Novice Linear Progression
Anyone interested in getting stronger and healthier should go through the Novice Linear Progression of strength training at the beginning of a fitness program.
The following is from my personal fitness bible, The Barbell Prescription.
To build strength, we want to exploit the Stress-Recovery-Adaptation cycle.
By holding the volume and exercise selection constant, and adding weight to the bar each workout, a Novice will display an increase in strength EVERY WORKOUT for a period of time.
A linear progression occurs when a trainee is capable of sustaining consistent increases in workload in successive training sessions for a period of time.
This period of time is typically about four to six months.
A basic training program will have you training three days per week, with at least a day in between workouts.
Training one day, appropriate rest until your next workout, and then loading the bar with more weight for the next workout exemplifies the Stress-Recovery-Adaptation cycle in its simplest form.
In my experience, to get the most out of this linear progression, you need to start out VERY conservatively with your weights.
The first couple of weeks should require almost minimal effort, as your focus is primarily on perfecting the movements while adding some weight to the bar for each workout.
The Basic Workout
The trainee who is starting off their training for the first time ever, or after a significant period of time has elapsed since they previously trained, starts with a very basic program that trains three days per week.
This is also the case with older trainees over 60 and even 70, for this initial Beginner training.
You will want to set up on a schedule that gives you at least one day of rest between workouts, such as Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Older Trainees over 60, after a couple months, may then want to switch to a two day per week schedule, such as Monday and Thursday, as it becomes more difficult to recover between workouts.
This initial program consists of two basic workouts as follows:
Workout A Workout B
Barbell Squat Barbell Squat
Deadlift Deadlift
Sets and Reps
For the squat, bench press and overhead press, we want to perform three working sets of five reps.
For the deadlift, we will only want to do one working set of five reps.
Before we do any working sets, we want to warm up first.
I recommend getting the body warm by jogging in place and doing some jumping jacks for a couple minutes, followed by some light stretching. However, this should take no more than about 10 minutes.
With each of the lifting exercises, we then want to perform a few warm up sets with a focus on our form, before getting to the working sets.
Sample Workout – Bench Press
Set 1 – Empty Bar – 10 reps with focus on form
Set 2 – 100 pounds – 5 reps
Set 3 – 115 pounds – 3 reps
Set 4 – 135 pounds – 1 rep
Set 5 – 145 pounds – 1 rep
Set 6 – 155 pounds – 1 rep
Sets 7-9 – 175 pounds – 5 reps
For the warm up sets, you only rest for the time it takes to change the weight on the bar. For the three working sets, you will rest for about 2 to 3 minutes.
If you start out very conservatively with your weights, then 2 minutes is all you should need. As the weight gets heavier, you will find yourself needing more rest.
This will particularly be the case for the squat, given the amount of muscle mass employed and the range of motion involved in the lift. Eventually, you will need 5 minutes of rest or more between sets.
Sample Workout – Deadlift
Set 1 – 135 pounds – 5 reps
Set 2 – 155 pounds – 3 reps
Set 3 – 175 pounds – 1 rep
Set 4 – 195 pounds – 1 rep
Set 5 – 205 pounds – 1 rep
Set 6 – 225 pounds – 5 reps
Starting Weight
To determine your starting weight for each exercise, you want to take the time in your very first workout to find the starting weight for each exercise.
For example, if you are actually able to start out with the barbell on your back for the squat, then start with the empty bar and do five controlled reps.
If that was easy, then add ten pounds, and do five reps (or if you are reasonably strong, put two 45 pound plates on the bar and work from there after the empty bar work).
Continue with this process until you get to a point where the fifth rep was a modest struggle… the bar speed slowed down and you struggled to maintain your form.
Let’s say that weight was 100 pounds.
For your next workout, you will start at 80% of that weight (80 pounds) and do 3 sets of 5 reps.
If you are a trainee that lacks mobility, and have never trained, you may need to start by doing unweighted squats, and even unweighted box squats if you are unable to go to full depth.
