The Strength Playbook

The whole volume, in the order you'd use it

A training week

What the evidence supports at each point of an ordinary strength week, and the year around it. Each box points to the card that backs it and the free tool that does it.

From the first test to the twice-yearly squeeze

Written for a healthy adult. Where a body is frail, hurt or long untrained, the season's own line comes first: the difference between a principle and a program is a clinician (card 5).

Week oneFind your ten-rep maximum and write it down
- The most you can lift ten times, on one lift
- Same test at any age, for either sex
- The chart is the method, and it costs a pencil
Cards 1, 5, 10 · Ledger
Before each sessionWarm up by moving
- A few minutes of the activity at low effort
- Leg swings, lunges, arm circles
- A few light sets before the heavy one
- No long held stretch right before a hard effort
Card 7
Lifting daysCarry sets near the end, then raise the load by the chart
- Any range you can stand, if the set is honest
- Heavy, low reps at the lift you want strong
- Raise the load when a retest says so
Cards 1, 6 · Ledger
Across the weeksA simple plan: hard weeks, easier weeks
- Say what you train this month, at what load
- Rest is an instruction, not a lapse
- When the plan and your numbers disagree, trust the numbers
Card 11 · Ledger
Sore joint or no gymShort hard holds against a wall
- A hold at an angle that doesn't hurt
- At the sticking point of a lift
- Strength stays near the angle you held
Card 4 · Press
Beside the barSwings for the back, or a walk with a moderate pack
- A bell trains the back of the body
- A pack well under a third of body weight
- Add by what you've recently done
- Neither replaces the bar
Cards 8, 9 · Bell, Pack
Every dayEnough protein, from food, then stop
- About 1.6 g per kg of body weight
- A few decent portions across the day
- Near training if convenient
Card 2 · Enough
Twice a yearSqueeze the gauge and log it
- A reading, compared with norms for your age and sex
- If it's low, train the whole body
- Don't train the hand to move the number
Card 3 · Marker

Part one

The lift

How to load a muscle, how hard to work it, how to arrange the weeks, and who it works for. The loaded lift, the best-founded practice in five volumes, lives here.

Card 1 · The Calf and the Bull

Cost 3Evidence 4Hype 3

Ask for a little more than last time, and write last time down

Progressive resistance is the best-founded claim in the volume. The calf story sold with it was an advertisement from 1925.

Reps per exercise, per session

1945, top of range100

1945, bottom of range70

1951 revision30

The 1951 scheme: three sets of ten

Set 150%

Set 275%

Set 3100%

Each set as a share of the ten-rep maximum. Fewer reps allowed heavier loads, and the authors found heavier loads built muscle faster.

1925A Philadelphia barbell company publishes "The Originator of the Progressive System." The calf appears in no ancient source that mentions Milo.

1945Army doctor Thomas DeLorme reports more than three hundred cases from a Chicago hospital: wasted limbs restored by heavy resistance, loads set from a tested ten-rep maximum.

1951After revising with Arthur Watkins, the book Progressive Resistance Exercise carries three sets of ten into everything.

SinceEighty years of trials have not found a population, young or old, injured or elite, in which the principle fails.

First sessionFind the most you can lift ten times. Write the number down.

Each weekRaise the load when a measurement says you can, not by the calendar. Retest the maximum.

Sets and repsThree sets of ten is "a fine way to spend a Tuesday." Change it when your numbers suggest you should.

No scheme of sets and reps has been shown to be best; three sets of ten was never tested as optimal. DeLorme was a rehabilitation doctor writing about wasted limbs, not a coach of healthy athletes.

Use it: the free toolLedger →Find a ten-rep maximum, work from loads set by it, retest, raise. The chart is the method.

DeLorme 1945 · DeLorme & Watkins 1948 to 1951 · Milo Bar-Bell Company 1925 · Season 1

Card 6 · The Pump

Cost 2Evidence 3Hype 3

Muscle grows from effort, across a wide range of reps

Take a set close to the rep you can't finish, and muscle grows across a far wider range of loads than the magazines allowed. Heavy loads still win for strength.

18 trained men, 8 weeks, every set to failure (2015)

Heavy: 8 to 12 repsMuscle: grewEndurance: no gain

Light: 25 to 35 repsMuscle: grew, no significant differenceEndurance: up by a wide margin

Back squat one-rep max gain

Heavy19.6%

Light8.8%

Muscle thickness grew about 5 to 9.5 percent depending on the site, in both groups.

