Wukong Protocol

These are supplemental notes to the training app.

Overview

‘Wukong Protocol’ is a year long (47 weeks, to be exact) training block designed to build muscle and bullet proof weak points.

If you are looking for ‘general training’ or have specific hypertrophy goals, this will probably suit you.

This is a program built for busy folks. The gym sessions are always capped out at 60 minutes at 3x a week to keep it manageable. You’ll be looking at budgeting 180 minutes a week of actual gym time (you can choose to go over, of course). 

The training block is broken down into 5 programs, or phases, throughout the year.

Phase	Duration	Split	Goal
Phase 1	14 weeks	Push Pull Legs	hypertrophy
Phase 2	7 weeks	Full Body	strength with compound focus
Phase 3	14 weeks	Upper Lower	hypertrophy
Phase 4	7 weeks	Push Pull Legs	strength with unilateral focus
Phase 5	5 weeks	Full Body	groundwork and movement

We utilise block periodisation to allow alternating hypertrophy cycles and strength cycles. This allows us to mitigate certain limitations with 3x a week training not allowing a full scope of both hypertrophy and strength training across a single week.

It’s important to note ‘strength’ in this context isn’t referring to just maxing out with a 1 rep max. In fact the entire program does not ask for a 1RM the entire year. Instead we are looking to develop specific strength attributes such as creating full body tension, and targeted unilateral work to build strength asymmetrically.

The weekly microcycle split is also strategically varied depending on the exact goal of each phase. A Push Pull Legs split, an Upper Lower split, and different Full Body splits are utilised.

This allows us strike the ideal balance between fully hitting a muscle and sufficient frequency of targeting muscles. It also introduces variety into training, which when done right is potentially more efficacious at best and neutral at worse, without veering into ineffective ‘muscle confusion’ territory.

Considerations

• On deloads
  • Each training phase has a deload week built in every 6 weeks. This is a practical point to allow for life happening, and not something strictly necessary in terms of physiological adaptations.
  • This also doesn’t need to be done right at the end of 6 weeks, and it also doesn’t need to be 7 days. Instead think of as a number between 3 to 7 days, that can be used as free passes any time throughout the 6 weeks.
  • Let’s say you run through 6 weeks of training with no blockers. Great, take 3 days rest, maybe a mini workout of a third or half the sets if you’re restless, and keep progressing. 
  • Let’s say as you run through 6 weeks of training, life gets in the way. Busy work, getting sick, etc. You take a full 7 days complete break after week 3. Now when week 6 comes around, just keep moving on with the next phase.
• On calendar planning
  • The total training block will run for 47 weeks if all goes according to plan. Of course with such a long time frame, it may go under (if the deloads all go well) or over (if life gets in the way).
  • If you intend to kick off this training roughly in line with a calendar year, try to start early to mid December and not January 1 if at all possible.
  • If you run ahead of schedule (a good thing!) you may well have around 6 more weeks of training to end a calendar year. You could choose to repeat Wukong Protocol, move on to another program, or also add on your favourite 6 week phase out of the 5 to finish up the year.
  • If you run behind schedule, that’s not an issue. The beauty of hypertrophy training or ‘general training’ is it’s flexible and malleable. Just keep running it to the end, or if you mentally really want to align phase 1 with January 1, stop the program anytime in Phase 5 and restart the entire Wukong Protocol.
• On all phases
  • It’s worth repeating each ‘phase’ can also be run separately. This is not some gimmicky transitional busy-work but a fully fledged program in its own right.
  • Of special mention is phase 1 and phase 3; these are serious hypertrophy programs that could each be run independently and form the crux of the entire training block.
• On Phase 5
  • Phase 5 is a special phase that doesn’t require access to a commercial gym. More reasoning is listed in its specific section. The idea of course is to recognise a gym is useful simply as it allows more equipment and thus more regressions and progressions. At the same time we never want to be mentally beholden to it either.
  • The intent is this phase be timed if you do plan to be away from home, on vacation for instance.
  • If that applies to you, then this phase can be reshuffled to anywhere on the calendar year.
  • If that doesn’t apply, feel free to simply run through it at the end of the year.

Phase 1

This is our Push Pull Legs training block.

