There are Olympic lifters and powerlifters who have used minimalist training with great success. Minimalist training basically means doing the minimum amount of work necessary to stimulate a positive training effect. True minimalist training consists of selecting a minimum amount of exercises which are done for a minimum amount of sets for a workout. Workouts are then done a minimum amount of days per week to stimulate strength gains.
Those Who have Succeeded with Minimalist Training
Perhaps the master of minimalist training in terms of success both as a coach and a lifter is Marty Ghallagher. His book The Purposeful Primitive goes into detail on how to apply minimalist training for best results. I also recommend his free internet article, The Eternal Resistance Training Schism…Intensity vs. Volume. This article takes a look at Mark Challet and Kirk Karwoski as examples of world record powerlifters who used minimalist training to become the best in the world. It is astounding how much they accomplished with just a little training.
I personally have found aspects of minimalist training to be effective; especially in terms of limiting workouts to a small number of exercises and a small number of sets. However, this has only worked for me if I apply it on a high frequency basis. In other words, short basic workouts that are performed six days per week. We are not all the same as other people have succeeded with minimalist training on a low frequency basis because their physiology is set up for it.
Example of Minimalist Training
What does a minimalist workout look like? You basically just select one basic exercise and do enough warm up sets to work up to one work set. For example, you could select a squat workout on Monday, a bench press workout on Wednesday, and a deadlift workout on Friday. Do the following sets and reps for each workout:
Do four warm up sets as follows:
Warm up Set 1: Choose a weight that allows 30 reps, but only do 10 reps
Warm up Set 2: Choose a weight that allows 18 reps, but only do 6 reps
Warm up Set 3: Choose a weight that allows 10 reps, but only do 3 reps
Warm up set 4: Choose a weight that allows 8 reps, but only do 1 rep
Follow your warm up sets with one work set as follows:
Do one heavy work set for:
8 reps during weeks one through three
5 reps during weeks four through six
3 reps during weeks seven through nine
1 rep during weeks ten through twelve.
Marty Gallagher would recommend doing this routine with increasingly heavy weights over the course of twelve weeks. Find your weekly weights by starting with your projected one rep max weight for week twelve and counting back three percent each week until you reach week one (percentage calculators are available on the internet by clicking here). For instance if you are shooting for a 300 pound bench press at the end of a twelve week cycle, plan your workouts by starting with 300 pounds for week twelve and subtract three percent for week eleven, and an additional three percent each preceding week until you reach week one. An example of this is shown below
Example of counting backward by 3% each week:
Week 12: 100% of 300 = 300 pounds for 1 rep
Week 11: 97% of 300 = 291 pounds for 1 rep
Week 10: 94% of 300 = 282 pounds for 1 rep
Week 9: 91% of 300 = 273 pounds for 3 reps
Week 8: 88% of 300 = 264 pounds for 3 reps
Week 7: 85% of 300 = 255 pounds for 3 reps
Week 6: 82% of 300 = 246 pounds for 5 reps
Week 5: 79% of 300 = 237 pounds for 5 reps
Week 4: 76% of 300 = 228 pounds for 5 reps
Week 3: 73% of 300 = 219 pounds for 8 reps
Week 2: 70% of 300 = 210 pounds for 8 reps
Week 1: 67% of 300 = 201 pounds for 8 reps
You will notice that 3% of 300 is nine pounds so the weight will increase by nine pounds each week from the start to the finish of the cycle. Of course it is difficult to increase the weight by nine pounds each week because weight plates don’t usually come in nine pound increments. You could easily round nine pounds off to ten pounds. The extra pound will translate into a poundage that is twelve pounds lighter the first week than if you could truly used nine pound increments. You can adjust for this by using five pound jumps the first two or three weeks, and then switch to ten pound jumps each week for the remainder of the cycle.
Picking the Right Numbers is Critical
Using the right amount of weight each week is critical to your success. I believe that one of the keys to training success is to train hard enough without training overly hard. Ed Coan has said that the reasons he never missed a lift while becoming successively stronger in cycle after cycle was that he did his best to use perfect technique, and he picked his numbers right in terms of how much weight he lifted from week to week.
If your personal physiology is set up right for it, or you simply don’t have much time to train, minimalist training would be a great option to experiment with. In the next article, I will be discussing minimalist training again, but in the context of high frequency training instead of infrequent training. Short workouts consisting of only a couple exercises and a small number of sets will be emphasized, but the training will be set up to be done four to six days per week. Until then, best of training to you.
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