus for these non-torso muscle groups.

It’s worth mentioning we won’t be applying a one muscle group a day concept here. An Arms day here will look like arms + shoulders + abs. A Glute day will look like glutes + abs + shoulders.

The second key point worth noting are the secondary days for the Push Pull Legs.

We’ll be taking a concept popularised by John Meadows here and treat these as ‘pump’ days.

This does NOT mean pump and fluff, and taking sets 10 reps away from failure.

Pump days will still be progressive overloaded, and done with controlled tempo. We will still be going near failure, typically around 1 to 2 RIR.

But the exercise selection will be tweaked to avoid fatiguing barbell lifts, focusing more and dumbbells, machines, and cables. And the rep ranges may be bumped up towards the 10-20 rep range as opposed to the 5-10 rep range.

Intensity, volume, frequency

This is a moderate frequency, high volume, and moderate intensity program.

Frequency is moderate – most large muscle groups are hit 2x times a week and most smaller muscle groups 3x times a week. I say most as there may be an exception for one muscle group that gets deprioritised depending on the exact split.

Volume is high. There’s 3-4 sets per muscle group per session. This will increase up to 4-6 sets per muscle group per session.

So on average, that’s 8-15 sets for larger muscles groups and 6-12 sets for smaller muscle groups a week.

Intensity is moderate. Reps in reserve will generally be 2 to 1, without high intensity techniques generally being avoided. As mentioned in other places, although traditionally by definition still a high intensity technique – I am not including partials and mechanical drop sets and these will be applied.

Microcyle split

8 day options

7 day options

This is where the flexibility of this split shows itself. The different days can be chained together in any number of combinations to support preferred or lagging body parts.

Balanced focused

Push-Pull-Legs-Upper-Lower is an extremely well rounded split. This is my preferred entry point to this program as a whole. After a couple of run throughs though, specialisation will probably need to occur which is where the introduction of Arms or Glutes days come into play.

For instance, this would be a good time to migrate to the 8 day microcycles.

1. 7 weeks of Push-Pull-Legs-Upper-Lower
2. repeat
3. 8 weeks of Push-Pull-Legs-Arms-Push-Legs
4. 8 weeks of Push-Pull-Legs-Arms-Pull-Legs

Upper body focused

If the sole focus is chest, back, and arm growth, this would be the split:

1. 8 weeks of Push-Pull-Legs-Arms-Push-Pull
2. repeat

Legs and glutes focused

If lower body is the focus, Legs should take priority as Day 1. There’s 4 options presented here which are equivalently good, and can be cycled between each other.

For instance, a good mesocycle design could be:

1. 8 weeks of Legs-Push-Pull-Glutes-Legs-Push
2. 8 weeks of Legs-Push-Pull-Glutes-Legs-Pull

Movement slots

As you can see there’s quite a few possibilities here.

Key movements have been outlined though note that in specific cases there may be exceptions; these should be treated more as guidelines than rigid rules. The brackets denotes some optional suggestions.

Session design

Main sessions

Pump sessions

It’s worth mentioning the program design is such that simply selecting Push A, Pull A, and Legs A will provide a decent well rounded program already. The pump sessions are in a sense supplementary, though some part of it is ultimately required as a 4 on 3 off split with these training session wouldn’t provide sufficient frequency or volume.

Push A and B

For push days, there’s always going to be a horizontal press. You’ll notice the suggestion of varying the angles, like so:

• ~0-15 degree press on Push A
• ~15-30 degree push on Push B
• ~60-70 degree press on Push A
• ~80-90 degree push on Push B

It simply makes sense to have a variety of pressing angles to build the lower pecs, upper pecs, and front delts. If chest and delts isn’t a priority, you may not run a Push B day. The beauty of this setup is we’ll have already covered the minimum volume required to still hit our pecs and delts with sufficient volume, and the extra volume if desired will allow us to hit different angles.

As always, we follow a chest-shoulders-triceps sequence. If you hit shoulders before chest, they may fail first. If you hit triceps before shoulders OR chest, the triceps may fail first.

Pull A and B

For pull days, just like for pushing there are 4 combinations of pulling that are key:

• Neutral grip, lat biased row on Pull A
• Supinated grip, upper back row on Pull B
• Neutral grip, lat biased pull on Pull B
• Supinated grip, upper back pull on Pull A

Again, note the intent of the variety. If we only get in one day for pull, we still want to hit a horizontal and vertical pull, and also target the lats and upper back.

In terms of sequencing, in general a lat biased pull should be done before upper back work. We do make an exception for pull-ups, simply because it is such a fantastic all-round back builder.

Legs A and B

We want to ensure often neglected muscles do not fall behind with legs in particular. For most people, this is some combination of calves, hamstrings, and/or adductors. Specifically, when we say hamstrings we want tons of leg curls – seated, lying, standing.

Note the sequencing of calves-hams-adductor-quads. This is old-school bodybuilding at its finest, just extremely fun sequencing that is also brutally effective and seems to minimise aggravating the knee for a lot of older experienced bodybuilders. The leg curls before squats idea in particular has wide consensus – when folks including John Meadows, Jordan Peters, Mike Israetel, Greg Nuckols, and more are all in agreement, it’s probably not a bad idea.

Exercises

Now we want to figure out some default exercises suggestions.

These should be treated as a starting point, and a good default, but there will be plenty of good alternatives.

Main sessions

Pump sessions

Intensifiers

There won’t be high intensity techniques in this block, though I don’t quite consider certain partials and mechanical drop sets as true high intensity techniques, so these will be included.

Progression

The main form of progression in this program is intensity.

Let’s break this down a bit more.

The primary way we want to make progress is by applying progressive overload.

That is, if we imagine the load * reps = x, we simply need to keep applying x + 1 each subsequent exposure to an exercise. After physical or physiological burn out, the exercise is rotated with an alternate exercise that still hits the same muscle or movement.

Of course if this was all there was to it – we’d all be benching 500kg by now.

At some stage, we will hit a wall (everyone’s may be a little different, this is where genetics come into play). It’s at this point we will need to do one of two things (and both can be done at the same time):

1. Increase recovery in diet, sleep, and stress
2. Push a set past 0 RIR failure, OR increase the number of sets

Now recovery is a bit outside the scope of a controlled program variable.

But we will be focusing on pushing sets past failure, thus first ensuring we are hitting true failure, and subsequently applying high intensity techniques.