The PPL split is 12 weeks of training 3x a week, so 14 weeks in the calendar when including for deloads (rest, sickness, holidays, etc).

More specifically, it will be two 6 week blocks.

The order of each Push, Pull, and Legs day can be reshuffled depending on your schedule, but ideally keep it chugging along the same order.

For each week, it is:

3 days x 6 exercises

In other words, three full body days, each with 6 exercises with 2-3 sets per session.

With 3 days of training, the microcycle (what typically constitutes a week of training) is extremely straightforward.

• Day 1 – Full body (with a Push focus)
• Day 2 – Full body (with a Pull focus)
• Day 3 – Full Body (with a Leg focus)

The session structure will look like this:

• Exercise A (of Push, Pull, or Legs)
• Exercise B (of the same Push, Pull, or Legs)
• Exercise C (of the same Push, Pull, or Legs)
• Exercise D (of the same Push, Pull, or Legs)
• Exercise E (of the alternate Push, Pull, or Legs)
• Exercise F (of the remaining Push, Pull, or Legs)

Movements

As always, there are no magic exercises. Instead, it’s more useful to think of a variety of movement patterns, or movement slots, that should be done. For each movement slot, there’s a variety of exercises that would work equally well.

For a 3x a week split, these movement slots should be considered the base.

• Chest/Shoulder/Triceps
  • A horizontal push, aka a variety of flat or slight incline presses
  • A vertical push, aka a variety of high incline or vertical presses
  • A chest fly movement
  • A shoulder abduction, aka lateral raise
  • A rear delt movement
  • An elbow extension, aka tricep pushdown or extension
• Back/Abs/Biceps
  • A horizonal pull, aka a variety of rows
  • A vertical pull, aka a variety of pullups or pulldowns
  • A pullover movement
  • An ab extension, aka a variety of leg raises
  • An erector extension, aka a back extension
  • An elbow flexion, aka bicep curl
• Quads/Hams/Glutes/Calves
  • A squat, aka any quad dominant, upright squat
  • A hinge, aka a Romanian Deadlift variation
  • A lunge, ideally a glute biased lunge pattern, aka a variety of split squats
  • A knee extension, aka a machine leg extension
  • A knee flexion, aka a machine seated or lying leg curl
  • A straight knee ankle flexion/extension, aka calf raise

Exercises

For a complete list of exercise options, check out this list of exercises.

Although there is no singular best exercise, here are some default suggested exercises. These should be treated as an excellent starting point, but certainly not the be all and end all. Among other things limiting extraneous decisions can minimise choice overload and allow us to focus on the things that really matter – consistency and effort.

• Chest
  • DB Slight Incline Bench (at a ~5 degree incline)
  • Pec Deck
• Shoulders
  • Smith Machine High Incline Press (at a ~70 degree incline)
  • 1-arm Cable Lateral Raise
  • Cable Rear Delt Fly
• Triceps
  • Cable Standing Overhead Extension
• Back
  • Pull-up
  • 1-arm Dumbbell Row (staggered stance with front foot same side as the weight)
  • DB Pullover
• Abs
  • 45 degree Back Extension
  • Supported Leg Raise
• Biceps
  • Cable EZ Bar Curl
• Quads
  • Hack Squat
  • Leg Extension
• Hams
  • Smith Machine Romanian Deadlift
  • Seated Leg Curl
• Glutes
  • Smith Machine FFE Lunge (glute biased)
• Calves
  • Leg Press Calf Raise

Sessions

Push

Pull

Legs

Phase 2

This is our strength focused, full body split training block.

It is 6 weeks of training 3x a week, so 7 weeks in the calendar when including for deloads (rest, sickness, holidays, etc).

The focus is on big compound movements, and throughout the movements work on bracing and tension in the body. Think of this as a secondary, ‘recovery’ type training block after 14 weeks of hypertrophy focused training.

Again hypertrophy blocks still build strength, and strength block still builds muscle, it’s just a small degree of difference and intent. The order of each day can be reshuffled depending on your schedule, but ideally keep it running in the same order.

Each Full Body day will have 3 compound movements (lower body, push, pull) and finishing off with 2 isolations. The isolation work can be sped up and/or supersetted if you’re short on time.

