Critique on my HLM template

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1

Hi there - I’m due to finish Powerbuilding I next week, so wanted to try to put together my own program for the first time.

I’ve put together the below Heavy, Light, Medium template, focusing on bench, squat and deadlift.

Some comments on how I put this together:

How I determined what is H, L or M:

  1. Heavy - I classed anything as c.87% of my 1RM and above as heavy
  2. Light - 75% - 81%
  3. Medium - 81% - 86%Exercise selection:
  4. Squats - I’ve found I respond to training better when squatting more frequently, but I also want to mix things up to incorporate some front squats as I have hardly done these in the past and think they would help my low bar squats (my squats sometimes turn into good mornings).
  5. Deadlift - Deadlift is one of my favourite lifts so the only variation I put in was paused deadlifts
  6. Bench - I chose 3 bench variations. On day 3 I put on 2 additional sets of 6@8, as I was hoping this may make up for the lack of pressing in the template.
  7. Press - struggled to know where to fit this in, so I put Myoreps in for two days, with additional benching as mentioned above.
  8. GPP - will supplement this with arm work/ab work/trunk work and conditioning
  9. Rep ranges - I’ve tried to put in a variety of rep ranges, just to mix things up

My plan:

  1. Run this template for 4 weeks, see how I respond to it and then make a decision on whether to increase volume or intensity where needed.
  2. I aim to increase strength whilst also hopefully losing excess body fat.

Questions I have:

  1. Does anybody think there is anything that is glaringly obvious that would need to be changed? Is there too much volume, or not enough? Is the intensity right?
  2. Press has taken a back seat on this template - where would you slot it in if you could? I was thinking of changing the medium bench slot on day 1 to a medium press slot?
  3. Is it wise to do H, L and M all on one day, or would I better doing all heavy slots on one day, and the same for light and medium?
  4. I was contemplating changing High Bar squat for another slot of Low Bar - any comments on this? Logic would say doing another Low Bar slot would help me improve low bar overall. Thanks in advance

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2

Does anybody think there is anything that is glaringly obvious that would need to be changed? Is there too much volume, or not enough? Is the intensity right?

I’m not a coach, but IMO there are some problems with this HLM setup that will be exacerbated by a caloric deficit. I don’t think how you’ve set up volume or intensity here is optimal for most people. In my opinion, this is rather low volume and rather high intensity. I’m not familiar with Powerbuilding I, so maybe someone who is could chime in, but I would assume that it had a fair amount more volume than what you’ve written for yourself here. Average intensity was almost certainly lower, too. I understand you want to manipulate these variables since your current goal is gaining/maintaining strength, but I think you can go about it a bit more intelligently.

Volume: You’re doing about 40 squat and deadlift reps and 50 bench reps (not counting the press myo-reps) per week with this current setup. I’m not sure what you’re accustomed to, but that’s quite low for most post novice trainees. For context, something like the SSNLP has weekly squat volume of around 45 reps, and the Bridge 1.0 (the template that I and I assume many people on this forum ran post novice LP) has weekly squat volume of around 70-80 reps. A drastic, long term reduction in volume is not good for your gainzzz, especially in a deficit.

Intensity: IMO, you’re going a bit too heavy across the board, here. The vast majority of your work is in the 80-92% range - that’s pretty damn high for a general strength HLM. In particular, doing three singles @ 8 for your heavy day is misguided. Why not one single @ 8, followed by some heavy-ish rep work (say, 3 sets of 4 or 5 @ 8)?

Press has taken a back seat on this template - where would you slot it in if you could? I was thinking of changing the medium bench slot on day 1 to a medium press slot?

I’d put the overhead press in the light slot.

Is it wise to do H, L and M all on one day, or would I better doing all heavy slots on one day, and the same for light and medium?

The way you have it structured now is good.

Again, I am not a coach, but I would absolutely not do this HLM setup, especially as the first block of a program. If you want to play it safe, buy the Barbell Medicine HLM template. If you aren’t willing/able to pay for it, I would personally keep the same general structure you have and make the following adjustments (if you want to keep mostly the same exercises you’ve selected). There’s more than one way to program HLM, and again, I don’t know your overall goals or your level of training, exposure to volume, etc., so you’ll have to figure out what’s optimal for you.

Heavy – I like keeping the heavy slot for your main/competition lifts, but I would ditch the multiple singles @ 8. Like I said before, one single @ 8 followed by a few sets of 4 or 5 @ 8 would be preferable.

Light – I’d personally opt for exercises that inherently force you to handle a lighter absolute load. Given the exercises you’ve selected, I’d put the front squats here instead of in your medium slot. CGBP is good, or you could do overhead press if you want to incorporate it into your program. Competition deadlifts for sets of 5 up to @ 8 are not a great option for a “light” exercise - I’d probably do something like RDL, SLDL, or even Barbell Rows instead. I’d also probably up the reps to more like the 6-10 range if you’re going to keep the intensity around RPE 8.

Medium – the exercises you’ve selected would probably be fine, depending on your goals, weak points, etc., except I’d put the HBBS here instead of the front squats. I like the sets in the 4-6 range, but I don’t know if repeating top sets @ 9 is a wise idea for a “medium” lift. If you want to work up to a set @ 9, go with some backoff sets afterward (either a % drop or a lower RPE target) to get more volume in, like how you have written for CGBP.

