How to Write a 5-Day Lifting Program Around Your 1-Rep Max

Nikkiey: What's up, babe? Nikkiey here. In this module, we are going to discuss how to build your own WarriorBabe build workout program. If your specific goal is to maintain and build, this is the programming that you want to follow.

What we're going to cover today is a brief overview of the build programming, and then we're going to deep dive into the key fundamentals behind building the actual workout: choosing your focal points and then programming the workload. Beneath this video is a 10-week WarriorBabe build workout program that I have built for you to be able to implement right away. But I expect you to look at this three-month, or 10-week, program as a study guide on top of reviewing this module again, and to understand the key fundamentals behind building your own WarriorBabe build workout program. I'm also going to discuss and show you a template that I've put together on how to build your own WarriorBabe build program.

So let's first discuss the overview of the build programming. This specific program increases strength. It is the growth of the muscle tissue that changes your body composition and makes you look more like that athletic, built, toned figure. It gives you more of that figure. This type of programming focuses on personal and individual strength, and your percentages based off of your maxes, to ensure that you are putting your body in the perfect environment to build lean muscle tissue.

So let's dive into the key fundamentals behind building this specific programming for yourself. But before I deep dive into this with you, I want you to take out a notepad and take some notes. If you haven't already listened to the Workout Terminology 101 module, I do recommend that you go back and listen to that, because I'm going to use verbiage and language that I explained inside of that module moving forward. I also expect you to always come back to this module. Once you have completed the 10-week programming that I'm giving you, come back to this module and follow the steps I'm going to discuss with you right now, and you'll know exactly how to build your own programming after you're finished with the programming that I've given you.

With the steps that I'm going to discuss with you right now, I'm also going to be showing you visuals so that you understand what I'm explaining. These visuals are available for you in the downloadable section, so you can download them, print them out and add them to your arsenal of all the action items that you have inside this program.

So let's first discuss choosing your focal points. The first step you are going to take when you're building your own programming is honing in on the specific muscle groups that you want to focus on. I personally recommend a five-day training split for this specific type of training. Three of those five days are always going to be compound-focused lifts, and the other two days are going to be accessory muscle group lifts that you personally want to focus on.

So, visual example here: this is the 10-week program that I have made for you. This is block one, which is five weeks, and this is week one of the five weeks. You can see that Monday through Friday, or day one through day five, whatever you want to name it, you've got the bench press, you've got chest, you've got deadlifts and you've got squats. Those are your three main compound lifts. And then you've got the two accessory days: shoulders and triceps, and rows and biceps. You can make these days whatever you want them to be when it comes to building your own programming.

Another cheat sheet available for you below this video is a split muscle group cheat sheet. By following it, you will understand which muscle groups are complementary when they're worked together, meaning that while you are working one muscle group, an additional muscle group is naturally being fatigued as well. These smaller muscle groups are called your accessory muscles, and these are really good accessory groupings that go well together: lats and biceps, shoulders and biceps, lats and chest, back and biceps. So you can just pull from this cheat sheet what you want your accessory days to look like.

Or maybe you personally want to work on developing your shoulders inside of this programming, or you want to focus on building up your glutes a little bit more, or you want to focus on building your back. There's also a specific muscle focus cheat sheet available for you below this video to print out. So let's say you do want to build up your shoulders. You'll have your three compound days, and then one accessory day could be shoulders and glutes, and your second accessory day could just be shoulders. Or if you're somebody who wants to focus on your back, you could have your three compound days, and your accessory days could be lats and biceps, and then rows and triceps.

The same goes for legs and glutes. You're going to be hitting your legs already with deadlifts and squats, so I don't know that you really want to add in another accessory day focusing on legs. But you could definitely add in a back and glute day, or an arm and glute day, or a shoulders and glutes day in those accessory days. This is really cool because it's really personalized to you. So that's the first step: choosing what muscle groups you want to focus on outside of the compound lifts.

The second step is putting in the total amount of exercises. Your compound lift days will consist of your compound lifts, and then you're going to have two accessory supersets. Here's an example, and here's a better example with percentages, which I'll talk about in a second. You've got your compound lifts, and then you've got the two supersets.

Then your accessory lift days focus on the specific muscle groups that you personally want to build. Those consist of four supersets with eight different exercises. Here's an example from the 10-week split that I'm giving you: you've got shoulders and triceps, with four supersets and eight different exercises inside. Just a little tip for you: when you're focusing on two different groups, like shoulders and triceps, biceps and triceps, or rows and biceps, four of those eight exercises are going to be shoulder exercises and four of those eight exercises are going to be tricep exercises. I explain that here as well.

Now, when it comes to what exercises you want to fill in, there is an entire cheat sheet of all the different exercises you could imagine for hamstrings, glutes, shoulders, triceps, calves, back, chest, biceps, everything. It's even broken down into compound exercises and isolation exercises for each group. And not only are there gym-focused exercises, there are also home-focused exercises. So if you have dumbbells, body weight, bands or a barbell, you can look at this exercise list, choose based on the equipment you have and put it into your programming.

So I've discussed the first two steps: figuring out your muscle group focus, and then putting in the number of exercises you want to focus on. Then you're going to use that exercise cheat sheet to fill in those exercises.

Now, listen up loud and clear. Once you've established that, you're going to be testing for your one-rep max. This is a common way to find out the heaviest weight that you can press once for the key compound lifts: squat, deadlifts and bench press. Then you'll build your exercise programming around this weight, so it's really personalized to you. You're going to figure out your one-rep max in each one of these lifts, and then you're going to build your exercise programming around that weight to ensure that you are challenging yourself to build muscle effectively. I'm going to show you how you will test for your one-rep max and figure out that specific weight, and then I'm going to show you how you would program your percentages based off of that one-rep max weight.