Phase 3

Overview

This is a quality, heavy duty hypertrophy program in its own right.

The goal here is packing on as much lean muscle tissue as possible; given it is very well balanced in body part distribution this would work equally well for guys or girls.

This methodology is heavily inspired by DC Training – Dante Trudel’s training concept popularised in the early 2000s. Other obvious influences are the concepts from the late great John Meadows and Jordan Peters. A couple of key modifications to adjust it to be more sustainable and fit for intermediate natural lifters. In sum:

• integrating partial reps and additional lengthened biased exercises in lieu of Dante’s original loaded stretching concept
• slight modifications in movement slot list and preferred exercises
• usage of different intensity techniques including a variety of drop sets

Onto the actual program.

The Upper Lower split is 12 weeks of training 3x a week, so 14 weeks in the calendar when including for deloads (rest, sickness, holidays, etc).

More specifically, it will be a 2 week cycle run 6 times.

There will be 3 upper days and 3 lower days split over every two weeks, so it looks like this:

• Week 1: Upper-Lower-Upper
• Week 2: Lower-Upper-Lower

The concept is very straightforward. We are going to cut down all the fluff and non-essentials and distil everything into 12 movement slots to cover our training.

Then, we’ll pick an appropriate exercise for each movement slot, and simply beat the logbook – increasing reps and load each session until you cannot. Needless to say, the execution of the reps need to be (near) perfect; getting sloppier reps to get a higher number than last session will render the whole program pretty useless.

It sounds simple but there’s a reason it’s not for beginners.

• In your first few years of training, you’re going to want to expose yourself to more movements, more exercises, and more variety. This does not do that.
• Training to failure with (near) perfect form is a skill that needs a while to get to a level where you can do it for a mere 12 exercises and squeeze enough juice out of the entire training week.
• And finally if the absolute tonnage of weights lifted is too low, this method is unlikely to work.

Intensity, volume, frequency

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

Frequency is moderate – each muscle group is hit 1.5x times a week.

Volume is low. There’s 2 sets per muscle group per session. Note that the 2nd set is usually a set applied with a high intensity technique (more on that later). So let’s count that as 2 sets by itself.

So on average, that’s 4.5 sets per muscle group a week.

This is well below the ‘science’ recommendation of 10-20 sets per muscle group per week. A lot of this is made up for in the intensity department.

Intensity is extremely high. Barring free weight movements that tax the lower back, every single set is pushed to failure. This is a skill in itself, and you’ll get better with this as the weeks progress. This is the primary mechanism for allowing us to apply progressive overload in this program, and we’ll be pushing it very very hard.

Microcyle split

The next point worth mentioning is this. You can run with what we’ve gone through so far, and spam this Upper-Lower structure ad nauseum, beating the logbook every single session.

Now that can work, for a time, but I would prefer to have built in mechanisms to extend the longevity of the program, and also pre-emptively avoid any overuse issues from hitting the exact same motor pattern 3 times a fortnight.

In fact, my recommendation is to have 3 sets of exercises to rotate.

So the microcyle split will actually look like this:

This is a 7 week block repeated twice. That’s 6 weeks and 1 deload week.

The 6 weeks will let you run through a full rotation 3 times.

Movement slots

So what are the 12 key movements slots?

As you can see the program design is very clean. One could almost say this is minimalist, but the training intensity will be anything but.

Guys will be happy to see not 2 but 3 movements for arms (triceps, biceps, forearms).

Girls, with quads, adductors, hams, and a posterior chain movement (which will hit glutes), the lower body is well covered as well.

This split will lead to a pretty balanced physique development. One thing it may lack is ‘shaping’, particularly of smaller muscle groups. For instance if you have lagging rear delts, this program may not bring that up to speed. However, in all likelihood 99.9% of people who think they have a lagging rear delt or bicep or glutes, wouldn’t have that problem if they simply increased lean muscle tissue across their entire body.

These 12 movement slots will be spread across the Upper and the Lower days.

Session design

A few things might jump out at you here.

Yes, abs can really be done on either day. However, the Lower day is already extremely fatiguing and jam packed, so it makes sense to do it at the start of the Upper day.

We utilise a couple of classic bodybuilding exercise sequencing here. The idea is to sequence movements in such a way to minimise another muscle being the limiting factor in a movement, and also enhance pump and blood flow.