3

Thanks for this man appreciate all the input. I’ve done some fiddling around, how do you think the below looks?

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Some comments from me:

Heavy - I’ve removed multiple sets of 1@9, I replaced these with 3 sets of 3@8. I agree with you in getting some volume in, but I wanted to keep this relatively heavy, so thought doing triples would be a happy medium. Do you think this will work or should I change to 3 sets of 5@8?

Light - Have upped the volume on deadlift and squat, changed these to romanian deadift and front squat, and changed CGBP to Press. How does this look? I was going to do sets of 8 reps instead of 7, but this would mean my top set would only be 74% of my 1RM, which I thought would be too low for me. Thoughts?

Medium - Have removed multiple sets of 4@9 and replaced with 2 back off sets of 4@8.

Additional - have changed day 3 myo reps from press to bench.

Thanks again, appreciate the comments.

4

The adjustments you have made are, overall, an improvement to the first iteration of this HLM program, and I wouldn’t call this a dumpster fire of a program or anything. I most like the adjustments you made to your light and medium slots in that you added more volume and reduced some of the intensity (both relative and absolute) to do so. Without knowing much about you as a trainee and how you respond to various stimuli, etc., something like this could very well work fine for you. I’m still concerned with how you’re treating your heavy slot, as well as your seeming lack of a progression scheme going forward.

The 3x3 @ 8 approach for your heavy lifts is certainly better than the multiple singles, but as for if this will work or if you should change it to 3 sets of 5@8 or something similar, it depends. I don’t know much about you - how you respond to volume & intensity, what your programming/training looked like previously, how advanced of a trainee you are, etc. To me, even with your adjustments, it still seems like you’re starting quite heavy. Unless you aren’t planning on increasing volume then tapering while upping the intensity (maybe Powerbuilding I lacked much of a volume taper so you’re treating this HLM block as such, I don’t know) I’m having a hard time imagining your progression from here. I understand you want to handle heavy loads for strength purposes, but I don’t understand why you want to go SO heavy to the point where you seem to be reluctant to go lighter than ~86% of your e1RM for any of your heavy working sets. Working up to a heavy single for your main lift, then following that up with 3x3 @ 8 honestly looks more like something I’d do in the final few weeks of a meet prep cycle than the first four week block of a general strength HLM.

In addition to these concerns, I would be wary of the way you’ve set up your main, heavy lifts because you’re just doing 12 reps of each per week. You’d probably be fine with your bench and deadlift, as your medium variations are very similar technique to the main lift, but your LBBS might suffer with your medium and light squats being HBBS and front squat. Disregarding doing more reps in your heavy slot, maybe you could try a beltless LBBS or paused LBBS in the medium slot, whether it’s in this four week block or a subsequent one.

As a less significant aside (I didn’t consider this when I first looked at your program) TnG bench for 4 @7-9 might a little heavy for a “medium” lift. If you want to keep the same RPE scheme, I would either switch to a variation like CGBP or 3ct pause bench that would force you to handle less weight for the same amount of reps, or stick with TnG but increase the reps a little to reduce the absolute intensity.

Bottom line, as long as you’ve got a somewhat intelligent progression scheme planned, something like this might work for you. Different people respond to different programming. Nevertheless, while this looks better than it initially did, there are still concerns. You could always run it and see how it works in practice, though. I’m certainly not going to stop you. I think it’s very important for trainees to be self sufficient and try their hand at their own programming at some point - you end up learning a lot about yourself as a lifter and what does/doesn’t work for you regardless of the outcome.

1 Like
5

Thanks man - the reason I thought of keeping heavy slots at c.86%+ was just based on viewing the RPE table (I’m on mobile so don’t have a link unfortunately), where everything in red is classed as heavy. Though you are right, I suppose this doesn’t mean that every lift during the workout has to be in the red so I will test out and adjust.

I was thinking the same for squat - I will likely change HBBS for a low bar variation. Will also review medium bench.

At the minute this is the first program I’ve tried to run myself so progression wise I was just going to run for 4-6 weeks, see how I respond and then review a progression plan from there (or completely rewrite a program of this one doesn’t do anything for me).

Again, thanks for the help and input - it’s really useful to get a second (more experienced) set of eyes on this, appreciate it.

6

Kudos to you for developing your own program. I’m definitely not there yet. The proof will be in your results and how you make modifications going forward.

To emphasize a point Nate is making, I don’t know if I would program heavy singles unless I was a few weeks out from a meet.

Also, FYI, I looked at two programs I have (Powerbuilding and Beginner) and their weekly rep volume (in the “heavier” weeks) are 100+ and 80+ for deadlift and squat (including all variations).

One last thing, I’m not sure I would consider high-bar and low-bar as different enough variations to be implemented in the same block of training. I’d go with tempo, paused, pin, front, etc. instead.

7

Nice one thank you mate - I’ve had a look at the volume and will likely add some more in (probably up the reps across the board, depending on how I respond).

On squats, I agree - I’ve removed High bar and now replaced it with either low bar, or a low bar variation.

Thanks again