RuleEight to twelve reps for size: the author searched for the study behind it and found none.

2017The trials weighed together: similar growth from light and heavy loads when sets go close to failure. Heavy loads better for maximal strength.

DoseMore hard sets grew more muscle, up to a point, then bought fatigue. The book prints no number for where that bends.

PumpBlood in a working muscle. "It says the set was hard. It does not say the muscle will grow."

Pick a rangeLift heavier or lighter as you like, as long as sets end near the rep you can't finish. Light sets cost more reps, time and discomfort.

For strengthLift heavy, in low reps, at the movement you want to be strong at.

How many setsEnough of them, and not more than you recover from.

Eighteen men is one small trial, and the rest of the evidence covers weeks and months, not years. Why effort grows muscle is still argued: tension leads, damage and metabolic stress trail.

The toolNo tool, on purpose. The ingredient is how close a set comes to its end, and only the person lifting can feel that.

Schoenfeld et al. 2015 · Schoenfeld, Grgic, Ogborn & Krieger 2017 · Season 6

Card 11 · The Peak

Cost 2Evidence 3Hype 3

Have a plan. Which plan matters little.

Training calendars were built on a 1936 study of rats under harm. When plans were finally compared, they came out about the same, and the people on them scattered.

How a rat study became the training year

1936Selye's letter in Nature: rats poisoned, chilled and injured, not trained

1955Swimming coach Forbes Carlile borrows the curve

1960sTrack coach Fred Wilt; Soviet plans published by Matveyev

1968Swimming coach James Counsilman

2018John Kiely's review: "Confronting an Inconvenient Truth"

What the comparisons found

Plan against planGroup results came out "equivalent"

Person against personSame plan, gains that scatter widely

RatsSelye measured survival and the state of the organs, not strength. "Nobody was giving barbells to rats."

TextThe profession's own foundational text calls his theory "one of the foundational theories" of periodization.

EastThe Soviet plans arrived with medals and without data the West can check, confounded by what else the state was doing.

WhyKiely's name for it is path dependence: a choice that made sense once, surviving "the eclipse of the justification."

OrganizeWrite what you're training this month and at what load, so the load rises on a schedule.

FatigueAlternate hard weeks with easier ones. Ease off before a contest.

AdjustWhen the planned peak doesn't arrive, the plan was never a forecast. Your numbers are.

"Planned beats unplanned by a modest margin" is the literature's general reading, not a measured figure, and the book prints no effect size. Soviet claims can't be checked.

Nearest toolLedger →No tool of its own. The season says keep the chart over the calendar, and Ledger is the chart.

Selye 1936 · Kiely 2018 · Season 11

Card 5 · The Nonagenarians

Cost 3Evidence 4Hype 2

Muscle still answers at ninety

Nine frail care-home residents, mean age ninety, nearly tripled the strength of the muscles they stand up with in eight weeks. Nobody had anything to sell.

After 8 weeks of heavy knee-extensor training (1990)

Strength+174%

Walking speed, heel to toe+48%

Thigh muscle area+9%

Ten enrolled

Nine finished. Ages up to 96. Three sessions a week, 24 in all, load raised as the measured maximum rose.

1990Maria Fiatarone's team, working from the federal nutrition-and-aging center at Tufts, in a Boston long-term-care facility.

Why"Percentages are ratios." Starting from a small base, any gain is a big percentage. The residents finished stronger, not athletes.

TissueThe 9 percent means real new muscle, not only nerves learning to recruit. The machinery of growth was "still running at ninety."

1994A larger randomized trial, about a hundred frail residents over ten weeks, went the same way. Training did the work; a supplement without training did not.

With a clinicianIn the study, staff measured each maximum and set each load. For a frail body, or any age with a condition, that's a clinician's job.

The goalIndependence: the stairs, the chair, the corridor without the rail.

Before buyingMachines and senior programs sold on the study's number are not honest just for being near it.

Ten people, then about a hundred. Neither study was built to measure survival, and nine people can't tell any one person where they'll land. The principle transfers; the prescription does not.

Nearest toolLedger →No tool of its own. The residents trained on DeLorme's chart, which Ledger keeps. Ledger is not a clinician.