There is the chest-shoulders-tricep sequence. If you hit shoulders before chest, they may fail first. If you hit triceps before shoulders OR chest, the triceps may fail first.

And there is the calves-hams-adductor-quads sequence. 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.

Finally we hit forearms-biceps in this order, this is just a little tip from the late great John Meadows to get blood pumped in your elbows and just absolutely minimise any niggling elbow discomfort.

The other thing you may notice is the days specifically end with posterior chain and quads. This is very intentional. The most fatiguing exercise is done last, both so you can mentally ramp up towards that heavy set and so you don’t have to train more after. After a near-failure set of Stiff Legged Deadlifts or Hack Squats (or a number of other variations), the last thing you’re going to want to do is pile on more exercises.

Exercises

Now we want to figure out what exercises fit into our 3 rotations of the 12 movement slots.

I’m going to provide some suggestions as a starting point, generally reserving these to equipment available in many commercial gyms.

But the overarching message is:

• Exercises should be loadable to allow serious progression (for example, a barbell overhead press instead of a dumbbell lateral raise)
• Exercises should be stable (for example, dips on parallel bars instead of ring dips)
• Exercises should be close to a full range of motion of the muscle, and as a bonus bias (i.e. it is more difficult) towards the lengthened position

Good exercise selection is the heart of any good program.

• Rotation #1 has an emphasis was on full range of motion, brutally effective exercises, with a focus on lengthened biased exercises.
• Rotation #2 has an emphasis on a slightly different movement plane (e.g. Leg Press instead of a Hack Squat), a different part of the musculature (e.g. upper abs instead of lower abs), or simply a different heavy-duty exercise for variety.
• Rotation #3 has an emphasis specifically on a lighter movements with a greater range of motion in the lengthened position (e.g. Tricep Extension instead of a JM Press), or just a lighter variation (e.g. Standing Leg Curl instead of Seated Leg Curl).

Chest

For chest, with only 1 slot we have to go with a heavy horizontal push as opposed to a fly movement. This could be a plate loaded machine, pin loaded machine, smith machine, barbell, cambered bar, or dumbbells.

There’s a couple of different variables to consider:

• Angle of pressing – slight incline vs flat
• Alignment – converging vs non-converging
• Stability – machines vs free weights
• Unilateral vs bilateral

Here’s why the plate-loaded incline chest press is so good.

Both machine chest presses and DB bench are a converging press. This will allow just a little bit more tension in the shortened position. While we know the lengthened position is the most important for muscle growth, having a better strength curve is always a good thing.

Both machine chest presses and DB bench also allow each pec to fire individually. Again, this by itself is not a critical factor, but it is nice to ensure any minor imbalance is worked on.

Unlike the barbell bench or DB bench however, you’ll be absolutely locked in and can squeeze out those very last reps to failure. With a barbell bench, there’s an issue with pushing to failure and (compared to a machine press) it’s still a technical movement. There’ll need to be extra effort to ensure any extra reps lifted isn’t coming from just arching higher, or getting more leg drive. With a DB bench, your stabiliser muscles will end up being a factor at the end of a hard set.

An incline chest press is the icing on the cake. Any flat press will hit the entire pectoris, and any (slight) incline press will still hit the entire pectoris. Anecdotally however, there’s just been far too much in the trenches experience of a slight incline biasing the upper chest fibres to ignore. That’s why we’re going to have a preference for the incline chest press.

Obviously you’ll likely be limited by whatever equipment you have at your gym.

The two best pieces I know of is the Panatta Incline Chest Press and the Prime Equipment Incline Chest Press. Your standard Hammer Strength is still an excellent choice.

Shoulders

The clear options here are barbell, dumbbell, and machine vertical / high incline presses. Overall, these are all fairly equivalent.

However, I have to give the nod to the Smith Machine Behind-the-neck Press.

This may seem like a bit of a controversial choice but there’s a number of proponents for this, from Skip Hill on the bodybuilding side of things, Alec Enkiri from a functional training perspective, folks like Eugene Teo generally encouraging any movement is safe as long as it is loaded properly, and so on.

