Two free strength programs from Brian Alsruhe: Dark Horse and 4 Horsemen. Both were published on his YouTube channel, and he walks through each one end to end on video rather than handing out a PDF.
Brian coaches out of Never Sate Athletics and comes at strength from a strongman and conjugate background, so both programs lean on max effort work, heavy carries and conditioning rather than a straight percentage progression. They are demanding programs, and neither is a good first template.
If you want a written breakdown before committing, watch the overview video for whichever program you are considering. I have kept the vlog series at the bottom too, because watching somebody actually run Dark Horse week to week tells you more about the workload than any summary will.
Note: the spreadsheets for both programs were removed at Brian’s request and will not be coming back. The videos below are the source for both programs, and they cover the structure in more detail than a spreadsheet would have anyway.
Table of Contents
Dark Horse Program Overview
Dark Horse is organised into max effort waves built around your competition lifts, so the first thing Brian has you do is establish those lifts and their current 1RMs. You then pick a variation for each ME wave.
Each of the first four days of a wave closes with a giant set, and you choose the antagonistic movement, the core movement and the conditioning piece that go into it. That choice is where most of the individualisation in the program lives.
4 Horsemen Program Overview
4 Horsemen is the other free template Brian put out. The video below is his own walkthrough and is the authoritative source for how it runs.
Dark Horse Training Vlog from Wynn Strength
Wynn Strength ran Dark Horse and posted a review of each training day on their YouTube channel. If you want to know what the program actually feels like session by session, this is the most useful thing on this page.
More From Brian Alsruhe
Brian posts programming and coaching content on his YouTube channel, and his gym and coaching services are at Never Sate Athletics.