Fiatarone et al. 1990 · Season 5

Card 10 · The Strongwoman

Cost 3Evidence 4Hype 4

The same program, for everyone

For a century women were told they couldn't lift, shouldn't, and would respond less. When the trials were finally weighed, women's gains matched men's in relative terms, and in the upper body beat them.

Women vs men on the same program (2020 review)

MeasureStudiesWomen's relative gainUpper-body strength17largerLower-body strength23similarMuscle size10similar

Abbye Stockton's 1947 lifts vs her body weight, in pounds

Press100

Snatch105

Body weight115

Clean and jerk135

1902Katie Sandwina lifts 300 lb overhead in New York. Eugen Sandow, the most famous strongman alive, gets it only to his chest. She takes his name.

1987Her 296 lb overhead lift, the women's record, finally falls to Karyn Marshall.

1944Stockton starts "Barbelles" in Strength and Health, for a decade. In 1947 she helps organize the first AAU-sanctioned women's weightlifting contest.

2020Roberts, Nuckols and Krieger weigh the trials that trained both sexes the same way.

The programThe volume's findings apply to women at the same rate as to men: the chart, the protein, sets near the end.

Starting outThe authors' suggestion: untrained women often start lower in the upper body, so there's more room to gain there.

The old warningIt was "consensus without a count, and every count has gone against it."

The review is about relative gains, not absolute strength. Men start with more muscle and lift more in absolute terms, and nothing in the review touches that.

Nearest toolLedger →No tool of its own. The finding is that the same chart works for everyone, so use Ledger.

Roberts, Nuckols & Krieger 2020 · Season 10

Part two

Around the lift

The cheap things: the warm-up, the hold, the bell, the pack and the plate. Each is real, and each is smaller than the story that came with it.

Card 7 · The Stretch

Cost 1Evidence 3Hype 3

Warm up by moving. Stretch for range, later.

Holding a stretch before exercise was taught for a century as protection. Counted, it didn't prevent injury or soreness, and long holds cost a little power.

Injuries in two army-recruit trials, 2,631 people

Didn't stretch200

Stretched181

About 5 percent lower risk, with uncertainty running from 22 percent lower to 16 percent higher. Not statistically significant.

Soreness at 3 days, on a 100 mm line

2002Herbert and Gabriel in the BMJ: stretching before exercise "does not seem to confer a practically useful reduction in the risk of injury."

AcheSeven studies, 224 people: "does not confer protection from muscle soreness."

2013A review of the lab work: after a long held stretch, a muscle makes a little less force and power for a while. Longer holds cost more.

RealWhat stretching reliably does: more range of motion, over weeks, as long as the practice lasts.

Before liftingA few minutes of the activity at low effort, then leg swings, lunges and arm circles, then a few light sets before the heavy one.

For rangeStretch after the session or on its own day, consistently, for joints your life asks to move further.

For protectionThe injury research points at strength itself, the progressive loading of card 1.

The review covered static stretching before training in young military recruits; later work argues about the edges. The power cost is small and fades, and for general fitness it hardly matters.

The toolNo tool, on purpose. The warm-up is movement, and it needs no app.

Herbert & Gabriel 2002 · Simic, Sarabon & Markovic 2013 · Season 7

Card 4 · Samson's Chains

Cost 1Evidence 3Hype 4

A hold against a wall builds strength at that angle

Isometric holds work, at a modest size. The 1960s miracle credited to them was a drug.

The 1953 protocol

9 untrained men1 hold a dayabout 6 secondsabout two thirds of max

Where the strength shows up

1926The strongman Alexander Zass says he built his strength straining against chains in wartime captivity. His strength is documented; "the chains are testimony."

1953Hettinger and Müller report gains of roughly 5 percent a week. No one should expect that rate past the first weeks.

1960sYork Barbell's lifters make huge gains credited to isometric racks. They were also taking Dianabol, marketed from 1958.

1983Terry Todd in Sports Illustrated on a small brown bottle: "'This is the secret,' they told me."

Painful jointA hold at an angle that doesn't hurt trains the muscle without the motion. That's why the method lives on in rehabilitation.

Sticking pointHold at the exact angle where a lift stalls, to get stronger exactly there.

No equipmentA wall, a doorframe or your other arm. Holds with the muscle long, not short, carry over to more angles.

No weekly rate of gain holds up past the first weeks. Strength stays near the trained angle, and for building size a hold is weaker than a lift that moves.

Use it: the free toolPress →One six-second hold per position per day, timed and logged, at the honest size.