There are alternatives for each of these four main lifts for any trainee who is unable to perform them comfortably with the unweighted barbell. For now, we will just focus on the main lifts.
Adding Weight
In the first week or two, you may be able to add 10 pounds to the squat and deadlift with each workout. This assumes you start out with conservative weights.
After that, you will add 5 pounds to the bar, and no more (if you are a trainee over 60, or a female trainee who is quite petite, you may only be able to add 2 or 3 pounds to the bench press and overhead press, and that is perfectly fine).
Your body will be able to adapt to the new weight fairly easily in the initial phases, provided you start out at a conservative weight.
Off Days
This program is for people interested in developing significant strength in the near term.
With that in mind, on the days in between strength training workouts, “active rest” is what is generally prescribed.
Therefore, while you are focused on building strength, just work on your golf game, do some yard work, or walk.
If you are significantly overweight, then you will definitely want to pay attention to diet and consider adding some cardio exercise on your off days.
However, it is important that you keep higher intensity cardio exercise to a maximum of 30 minutes. If you go much beyond that, your body will start to burn muscle tissue to produce energy.
Program Changes
Over time, you will need to make changes to the program as training becomes more difficult.
The first change to this basic program is that we will swap out the deadlift for another pulling exercise, such as chin ups for Workout B.
So for a time, you will only deadlift every other work out.
We typically do three sets of chin ups for as many reps as possible. I typically rest about 3 minutes after set 1, and 4 minutes after set 2.
If you can’t do at least five chin ups for a set, start with lat pulldowns with the palms facing inward.
The next change you will probably need to make is add less weight to the bar for the overhead press.
The overhead press is the exercise that in the long run, we will lift the least amount of weight. It is also the most technical of the four main lifts. Therefore, it doesn’t take long before we start to struggle with this lift.
In order to continue making progress with three sets of five reps, you can start micro loading the bar by adding just a couple pounds each workout. You can pick up plates as light as 1/4 pound.
5 sets of 3 reps
Eventually, you will start to fail on reps.
For example, you may have a session go like this… 5, 5, 4. When that happens, just wait a minute, and bang out that 5th rep in the third set.
A couple sessions later, if you have continued to add weight to the bar, you may have a session look like this… 5, 3, 3.
It’s time to make a new change.
We still want to try and get 15 reps without taking weight off the bar. Therefore, we will do five sets of three reps.
The squat gets really hard
Later in the novice phase of training, the squat becomes really hard. You may even start to dread having to head into the gym, add 5 pounds to the bar, and bang out three sets of five.
The reality is this is when many novices begin to question how strong that want or need to be.
They may start to look for alternative programs, such as those that employ higher reps and lighter weights.
Been there, done that.
For now, I will just say this… it is a mistake for trainees to switch to that type of programming for one reason… it will result in a detraining effect… you’ll lose strength.
With this in mind, it’s time to give yourself a mental break during the week.
On Wednesday, give yourself a light squat day. Put 80% of your working set weight from Monday on the bar and do one working set of five reps.
Then on Friday, add weight to the bar from Monday’s workout.
This will give you a bit of a mental and physical break from doing three heavy sets of five reps every workout on the squat.
End of Novice Linear Progression
The end of the novice linear progression arrives when it is no longer possible for the trainee to display increased strength each workout.
This is actually a good thing.
The trainee has increased their strength to such a point that their ability to display increased strength each workout is overwhelmed by their ability to impose a training stress too heavy to allow adequate recovery.
This occurs more quickly for trainees over 50 years old.
In other words, trainees over 50 will reach the end of the NLP more quickly than younger trainees. Trainees over 60 will reach the end of NLP more quickly than trainees just ten years younger, and so on.
As a result, the trainee will need to proceed to intermediate programming, where displays of new strength occur less frequently.
The Stress-Adaptation-Recovery cycle is now stretched out over several workouts, rather than from one workout to the next.
My fitness bible, The Barbell Prescription, provides a roadmap for strength training.
However, many people will veer off course and stall out with their training progress too soon.
This is why it may be a good idea for some trainees to consider coaching to get the most out of their training.
