“Just remember, somewhere, a little Chinese girl is warming up with your max.” -Jim Conroy, Olympic Weightlifting Coach
Going into college, my wrestling coach at the time sent me this program. He ultimately moved onto different pursuits before the end of my collegiate wrestling career, but I still went back to this program time and time again. Every six weeks, my one rep maxes would go up by roughly 10%, which felt awesome. This led to some serious jumps in strength as 10% increases over a six week period compounds pretty quickly. That said, make sure you get the technique right. Google and Youtube are your friends.
Principles
Divide the training sessions into four days.
Heavy push and squat
Heavy pull and hinge
Light push and squat
Light pull and hinge
I would do these sessions on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday respectively. If you’re an overachiever and want to do more, you can do something light on Wednesday. Go for a run if you’re into that sort of thing.
If all you want is size, feel free to repeat weeks 1 and 2 over and over again.
Take a week off between each six week cycle. Your body needs to heal from strenuous lifting programs.
Technique matters above all else. Executing with improper form increases the risk of injury while decreasing potential strength and muscle gains.
You can play around with which exact exercises to use. If you want to replace the leg curl with something else, then by all means go for it. This is only my personal variation of the program with wrestling performance in mind.
Exercises
Bench press (push)
Military press (push)
Squat (squat)
Clean (hinge)
Deadlift (hinge)
Lat pulldown (pull)
Leg Curl (hinge- technically, leg curls are not a hinge movement but they strengthen some of the muscles involved in the hinge movement)
Additional fun: (I didn’t count the reps here. If you’ve got time to kill, these are all good additions)
Box jumps
Kettlebell swings
Kettlebell TGU
Pull ups
Dips
Additionally, these exercises are split into two groups: High repetitions and low repetitions. The intention behind this was that doing a higher amount repetitions at slightly lower weights would minimize the risk of injury.
Low rep group:
Bench press
Military press
Clean
High rep group: (intention: higher reps at slightly lower weights in order to minimize injury. In fact, you can put cleans as high rep exercises too.)
Squat
Deadlift
Lat pulldown
Leg curl
Week 1
Low reps: 10X, 10X, 10X
High reps: 12X, 12X, 12X
Week 2
Low reps: 8X, 8X, 8X, 8X
High reps: 10X, 10X, 10X, 10X
Week 3
Low reps: 6X, 6X, 6X, 6X, 6X
High reps: 8X, 8X, 8X, 8X, 8X
Week 4
Low reps: 8X, 6X, 3X, 1X
High reps: 10X, 8X, 6X, 4X
Week 5
Low reps: 8X, 6X, 3X, 1X
High reps: 10X, 8X, 6X, 4X
Week 6
Low reps: 8X, 6X, 3X, 1X
High reps: 10X, 8X, 6X, 4X
Rest as much as you need between sets. Usually, two to three minutes is enough. With the harder weeks, I would take as much as five minutes between sets.
If you’re new to this, get a spotter when some of the exercises get difficult. Having 200+ pounds (around 90 kg) stuck on your chest is no fun. All it takes is a quick, “Excuse me. Would you mind spotting me for a quick set? I’m going for [X] reps.”
Don’t forget to say thank you after they potentially prevented you from hurting yourself. Also, oddly enough, this has been a great way for me to meet new people.
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