Hettinger & Müller 1953 · Todd 1983 · Season 4

Card 8 · The Girya

Cost 2Evidence 2Hype 3

A bell for the back of the body, not the whole gym

The kettlebell was a Russian market weight, never a secret. In its best-controlled trial it eased sore backs and left the shoulders and the heart where they were.

Pain drop vs control, 10-point scale (2011, 40 adults)

Neck and shoulder2.1

Low back1.4

After 8 weeks of swing-based sessions, 3 a week

back muscles strongerless painshoulders unchangedfront of trunk unchangedaerobic fitness unchanged

1700sA girya weighed grain at Russian markets. The standard size, the pood, is about 16 kg.

1885Competitive kettlebell lifting begins at a Saint Petersburg athletic club.

1998An instructor brings it to the US; a 2001 book title frames it as a Russian challenge. By 2010 it's in most gyms.

2011Kenneth Jay's Danish trial: workers with neck, shoulder and back pain, average age 44, mostly women, randomly assigned.

The swingThe hips drive the bell forward and up; the back, glutes and hamstrings work; the arms only guide.

Beside, not insteadKeep the barbell and the road. The bell doesn't ask for a heavy squat or a long run, so it doesn't build them.

The costOne bell, one floor, no maintenance, no membership.

One trial of forty adults. Smaller trials disagree about the heart, and nobody has run one big enough to settle it. Bells come in jumps, not the small steps a chart wants.

Use it: the free toolBell →A swing timer: so many swings at the top of each minute for so many minutes, counted and logged.

Jay et al. 2011 · Season 8

Card 9 · The Soldier's Load

Cost 2Evidence 3Hype 3

Carry something. Carry less than you think.

Walking with a load is walking, plus. The army's science of it was a science of when to stop, and the fitness trend kept the pack and dropped the ceiling.

Pounds on the back, from Marshall's 1950 book

Roman legend80

Road-march ceiling40-45

Roman, corrected: approach44

Roman, corrected: combat33

The ceiling Marshall cited: about one third of body weight, "not in excess of forty to forty-five pounds." In combat, lighter still.

1943A regiment lands on Kiska carrying a "Book of Battle Songs." The enemy had already left. "Had the enemy been there with only two machine guns, we would have been repelled."

1944At Normandy, troops went in "each with four cartons of cigarettes in his pack." Some overloaded men drowned.

LaterMilitary research: energy cost climbs faster than the load, speed falls, posture pays, and injuries rise with load.

2008A rucksack company founded; by 2017 more than 900 of its loaded-walk events a year. "Rucking" becomes a trend.

StartA bag with something in it, well under a third of your body weight. You have no enemy and no forced march.

AddBy what your body has recently done, not by what the pack can hold.

Beside the barA loaded walk builds sustained, moderate fitness and a strong back. It doesn't build the strength of the bar.

The research is military, not trials of civilian fitness, and the book prints none of its figures. The load that trains also injures, and the harm has no floor below which it vanishes.

Use it: the free toolPack →Sets your ceiling at a third of body weight, logs each walk, and flags any load over the ceiling.

Marshall 1950 · Season 9

Card 2 · The Meat

Cost 2Evidence 4Hype 3

Eat enough protein, then stop

Forty-nine trials found a ceiling the folklore never had: past about 1.6 grams per kilogram a day, more protein added nothing the trials could detect.

Protein per kg of body weight per day (2018, 49 trials)

Below 1.6, more protein meant more gain. Above it, the line went flat. On top of training, extra protein added about 0.3 kg of lean mass.

1842The chemist Justus von Liebig says working muscle burns its own protein. Within twenty years a beef extract with his name is sold on it.

1865Fick and Wislicenus climb the Faulhorn on starch paste and sugary tea, collecting their urine. The nitrogen was "nowhere near enough" to account for the climb. Protein is the material of muscle, not its fuel.

2013Aragon and Schoenfeld on the post-workout window: whether it matters depends above all on what you ate before training. Total daily intake does the heavy lifting.

2018Morton and colleagues weigh 49 trials and 1,863 people, and find a point past which more protein adds nothing the trials could detect.

DailyAbout 1.6 g per kg of body weight, from food, in a few decent portions across the day. Most people who lift and eat normally are near it already.

TimingNear your training if it's convenient, and not if it's not.