The BTN Press allows the side delt to be the biased more than the front delt. To do this, you’ll likely want a wider grip than your usual grip for an overhead press.

For our hypertrophy purposes, we want to remove stability concerns. Anyone who’s OHP’d a decent weight will tell you your core is at risk of giving out before your delts. Now the BTN press will have less absolute load than the OHP, but the same concept still applies. By using a smith machine, we can perfectly standardise the form, range of motion, and tempo – allowing us to focus purely on pushing the side delts.

Triceps

The JM Press is the perfect middle ground along the spectrum of folding (elbow) presses.

Unlike a skull crusher, more weight can be loaded.

Unlike a close grip bench press, the triceps go through a greater range of motion.

Using the smith machine again allows the stability we need to hammer the triceps to absolute failure.

Biceps

Unilateral options allow us to load the biceps more.

The preacher pad allows us to remove momentum and ensure the movement is simply an elbow flexion with maximum intensity.

Forearms

The danger of forearms is selecting exercises that end up being too light.

A neutral grip allows a strong position while still significantly engaging the brachialis.

The swiss bar is the perfect unilateral implement to allow this neutral grip.

Again, a preacher pad allows us to ensure consistency and remove momentum.

Back

There’s just something magical about pull-ups.

I’m not even 100% sure why, but I’m definitely not the only one who thinks this well. Pulldowns are great, but somehow all the pulldowns in the world don’t seem to be able to entirely replace the pull-up.

Dante Trudel himself invented the rack chin exercise (a pull-up variation), precisely because there is just something to the pull-UP that is unique as compared to the pullDOWN. If I had to speculate, we know how lengthened positions are more conducive to hypertrophy, and the pull-up just allows gravity to do its work in adding to that stretch.

Specifically, we want a pull-up on STABLE handles.

This means no ring pull-ups for the purposes of this movement slot. (As a general strength training movement, ring pull-ups are a clear S tier).

Next, I have a preference for grippy handles that are angled slightly to allow 2 o’clock and 10 o’clock position on the hands, somewhere in between neutral and pronated.

Finally, we want to ensure our back fails, not our grip. You’re going to want some VersaGrips or straps, and possibly add some chalk on top of that.

Posterior

The back side of anybody defines their physique, and in a sense this movement slot defines this program.

The exercises here will hit everything, from traps to lats to erectors to glutes to hamstrings – muscles both guys and girls care about.

Here, old school is the best school in my opinion.

We want a hip hinge, and one that allows significant loading.

The deadlift is of course an obvious choice, but it becomes such a full body movement it’s hard to focus on those target muscles.

Logically, the stiff leg deadlift is the winner. Just brutal, simple, and effective.

It’s a fairly low skill movement as far as barbell movement goes.

We don’t really need to worry about our stabilisers failing or some such.

Done with VersaGrips with straps, and on flat soled shoes, this is all we need to build everything in the posterior chain.

The unique point about this slot is the stiff leg deadlift is so fatiguing we aren’t going to want a very similar variant done 3x a fortnight.

For rotation #2, a barbell row is a logical complimentary choice. Specifically, barbell rows done relatively (but not 100%) strict, that do NOT touch the ground. With the SLDL, the plates hit the ground under control each rep. It makes sense to vary it up here to allow that isometric tension on this lower fatigue movement.

For rotation #3, we specifically want to give our lower back a break. That’s why we want a chest-supported row. Any number of chest-supported horizontal rowing variations would work well here. But the chest-supported T-bar machine remains a favourite; there’s little better for working on pure back thickness.

Abs

I’m a big believer in a couple of things for abdominal training.

One, bodyweight exercises are fantastic. Cables are great too of course, and there are interesting variations you can do on machines. For instance, a standing ab pulldown can be done on a pullover machine, if you’re in a gym with a pullover machine. But bodyweight exercises are just extremely effective, easy to standardise across gyms, and multiple variations allow a great stretch.

Two, an ab mat is key. If you’re gym doesn’t have an ab mat, I strongly suggest you acquire one yourself.

Three, combine points one and two to get a wicked stretch in the lengthened position at the bottom of every single rep.

That’s pretty much all you need for effective ab work.

There are obviously two movements we want:

• an upper ab movement, bringing torso to legs
• a lower ab movement, bringing legs to torso

These are pretty much equally important. However, just to select something for rotation #1 I would have to give the nod to a lower ab movement.

