Workout of the Week #64

Welcome to Workout of the Week, number 64. This time we have a five-day bigger lifts program. Hang on a minute, Christian. Yes, we have done that before. Workout of the Week number 23 was a five-day bigger lifts program. Workout of the Week number 47 as well. Anyway, there will be slight variations within all of these workouts. Yeah.

So what’s the training goal? Well, the title suggests we want to improve our big lifts. Yeah, I’ve chosen a couple of big lifts over here, but they are interchangeable if you choose to.

So training variables: 85% of the one-rep max to 90% of the one-rep max for the big lifts, and then 72.5% to 87.5% for the assistance lifts. The rep ranges: 3 for the big lifts and 3 to 10 for the assistance lifts. The exertion: hard to near maximum. The training effort is a max effort for the big lifts and a repeated effort for the assistance lifts.

Let’s have a look at the exercises. The big lifts I’ve chosen are a squat, a bench, a deadlift, a row, and a single-leg squat. Yeah. So a lower body push, an upper body push, a lower body pull, an upper body pull, and a lower body unilateral push. Yeah, there’s still the typo in there. It should be LB instead of UB.

So the assistance lifts. I’ve chosen to do the same movement as the big lift. Yeah, some people vary it. So for example, if you have an upper body push as the main lift, they choose to do the assistance lifts for the lower body or an upper body pull or something like that. Yeah. So we saw that in the modified 5/3/1. Yeah, they vary it a bit. Anyway, many ways lead to Rome. So long story made short: the assistance lifts are lower body push variation, upper body push variation, lower body pull variation, upper body pull variation, and a lower body unilateral push variation.

The exercise order: We work from the bigger lifts to the smaller lifts.

If we have a look at more training variables, we train five days a week as a training frequency. It’s a station training. And the training split is movement-focused. Yeah, so I just outlined—we do squat, bench, deadlift, and we do a row and a single-leg squat. Or if you want to name it: upper body push, upper body pull, and so on and so on. You can also do that. Anyway, it’s a movement or exercise focus.

So how does it look? Here we are, and we’ll jump right into it.

Here we are inside our workout. You download it. You get an overview of the workout. Then you see we train five days a week. You can do five consecutive days, but you could also do three days, one day of rest, two days, one day of rest. Yeah, that’s up to you.

Anyway, Workout Number One. Here we focus on our squat. So we start with the back squat as the big lift, and then the assistance lift is a box squat and an RDL. Hang on a minute—I just contradicted myself. Yes. So we do the assistance lift: one of a similar movement pattern and one of an antagonistic movement pattern. Yeah. So we have a lower body push, which is the squat, the back squat. Then the first assistance lift is another lower body push. And the RDL for the posterior chain is a lower body pull. So we do three sets of five at 85%. Then we do three sets of six at 77.5%, and we do two sets of eight at 75%.

Then we move to Workout Number Two. There is the bench press, the barbell shoulder press, and dips. Same structure: three sets of five at 85%, three sets of six at 77.5%, and then two sets of eight at 75%. Yeah, so the rest between the exercises is five minutes—the inter-set rest.

And then we move to Workout Number Three. This is our hinging, deadlifting movement. Yeah. So we start with a deadlift. Then we do the deadlift from the hang. Some call it the floating deadlift or halting deadlift, I think, is another word. Anyway, you bring the deadlift down and then just hold the bar at the mid-shin position. So it’s floating a few centimeters above the ground. Yeah. Therefore, we have to reduce the intensity a little bit—otherwise, you will not be able to make it. And then we combine that with the reverse hypers. Yeah. So same here: we do three sets of five at 85% for the main lift. For the assistance lift, you can see the intensity is reduced. I just explained why. Three sets of six at 72.5%, and then the reverse hypers: two sets of eight.

We go to Workout Number Four, which is then the upper body pull. We do a bench row. We do pull-ups. And we do a dumbbell single-arm bent-over row. Also here, the big lift: three sets of five at 85%. Three sets of six at 77.5% for the first assistance exercise, and two sets of eight at 75% for the second assistance exercise.

And Workout Number Five. This time we do our unilateral squat variation. We do the Bulgarian split squat, the step-ups, and walking lunges. And also here: three sets of five at 85% for the big lift, three sets of six at 77.5% for the assistance lift, and two sets of eight at 75% for the second assistance lift.

You download that PDF. You get a glossary explaining the terms if you don’t know them already. You can read about myself. You can see what my former athletes and athletes have to say about me, my mentees, and my former colleagues and colleagues. And last but certainly not least, you can subscribe to the membership. What’s the membership? We’ll talk about that in a second. But in there, you get not only the workout which I presented here, which is the first week—you get the full training program, which is a four-week periodized program.

So let’s jump back and finish it. What are the next steps?

You download that PDF. You join the membership. Inside the membership, I outlined you get the four-week periodized program. Considering we are in week 64, or Workout of the Week 64, you get another 63 four-week periodized training programs targeting different training goals at different training frequencies: two days a week, three days a week, four days, up to six days a week.

You like and subscribe. And you can grab all free workouts here. You can watch the previous workout here. If you haven’t subscribed, this is your last chance to do it. Otherwise, I’ll see you next week with the next Workout of the Week.