The 38 Week Functional Strength and Muscle Mass Program

The number one question I’m asked is which strength program is best for an athlete. My second most common question is which program should that athlete do after finishing up another. This article will answer these questions and more. I will lay out an ideal program order for my most popular strength biased functional fitness programs. Fair warning, it’s not going to be easy.

Readers of this website will know that I primarily write functional fitness programs, which means that the vast majority of these fitness plans incorporate heavy lifts as well as a WOD or conditioning session. This programming track is going to be no different even though we will put the majority of our effort towards gaining strength. Here are some of the types of athletes that might benefit from this programming track.

Who is This Program Right For?

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• Athletes who compete in strength sports who traditionally don’t do much conditioning
• Functional Fitness athletes that are already well conditioned but lack absolute strength
• Off season team sports athletes that need strength and muscular size

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Obviously you don’t have to fit perfectly into one of these categories to do this cycle, but I feel like these types of athletes will receive particular benefits.

Athletes like strongmen, and power lifters will often spend way too much time just building their strength and they will neglect their overall work capacity. This can be a huge deficiency, as the size of your fitness base ultimately determines how high your peak fitness can go.

This strength cycle is also great for athletes like football, hockey, and rugby players who certainly benefit from increases in strength, but cannot afford to neglect their conditioning. Lastly, this programming track can be a nice break for athletes who haven’t lifted any heavy barbells in a while!

Introduction to this Cycle

Before we get into the details of this strength progression, we need to cover a few things first. If you are new to heavy, or high volume training, then you should probably give my 12 Week Metabolic Strength Program a shot first. It’s still plenty heavy, but there is slightly less emphasis on lifts, and more on overall work capacity.

If you’re accustomed to lifting heavy or working with higher volume programs, then you’ll be fine to start on this programming track. Like most of my programs, these are designed to be done in order, but you can move them around to different days as your schedule allows. Try to get at least 4 sessions in per week, with 5 sessions being an ideal number. Without further ado, let’s get into the program!

The 38 Week Functional Strength and Muscle Mass Program

This programming track will start off with one of my more popular programs, designed to build strength and muscle mass. We are starting with this program for a reason. You will need to build more muscle to increase your strength. You will start to run into plateaus if you only focus on increasing your neuromuscular efficiency with the amount of muscle mass you currently have.

The 10 Week Functional Power Building Program (Part 1)

This program is roughly double the volume of a traditional fitness routine where you only do one lift and a WOD. In the first week of the cycle you will see that there is one strength movement, where you will be lifting heavy, and a bodybuilding style accessory move that complements this lift.

There is a short break then a WOD or metcon, followed by a final accessory move. During my testing of this program, I found I could get through one of these sessions in about 70-90 minutes. Check out week one below.

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CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART ONE OF THE 10 WEEK FUNCTIONAL POWER BUILDING PROGRAM

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The first part is five total weeks in length, with the last week being a deload. Deloads are important as they are the week when your body repairs and rebuilds new tissue. This is where your strength gains actually come from so take them seriously! Next we move into part two of the functional power building program.

The 10 Week Functional Power Building Program (Part 2)

This second portion is also five weeks in length. It will terminate with one week of establishing new one rep maxes in your primary lifts. The programming movements have changed slightly from part one, and the lift intensity, relative to one rep max, has increased. Check out the first week of part two below.

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CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO OF THE 10 WEEK FUNCTIONAL POWER BUILDING PROGRAM

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The general trend for part two is to increase the overall weight you will be lifting. Each successive week puts you closer to lifting weights nearer your new new one rep max.

I find that this program works very well prior to a more traditional power lifting style program, which is where we will go from here.

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The 9 Week Functional Fitness Strength Program (Part 1)

This is by far my most popular program on this website. As of this writing over 150,000 people have taken a gander at this program. It is very traditional, in that you will be working basic barbell lifts in rep ranges of 5 and below. As with my other programs, you will still have a WOD for each session as well. Here’s week one.

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CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE OF THE 9 WEEK FUNCTIONAL FITNESS STRENGTH PROGRAM

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Make sure you read the article for this program, as it has some tips that will help you work through this program successfully. You will also need to download a spreadsheet linked in that article that will calculate your lifts for every session.

The 9 Week Functional Fitness Strength Program (Part 2)

As you might expect this program continues on in the same track as the previous portion. It is still heavily focused on traditional barbell work, with weights moving ever upward.

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CLIC HERE FOR PART TWO OF THE 9 WEEK FUNCTIONAL FITNESS STRENGTH PROGRAM

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You will also find that the lower overall volume in this program allows you to focus on pure strength gains a little better. Sure, you can gain strength with high volume, but your body can only handle so much training at once. By the end of this program, you should be setting very respectable PRs.

After this program we will move onto an advanced strength training program using accommodating resistance.

If you want to take a break from super heavy lifting and focus on muscle mass then check this ebook out!

The 9 Week Advanced Strength Program for Functional Fitness

This program will be a big change for many of you. Most functional fitness athletes are accustomed to using elastic bands to make difficult exercises easier. Here we will steal a page out of the powerlifting handbook, and use the bands to make the lifts harder.

Make sure you carefully read this program because there are some definite do’s and don’ts for this style of training, and you can injure yourself if you don’t pay attention to what you are doing. Here is week one.

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CLICK HERE FOR THE 9 WEEK ADVANCED FUNCTIONAL FITNESS STRENGTH PROGRAM

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You can see that green blocks will utilize bands, while the blue blocks are more traditional movements. There will also be a short WOD for most sessions, but not all. This program is very focused on building strength and it works very well. Research shows that using accommodating resistance with bands, is quite effective.

Nutrition and Recovery

These program work, but they will work much better if you take care of the details outside of the gym like nutrition and recovery. Make sure you read this article on eating like an athlete, and download this calculator that will give you a custom calorie and macro split.

I would also recommend reading this article on recovery. The research highlighted in this article shows that cycling or walking for 10 minutes, after a workout, can really enhance recovery.

Final Thoughts

This is a long programming track, and lifting heavy can take a toll on your body. I recommend taking a few days to one week off between each of these programs to allow your body some time to recover. It’s ok to feel a little run down and have a few aches while training hard, but if you feel like this all the time you are under recovering.

I would also recommend switching your training style to something that will build more muscle mass, like my 8 week hybrid hypertrophy program. This will give your joints a break, and build some much needed muscle mass. Not get out there and start training!

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