So let's first talk about testing for that one-rep max. It's already programmed for you in the 10-week program that I built for you, and it's also in the templates that I'm giving you. You literally just have to follow the week. Week one of your block will always focus on retesting your maxes to see where you're at. You'll have it in chest for bench press, deadlifts and squat. You can see it right here. You're just going to follow these steps. First, you're going to start off with a light weight to warm up, and then you're going to gradually keep adding weight until you feel like you can't push any more weight.

When you're going for your one-rep max, I highly recommend you speak up. It's one of our principles. Speak up and ask for a spotter so that you can be at your personal best and know, damn, I did it. You may want to have a spotter when you're hitting this one-rep max. So speak up, and make sure that you are still establishing really good form when you're going for your max.

If you want to take a video of yourself doing your one-rep max and share it with the Facebook group, do it. I highly recommend that, because you're going to get some people to chime in and say, that was really good form, or, I would probably lower your weight and focus on a lighter weight for that one-rep max, so you're doing it effectively and smart. So, this is already done for you: testing your one-rep max in the first week of your blocks.

Before I dive into programming your percentages, really quick, I want you to understand that it's recommended to change your workouts and to retest your maxes every five weeks. Whichever way you look at it, it's either at the end of your block or the start of your block. I like to say it's the start of your block: the first week of your new block is when you're testing for your new maxes. This is what will create the most challenge and confusion for your muscles so they're constantly growing.

So take out your notebooks. If you don't already have them, I expect you to. Now we're going to talk about how you're going to program your percentages based off of that weight you figure out. Once you do figure out your one-rep max, I highly recommend you write it down somewhere, because you're going to need this weight to figure out your percentages. This is based off your one-rep max percentages, which is key for breaking down and building muscle tissue.

I've already programmed your percentages in for you. You'll see right here: 65, 75, 85. They range from about 60 all the way up to about 85, or 50 all the way up to about 95. So the percentages are already programmed for you. What you have to figure out is what that percentage looks like in weight for you, with a calculation. I'm going to show you some examples right now. Jot this down. These are just examples, but you're going to get my concept.

Let's say you can squat 135. That's your one-rep max. Let's say that on this first day, you're going to be doing 65% of that one-rep max, so 65% of 135. You would dial in 135 times 0.65, and this would always be whatever percentage you're focusing on that day. That gets you 87, and I would round to 88. So 88 pounds is 65% of your one-rep max. Then I would jot that down right next to it, so you know what weight you're going to be putting on inside of your workouts.

Now let's do another example. Let's say you're doing 185 for deadlifts and you've got to hit 85% of your one-rep max. You would do 185, your one-rep max, times 0.85, which equals 157. So 157 is 85% of your one-rep max. When you're doing 85%, you would just jot down that weight right next to it.

This is how it's really personalized to you. You have your own unique one-rep max, and your percentages are unique to whatever that one-rep max is for you. That's the only thing you have to determine. I've already programmed the percentages in for you; you just have to do the percentage calculations based off your one-rep max. So that's the fourth step.

The fifth step is programming your reps and your sets. Within this five-week training block, your reps and your sets will change. Listen up: it's already done for you, but I still want you to understand this concept. The compound lifts consist of five sets, right here, with a 2 to 25 rep range. You can see all the rep ranges change here. It's already done for you, but just understand it. The accessory lifts consist of three sets of 10 reps. You'll notice there are some higher reps that go with a lower percentage, because it's less weight and you're doing more repetitions. And there are some lower reps that go with a higher weight percentage. Again, this is already done for you. You just need to follow it and figure out the percentages based off of your one-rep max.

The last thing is programming your rest periods. Your compound lifts require 60 to 90 seconds of rest between sets. This helps you maintain performance and regain strength from set to set. For your accessory lifts, anything in a superset is going to require a 30 to 45 second rest period, to keep that tension on the muscle and to keep your heart rate high.

Now, I have just talked about every single step that you need to complete when it comes to building your own blocks and your own build workout programming. I would personally recommend that when you're done with the programming I've built for you, you come back to this module and re-listen to these steps so that you understand exactly how you should be building your own.

Beneath this video is the 10-week WarriorBabe build workout program that I've already made for you. But I want you to look at it as a study guide on top of following this module and listening to the fundamentals of building your own workout program. A lot of it's already done for you. You just need to test for your maxes, jot down your weights and do the simple calculations that I've already walked you through.

There's also a template beneath this video that I recommend printing out. When you are building your own after you've completed the 10-week program I made for you, you would just fill in the blanks. As you're listening to the steps, literally pull it out, fill in the blanks and use your cheat sheets.

Available below this video are all of the cheat sheets I talked about in this module. You've got the split muscle group cheat sheet, so you understand which muscle groups are complementary when they're worked together and how to implement them. You've got the specific muscle focus cheat sheet, so if you personally want to focus on specific muscle groups, just follow that cheat sheet. You've got the exercise cheat sheet as well, an entire resource broken down by muscle group for you to refer to when you're building your own program. You've got the 10-week WarriorBabe build workout program that I built for you. It's a follow-along, two-block workout program for you to implement right away, but I expect you to use it as a study guide so that you understand how to build your own. And then there's the template, which is an empty template with some done-for-you steps already filled in. It's a step-by-step on how to build your own workout programming moving forward after you're done with the 10-week program.

These are all available for you below this module. And I highly recommend that you come back and listen to this module when you're ready to build your own.