A decline leg raise, done on an approximately 15 degree decline, with your lower back resting on an ab mat, will allow an unparalleled stretch of your abs each rep.

Flip the position to the inverse, and on the same bench, on the same ab mat, a decline sit-up is an S tier exercise – this goes in rotation #2.

Finally a hanging leg raise, starting with toe to bar reps, is never a bad idea.

There’s the additional point that hangs are just useful and restorative to your spine and back musculature, making it a perfect fit for rotation #3.

Quads

All manner of back-supported squats are excellent choices.

The pendulum squat or hack squat would have to be king, allowing us to hit an ass-to-grass squat safely and push to absolute failure.

The old standard leg press is still excellent, and the inverse position allows for some variety. This is in rotation #2.

The one thing that’s missing with this movements is taking the quads through a complete range of motion; that is, ass-to-grass with the hips pushed maximally forward. Essentially we are describing a sissy squat.

While this is great, a bodyweight sissy squat is also extremely unstable. A sissy hack squat allows us to replicate this motion of the much more stable smith machine. Full credits to Scott Stevenson for popularising this exercise.

You’ll likely want to be wearing Olympic weightlifting or dedicated squatting shoes to allow a sufficient heel wedge. The gold standard in these shoes is of course the Asics 727.

Hams

This is a simple choice. Leg curl machines are all S tier.

The hamstrings are a bi-articulate muscle so we need a knee flexion movement as well as a hip hinge (the posterior slot).

Leg curl machines simply offer unmatched stimulus to fatigue ratio, and stability to push to failure unlike a glute ham-raise, for example.

The seated leg curl has to have the top slot as it allows the most lengthened position for the hamstrings, and it’s also more difficult to unintentionally cheat with the lower back at the end of a fatiguing set.

Of course, the lying leg curl and standing leg curl are also S tier. They are in rotation #2 and #3 respectively.

Calves

This is also quite straight forward. There are really only two types of calf raises – straight knee calf raises and bent knee calf raises.

We want a straight knee calf raise as it biases the gastrocnemius, the larger of the two between the soleus.

Done on a leg press also just avoids any minor axial loading fatigue. This is not really a big deal, but since we’re also loading up on deadlifts, this is just slightly preferred in my opinion.

Of course, the standing calf raise machine and seated calf raise machine are also S tier. They are in rotation #2 and #3 respectively.

Intensifiers

There’s a few different high intensity techniques, or intensifiers, we use.

Again, I want to emphasis intensifiers should be exercise specific. Some exercises simply lends itself better to different techniques.

Cluster set partials

Go to full ROM failure, rest 20 seconds.

Go to full ROM failure again, rest 20 seconds.

Go to full ROM failure and continue with partials until failure.

I find cluster partials are ideal on any machines (smith, plate-loaded, pin-loaded) and cables.

Drop sets

Go to full ROM failure then immediately drop 30% load and go to full ROM failure and continue with partials until failure.

I find drop sets seem to work a bit better for free weight exercises (barbells and dumbbells).

Widowmakers

Go to full ROM failure, and rest 3-5 breaths.

Continue with reps, resting 3-5 breaths when necessary, to hit 20 full ROM reps.

Widowmakers are only done for quads. Of all the muscle groups you probably have to deal with the most burn for quads and delts. For our purposes here, we’re going to focus on just the quad work. As anyone who’s done a long set of leg pressing can attest to, there’s always 1 more rep with a back-supported squatting motion.

To be honest, there’s nothing magical about the 20 rep number. There certainly isn’t any physiological reason as to why it work build more muscle than 19 reps or 21 reps.

But it’s simply an easy number to mentally push towards, and when you’re at the tail end of the set every little thing counts.

There’s also the allure of old school 20 rep squatting, and if that adds a bit of extra motivation, all the better.

Mechanical drop sets

Go to full ROM failure, and continue the set with as much ROM as possible, until very limited partials.

This mostly applies to bodyweight exercises, where there can be quite a large degree of difference in range of motion.

Very limited partials is a bit hard to define, and mostly depends on the particular exercise.

