← The science

Programs

One article per named program: the scheme, the reasoning, and who it suits.

Each of these articles covers a training program that has been around long enough to be worth explaining properly. They follow the same shape: what it is, where it came from, the actual scheme laid out, why it is built that way, what the evidence does and does not support, who it suits, how to run it well, and what to do afterwards.

If the terms are unfamiliar, start with how training programs are built. These articles lean on it rather than repeating it.

Why some articles have a week by week table and others do not

The Russian Squat Program and Smolov Jr are fixed cycles: the sets, reps and percentages are decided in advance for every session, so we can print the whole thing. Push / Pull / Legs is a split, not a scheme, and its numbers come from your own training history rather than a table. German Volume Training and the Texas Method are weekly patterns that repeat, so the honest thing to show is one week rather than a fabricated six.

Programs are described here by their established names because that is what they are called. This is not an endorsement by, or an affiliation with, anyone associated with them.