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5 Free Minimum Dose Templates for Hypertrophy & Strength
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General notes & disclaimers
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My name is Pak and I did my PhD on “the minimum dose required for 1RM strength in powerlifters“, a project dedicated to understanding what the least a powerlifter can do is and still get stronger.

As part of my PhD, our lab and other collaborators, got to do a few studies on the topic, including a review of the current scientific literature, training studies as well as interviews with some of the best powerlifting athletes and coaches in the world. I also got to read a bunch about minimum dose training in general, including the least one needs to do to make substantial muscle size gains.

Tl;dr we found out that powerlifters or resistance trained individuals can get meaningfully stronger for 6-12 weeks by doing a few heavy/high intensity of effort sets per lift, per week. Additionally, as low as 1-4 sets per muscle group per week can yield meaningful increases in muscle growth, in both trained and untrained individuals.

That’s not to say “a few sets” is all you need for life but it may be something you can try when time or recovery resources are limited or even when training motivation is low.

This sheet contains a series of 6-week minimum dose style “templates” for hypertrophy, 1RM Squat-Bench-Deadlift strength as well as a mix of both.

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Hypertrophy Program
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This template is aimed at people who primarily care about hypertrophy and want to grow a solid amount of muscle but don't have the time or recovery resources to train with "optimal" training volumes. Watch my video on this for more information.
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SBD: Singles + Back-offs
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This template is aimed at lifters who want to experiment with a minimum dose training approach but do not necessarily want to do as little as possible. In addition to singles, this template contains a few back-off sets based on your top single for each training day, as well as 2x optional accessory slots for each training day at higher repetitions. You can expect to make meaningful strength increases in 6 weeks.
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SBD: AMRAPs
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This template is aimed at lifters who do not necessarily enjoy singles and/or heavier loads and want to absolutely YoloFreakIt™ by doing very few sets per week per lift, but in the form of "As-Many-Repetition-As-Possible" aka AMRAP sets. Expect to gain some strength and potentially increase muscle size in 6 weeks. You will need to have a rough idea of your 1RM to run this template as the load selection for the working sets depends on it. If you do not know your current 1RM you can either MAX OUT like a true chad/chadette or also do a heavy-ish single and use your e1RM to calculate the load for your working sets.
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General: Strength & Hyper
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This template is aimed at people who are after general strength & hypertrophy gains and do not necessarily care as much about SBD 1RM strength. That said, you can still expect to gain some strength on your 1RM as well as potentially increase muscle size. In addition to SBD, the template also includes includes OHP, BOR and 2x optional accessory exercise slots.
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SBD: Singles Only
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This template is aimed at the true MinimumDose™ fanatics who care almost exclusively about 1RM strength and want to do literally as little training as possible and only in the form of singles. Expect some strength increases in 6 weeks but they may not be as meaningful as they could be if you followed the singles + back-offs template. As said above, feel free to add any accessory lifts you like.
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