Strength Training – Monthly Percentage Cycles (3 Days)

About the plan

12-week strength training plan organized into three four-week cycles for people who train three days a week and can no longer add load every session. The logic is to change the unit of progression: instead of adding weight every session, you add it every monthly cycle and work with percentages of a deliberately conservative training max — about 90% of what you actually lift. Within each cycle, the first week is fives, the second is threes and the third is singles, with the load rising from 85% to 95%, and the fourth week is a deload. In all of them the last set goes to technical failure, and the number of reps you get is your progress indicator. Each session pairs a main lift in this format with a second lift for five sets of five reps at a light load: squat with bench press on Monday, bench press with squat on Wednesday, and deadlift with overhead press on Friday. At the end of each cycle you add 2 kg (about 4.4 lb) to your upper-body training max and 5 kg (about 11 lb) to your lower-body one, regardless of how you felt — keeping the load conservative is what lets the plan run for months.