Reader
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Most everything I do for my clients is information you can get for free in about 20 minutes of searching.

The Novice Linear Progression aint a secret. You can buy the Blue Book for like $20 on Amazon. Squat, press, deadlift, bench, add weight every session. 3x5, sometimes 1x5 on deadlift. Eat more, sleep more, do it again Wednesday. That's the whole program, and I've even written extensive details and expansion on the programming stages through the phases for free that you probably downloaded to be on this list. I'll even give you the numbers: most lifters can run this until they're somewhere around 225/135/315/405 for bench/press/squat/deadlift (for 5 reps) before it stops working on its own.

Anyone telling you novice programming is complicated is selling you complexity you don't need.

But eventually, it does reach a breaking point.

One day you hit a session and the bar doesn't move. You reset, try again Friday. Same thing. You're not under-recovered, you're not sick, you've been eating well, but you just stalled and you can't move the bar another inch. Is it your form? What if you are feeling a niggle somewhere? How do you fix it?

This is where 90% of lifters quit, get hurt chasing the old program past its expiration date, or wander into "intermediate" programming they found on a forum that has zero structure, framework, or principles behind it.

Here's what actually happens next, in full:

You stop adding weight every session. You move to something like an HLM split heavy/light/medium days across the week instead of the same weight three times. Your heavy day becomes your new PR attempt. Your light day is recovery in disguise, same exercises, 70-80% of the weight, for the express purpose of letting your body catch up without losing the movement pattern. Your medium day bridges the two.

Sounds simple written out. But....

You now have to track three different weights across three different days, for four lifts, every week and adjust each one independently based on how the previous week went. Your squat might need a deload while your bench is still climbing. Your deadlift might need to drop to once week, or move to rack pulls, while everything else stays the same. You have to make sure your form is holding up well with increasing loads. Life will throw a sick kid, a work trip, or a bad sleep week into the middle of this, and now you have to decide: do I run the heavy day anyway, or shift the whole week?

Every one of those decisions compounds. Get it wrong, and you waste time. If it isn't working, you don't know what levers to pull to get you back on track.

That's the part I actually get paid for. Not the information, but The Decisions.

You now know exactly what comes after novice progression. You could build your own spreadsheet program tonight, run it for six weeks, and find out the hard way which of those decisions you got wrong.

Or someone can just tell you each week, before it costs you months, or years of progress where you other wise would have Built Your Base.

Get it right by applying to work with me at coaching.gzstrength.com​
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Talk soon,
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Sam Krapf, SSC
Ground Zero Strength