World's simplest strength program, part 1

It’s 2019, and strength training is in vogue. Thanks in large part to CrossFit and the advent of social media, more people than ever have access to a barbell. I believe this is a great thing, and our mission at Elev8 is to get a barbell in as many hands as possible.

However, in a society like here in America, the more popular something is, the more people hopping on the bandwagon hoping to make a quick buck. This leads to a lot of less-than-qualified coaches preaching things they may or may not be qualified to preach. And as with anything, more people trying to sell strength training means a more crowded market, which in turn makes people do crazier and crazier shit on Instagram to stand out and hopefully carve out a living.

(Before we go any further, I want to say this. Maybe it’s my bias as a coach myself, but good coaching is invaluable. If you’re a serious athlete, investing in a good coach can mean the difference between first and second place, that national team you’ve been eyeing or getting a scholarship or not. This article is not aimed at those coaches. You can check out our coaching options here.)

Rant over, and this is really all to say this: The increase in popularity and accessibility of strength training has lead to a TON of overcomplication. Single leg squatting on Bosu balls might look cool on Instagram, but isn’t going to help someone who can’t squat bodyweight to a box.

Those very same coaches are the ones who have gotten good enough at marketing to make you feel like you need that program to make any real progress, while that is simply (and honestly, quite obviously) not true. So the goal here is to lay out a simplified strength training program anybody can follow, without all the BS.

FUNDAMENTAL MOVEMENT PATTERNS

Before we get into rep schemes, frequency, volume or intensity or any kind of deloading, first we have to understand what we are trying to get good at when we walk into the gym. Bicep curls are great for bodybuilders, but if you’re trying to gain strength to improve your athletic performance, making them a focal point of your program might leave you lacking.

At Elev8, we believe in training movement patterns, not exercises. We break down movement into 7 fundamental patterns

Hinge

Squat

Push

Pull

Lunge

Gait

Rotate

Almost anything you can do on a field, in a gym, or in life requires the production of force in one of these movement patterns. Good, solid training should be based on these principles.

From here, we can develop a weekly training plan, or microcycle, that emphasizes these movements, and progressively overload them over a series of weeks, forming our first mesocycle. String a few of those together and you’ve got your first training macrocycle, which we’ll dive into in part two!