The tubAbove the plateau, protein bought nothing the trials could see. The cautious ceiling is about 2.2.

An average across many people, over months of trials. Individuals differ, and older adults may sit toward the higher end. Nothing here says what decades of high intake do. Timing may matter more if you train fasted.

Use it: the free toolEnough →A protein target from your body weight, a cautious ceiling near 2.2, and a rough tally of the day against it.

Fick & Wislicenus 1865 · Aragon & Schoenfeld 2013 · Morton et al. 2018 · Season 2

Part three

What to count

A reading that forecasts the body, and a count that nobody owns. Both are measures, and neither is a lever.

Card 3 · The Grip

Cost 1Evidence 4Hype 4

Read the squeeze. Don't train your hand to please the gauge.

In 139,691 people, grip strength forecast death better than blood pressure did. Squeezing a spring harder is no way to buy the years.

Risk of death per standard deviation (2015)

What the squeeze forecast

death, any causecardiovascular deathdiabetes: nofractures: no strong link

2015The PURE study in the Lancet: 139,691 people aged 35 to 70 in 17 countries, followed a median of four years.

5 kgEach 5 kg less grip went with about 16 percent higher risk of death, and about 17 percent higher cardiovascular death.

WhyThe hand samples the whole body: muscle, nerves, appetite, mood, reserve. It is convenient, and what it reads is nearly everything.

TrialNo trial has trained people's grip and shown they lived longer. "A predictor is not a lever."

A readingA ten-second squeeze, twice a year, the same way each time, compared with norms for your age and sex.

If it's lowTrain the whole body with loaded work (card 1) and let the grip come along with it.

Any numberAsk the grip's two questions: does it predict or cause? If I move the number, do I move the thing?

An association in a cohort, not a trial. A reading is "not a diagnosis." Training the hand moves the number without touching what it measured, "dyeing the hair to move the age."

Use it: the free toolMarker →Log a grip reading a few times a year and watch the line over years.

Leong et al. (PURE) 2015 · Season 3

Card 12 · The Stones

Cost 3Evidence 1Hype 1

A count nobody owns

No trial, no theory, no product. A stone claims only to be heavy, asks the whole body for everything at once, and can hurt you.

The stones, in pounds

Both Dinnie Stones733

Larger Dinnie414.5

Húsafell stone410

Smaller Dinnie318.5

Lifted both originals, 1860 to 1 July 2025

1860Donald Dinnie is reported to have carried both stones across the Potarch Bridge, 17 feet 1.5 inches. Some sources credit his father, Robert.

1979Jan Todd lifts them with straps, the first woman on record. In January 2019 Emmajane Smith lifts them bare-handed.

1700sThe Húsafell stone was built as a sheep-pen gate. On 14 August 2025 Hannah Linzay became the first woman on record to carry it around the pen.

1977The first World's Strongest Man, on a studio lot. A refrigerator carry dislocated Franco Columbu's knee on camera.

Know the costA stone loads the lower back rounded, the way barbell coaches teach people to avoid, and it has torn the arm tendons of strongmen.

No small stepsA stone weighs what it weighs. The jump from one you can lift to one you can't is the whole gap.

The lessonWhen you want to know whether something works, look for the count that nobody owns.

Evidence 1: a count of outcomes with no comparison and no mechanism. It can't say whether lifting stones builds strength. Behind it is an uncounted record of people who tried and were hurt.

The toolNo tool, on purpose. The stone keeps its own count.

The Dinnie Stones count, to 1 July 2025 · Season 12

Index

All twelve on one map

Across: what it costs to do. Up: how well the research backs it. Color: how far the popular version runs ahead. Tap a practice to jump to its card.

Three of the best-supported rows cost a bar and a room, and seven cheap practices sit beside them or just below

4 Strong

3 Grip reading

2 Enough protein

1 Progressive load 5 Load at any age 10 Same program for all

3 Moderate

4 Isometric holds 7 Moving warm-up

6 Sets near the end 9 Loaded walk 11 Simple plan

2 Suggestive

8 Kettlebell

1 Thin

12 Stone

1 Very low cost

2 Low

3 Moderate

4 High

Hype gap: 1 small 2 moderate 3 large 4 extreme

Ratings are one reader's judgment on the book's own scales, argued row by row in the Volume Five matrix. They don't rate how well anything works for you, and the cost scale doesn't measure injury: the stone and the loaded walk carry a physical cost no number here conveys.