TLDR: Start treating your rehab exercises right, like a proper part of the program
A tour around fitness centers will yield 2 observations; everyone is doing upper body and everyone seems a little hunched. Eric Cressey’s book is written to target this problem, by balancing out pulling and pushing exercises, rehab, and lower body work.
This program is so focused on rehab that it lists those exercises with sets and reps, no different from a ‘bodybuilding’ exercise. This program is for intermediate lifters that are a little banged up from all the pushing work they have done, and the mobility work that did not follow.
An example of this emphasis is one of the first days of phase 1, where front squats are to be supersetted with scapular wall slides for 4 sets. This was written in the training log so the lifter will never be able to ‘forget’ to log it down.
This program has 4 phases, with 4 weeks per phase, with 2/3/4 sessions depending on the lifter’s schedule. If 4 sessions are chosen, there will be 2 ‘speed’ days and 2 normal/strength days, split into upper body and lower body. Exercises are rotated each phase except the last, where each exercise will be featured at least for 1 week in phase 4. The program is very low reps driven; the main compound movements are at most 6 reps, and some of the accessories can go as low as doing 3-rep sets.
Eric Cressey also recommends doing some sort of agility drill or HIIT during the off days to keep work capacity high. On top of that, diet plans are also included for different goals like leaning out or ‘Scrawny Beanpole Get Big’, but with a focus on how the lifter felt after the meal.
Pros:
- Long-term structured view on rehab work
- Highly structured phases with clear goals and work
- Adaptive to people’s schedules, with a range of workouts catering 2 sessions per week to 4 sessions per week
Cons:
- Can’t think of any yet