There is no one right or “best” workout plan (there are absolutely bad ones though). It is all purely based on YOUR GOALS, YOUR BODY AND YOUR ADHERENCE to the program. My goal is to provide you with the tools you need to create a BALANCED and EFFECTIVE program, you have to do the rest. You have how many days/week you’re going to workout which you a suggested split. Now that you have that you can choose the exercises for each day.

There are 5 main movement patterns:

1. HINGE (Hip dominant)

2. SQUAT (Knee dominant)

3. PUSH (Vertical & Horizontal)

4. PULL (Vertical & Horizontal)

5. CORE (Carry/Rotation/Anti)

Within these there are a ton of different subdivisions or ways to load them such as unilateral (single arm/leg), ipsilateral, contralateral and bilateral (defined in the terminology section) but aside from defining them I won’t be telling you where to program them. My general suggestion is to include some sort of unilateral training into each session to make sure imbalances don’t become too dominant, otherwise the variations are endless. I realize “Core” is not a movement pattern, it’s a thing that is used in every single movement pattern in order to maintain your stability and transfer strength. Core is covered more in depth in my CORE E-book for you to read and create your own core training program to incorporate.

Your placement of these movement patterns rely on multiple things including:

1. Your goals/focus of the plan and training session
2. Technicality of the movement
3. Goals for the lift itself

Exercises should be ordered from most technical / most demanding to least.

1. POWER / PLYOMETRICS
2. COMPOUND LIFTS/ MAX STRENGTH
3. STRENGTH / HYPERTROPHY
4. ACCESSORY / ENDURANCE
5. CORE

If you’re working max strength in your squat – you don’t want it to be after you burn out your legs with leg press. That being said, there are reasons for techniques of “pre-fatiguing” a muscle prior to a big lift and core can also be done during warm up in the session as activation or during the strength component – but these are general guidelines.

You don’t HAVE to include all of these into a session – if it’s not part of your goal then skip it and go to the next relevant exercise type.

These movement patterns can be broken down even further into compound and accessory lifts.

Compound lifts involve multiple joints and full body effort to perform.  They are the exercises most commonly emphasized in (max) strength/hypertrophy lifts. You may have heard of the “BIG 5” which refers to the 5 main compound lifts including:

• bench press

• deadlift

• Squat

• (I think pull ups should be here, but i’m not in charge of what the world thinks)

• overhead press

• row

The order you do these exercises has to do with your goals but the general guidelines are there because if you’re working max strength in your squat – you don’t want it to be after you burn out your legs with leg press.  Also, being fatigued under a heavy bar is much less comfortable/safe than being fatigued with body part accessory work.

That being said, there are reasons for techniques of “pre-fatiguing” a muscle prior to a big lift and core can also be done during warm up in the session as activation or during the strength component – which is why these are just guidelines.

** Please keep in mind – this is a very generalized formatting and doesn’t include things like single leg/arm movements, lateral movements, etc. This is where individualized programming comes in.

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