The Regular Guy Off-Season Strength Program

Written on September 8, 2009 at 4:38 am, by Eric Cressey

Pop quiz, hotshot. You need to add some plates to the bar and pack some meat on your bones. You’ve got precious few weeks to accomplish both, but only have four days per week to train. What do you do? What do you do?

I’ve asked this question to myself countless times and only recently have I come up with what I believe is the most effective method. Forget total-body training. Forget upper and lower splits. The trick is to, well…I’ll get to that in a minute.

Continue Reading…

3 Responses to “The Regular Guy Off-Season Strength Program”

1. Jack Says:
   September 8th, 2009 at 10:31 am

   Eric,

   This may seem a bit random, but perhaps you could have an upcoming blog post on what you would do if you had an athlete who suffered an injury like Sam Bradford did in Oklahoma’s season-opening loss to BYU.

   These days it seems all about balancing risk with reward when trying to bring athlete’s back as quickly as possible from various injuries.

   It would be interesting to see a mini series on templates for getting athletes back as fast as possible while ensuring that they are better than ever instead of compromised from trying to rush back.

2. Benji Says:
   September 8th, 2009 at 2:01 pm

   Hi Eric, thanks for another great article!

   You don’t write anything about progression in the program. Do you recommend to start at moderate weights, and progress linearly, or do you reccomend some kind of periodization?

   And another thing, about the barbell lunge with front squat grip. I feel like the bar is choking me when i do sets at higher reps with the front squat grip. Is the back squat grip usable on that particular exercise?

3. Vic Magary - GymJunkies Says:
   September 9th, 2009 at 5:40 am

   Great article Eric! It’s always fun seeing what you put the teams through.

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