For pull-ups, the set may look something like this:

1. 5 reps of a pull-up to sternum height, Gironda style
2. 3 reps of a pull-up to neck height
3. 3 reps of a pull-up to chin height
4. 2 reps of a pull-up to nose height
5. 2 reps of a pull-up to forehead height

That’s one set.

For decline leg raises, the set may look something like this:

1. 5 reps of a dragon flag / candlestick
2. 5 reps of a straight leg raise
3. 3 reps of a bent knee leg raise

And that’s again one set.

Partials

This applies to adductor movements.

Deep stretch of the adductors are incredibly useful but applying crazy intensifers to it simply skew the risk-reward ratio unfavourably. We want to avoid micro tears of the adductors.

A simple partial is all we want.

Straight sets

Finally, there’s a couple of instances where we want to avoid or minimise intensity techniques.

This is mostly with free weight movements that tax the lower back.

In our suggested exercises, this would just be the Stiff Leg Deadlift and Barbell Row. If you subbed in any free weight squat, that would be the same deal as well. For any of these exercises, stay 1-2 reps away from failure.

Progression

For each exercise, we want a target rep range and a set mode of progression.

This is the structure we’ll follow:

• Top set – done as a straight set
• Back off set – done with a high intensity technique, either a cluster set, drop set, or widowmaker set

Set 1 (the top set)

This is a straight set, done with full ROM reps, to failure.

Failure in this context is technical failure of the full range of motion.

So we are NOT doing partial reps here, with the exception of certain bodyweight movements. These are noted as mechanical drop sets.

Apart from this, the goal is simple.

Take a straight set to technical failure until you’re unable to complete 1 full ROM rep – this means you try to do a rep and fail.

You record the load and reps, and next session you are going to aim to beat it. You should have a mixture of dread and anticipation in the days coming up to the next session.

You WILL need to push past some mental barriers for this to work.

Aim to increase the reps, at least by 1, possibly more. When you hit the upper end of the rep range for an exercise, next session up the load by 2kg / 2.5kg, or possibly 5kg towards the beginning of the program, if you’re feeling great.

This all falls apart if you simply use more momentum and cheat the reps. Consistency of reps is key here.

Set 2 (the back off set)

This is usually going to be with a high intensity technique.

The rep range in set 2 includes BOTH the reps of the main set and the intensifier.

For example, if you hit 8 + 4 + 2 in a cluster set, that’s a total of 14. If you get 11 + 4 in a drop set, that’s a total of 15.

The mechanical drop set for most (but not all) bodyweight exercises works a bit differently.

The rep range for these are always listed as 5-10/20.

As described above, this means that for instance a pull-up is done to sternum (Gironda style), then neck, then chin, then nose, until your arms are just breaking 90 degrees.

Weight will be added when you hit:

• 10 FULL range of motion pull-ups, i.e. Gironda style sternum pull-ups, OR
• 20 any range of motion pull-ups, i.e. counting all the partial reps done within the one set

The same applies for the bodyweight ab exercises.

Phase 4

This is (a different type of) a PPL split consisting of a pure Push, Pull and Legs day each week, for 6 weeks.

The order of each Push, Pull, and Legs day can be reshuffled depending on your schedule, but ideally keep it running along in the same order.

Again, treat this as a ‘recovery’ phase but one where you still push hard, just in different ways.

Unilateral work especially helps enhance the mind muscle connection and body awareness. Get a squeeze in the shortened positions and a deep stretch in the lengthened position. Overall it might not be as systemically tiring, but you should be feeling tired in new and different parts of your body.

Phase 5

This split is 5 weeks of training 3x a week.

Unlike other splits there is more flexibility here to cut it short if necessary.

As the name suggests, in this training block we’ll focus exclusively on training without equipment. Learning how to train with minimal equipment is an invaluable skill so that you can never use that as an excuse to yourself to not train.

We will also focus on quality of movement here – notice there are no reps, rather time-based intervals. As an added bonus (though this is not the reason for implementing this protocol), you will know exactly how long each session takes down to the minute.

Since this training block is especially designed to be your primary recovery block – to be done when you’re on holiday or taking a mental break from the gym – sessions are shorter and you will know exactly by how much. Each session will have a structure of lower body work, isometrics, and then locomotion.

What’s next