This is Greg Nuckols’ high frequency block: a repeating three week cycle where you train the same lift five days a week at 65% to 85% of your 1RM, always stopping well short of failure. Every session is short. Nothing in it is a grinder. The whole point is to accumulate a large number of clean, fast reps rather than a small number of hard ones.
Greg published it in 2015 alongside a calculator that estimates how much of your strength potential you’ve already reached for a given lift. His argument is that the answer changes what you should do next. Below roughly 80%, the lift is limited by practice and responds to frequency. Above it, you’re limited by muscle mass, and more skill work won’t move much. If you’ve read the Bulgarian Method manual, this is a gentler cousin of the same idea.
Five sessions a week is what rules most people out. It suits an intermediate who has a lift that lags the other two and who can get to a gym most days, and it’s a poor fit if you’re already close to your ceiling on every lift or you can only train twice a week. Two spreadsheets are below: one that follows Greg’s article exactly, and one that pulls deadlifts and overhead press onto a single day.
Table of Contents
Greg Nuckols High Frequency Program Spreadsheets
Both sheets take your 1RMs and fill in every working weight. Pick Version 1 if you want the article as written, Version 2 if deadlifting five days a week sounds like a bad idea to you. As always, make your own copy before you type in it.
Version 1 (Exact) – Squat, Bench and Deadlift Five Days a Week
Spreadsheet by Redditor /u/aivets, who also wrote up a program review of his run through it.
Version 2 (1x Deadlift + Overhead Press) – Six Days a Week
Spreadsheet by Redditor /u/Pronounta. Squat and bench are still on five days, deadlift and overhead press get their own day, and the accessory slots are named for you (tricep work, pec work, posterior chain, Kroc rows, pulldowns) at RPE 8.
High Frequency Program Overview
- Length: a 3 week block you repeat off a higher training max
- Frequency: 5 training days (Version 1), 6 days (Version 2)
- Loading: percentage-based, 65% to 85% of your 1RM
- Reps in reserve: every set stops well short of failure until the last day of week 3
- Inputs: 1RM per lift, plus 6RMs for rows and pulldowns in Version 2
Week 1 is the template. Each day gets one percentage and one set-and-rep scheme, and they’re deliberately mismatched: the heaviest day is the shortest, the lightest day is the longest.
| Day | Intensity | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | 75% | 4×3 | 5×3 | 5×4 |
| Day 2 | 80% | 3×2 | 4×2 | 4×3 |
| Day 3 | 70% | 4×4 | 5×4 | 5×5 |
| Day 4 | 85% | 3×1 | 4×1 | 1 x AMRAP |
| Day 5 | 65% | 5×5 | 6×5 | 6×6 |
The progression is as simple as it looks. Week 2 adds one set to every day. Week 3 adds one rep to every set. The percentages never move.
Ending the Block and Resetting
Day 4 of week 3 is the only test in the program. Instead of 4 sets of 2 at 85%, you do one set of as many reps as you can at 85%, and what you get sets your next training max:
- 6 or 7 reps: add 5 lb / 2.5 kg
- 8 or 9 reps: add 10 lb / 5 kg
- 10 or more reps: add 15 lb / 7.5 kg
Then you start over at week 1 with the new number. That’s why calling this a “3 week program” undersells it. Three weeks is one turn of the wheel, and you keep turning it until the AMRAP stops paying out.
Note: if you can’t train five days, Greg’s fallbacks are to drop the 65% day first, and the 70% day after that. A four day version keeps 75/80/70/85, and a three day version keeps 75/80/85.
Should You Run High Frequency Training?
Greg’s answer runs through an efficiency score, which compares your current 1RM against what your fat free mass predicts you should be lifting. He coached a dozen people who thrived on high frequency work and a dozen who didn’t, ran both groups through the model, and found the responders all started below 80% on the lift that improved. The non-responders sat between 88% and 102% on the lifts that stalled.
Read the source and run your own numbers before you decide. The original article is archived here, since Stronger by Science has since retired the page, and its embedded calculator no longer runs. Greg’s own calculator spreadsheet still does the same math and is the version to use:
Greg’s strength potential calculator spreadsheet – feed it your height, weight, neck, waist, wrist and ankle measurements plus your three lifts, and it returns a predicted maximum total and how much room you have left.
My own take: the efficiency score is a rough instrument and the measurements it depends on are easy to botch, so treat it as a tiebreaker rather than a verdict. If one lift has been flat for months while the other two keep moving, you already have your answer without a tape measure.
Running It Well
- Perfect form on every rep. The program keeps you away from failure on purpose. The point is to accumulate as many quality reps as you can in a week, and a rep with a form breakdown in it doesn’t count toward that.
- Max effort on every rep. Accelerate the bar through the whole movement. Submaximal weight makes it easy to coast, and coasting is what turns this from practice into cardio.
- Lift with a cue in mind. Pick one external cue, use it, then reflect after the set on what you’d change. Reflecting on the set is what makes the practice count.
- Keep accessories light. You’re already doing a bunch of lifts per week. Pick a couple of prehab or isolation movements, superset them for three sets, and leave.
One thing worth being clear about: Greg’s article prescribes this progression per lift, for whichever lift is scoring below 80%. Running squat, bench and deadlift through it at the same time is the spreadsheet authors’ extension, not Greg’s instruction. It works for plenty of people, but if you’re only fixing one lift, you can run the block on that lift and leave the other two on whatever you were already doing.
High Frequency Program FAQs
How long should I run it?
Until the week 3 AMRAP stops earning you a jump. Each block is 3 weeks, and most people get multiple blocks out of it before the reps at 85% stop climbing. When you get 5 or fewer, the block has given you what it has.
Is this the same thing as the Bulgarian method?
They share the frequency and the skill-practice logic, but not the intensity. Bulgarian training works up to a daily max; this caps out at 85% and never takes a set to failure until the final day of the block. If you want the harder version, the Bulgarian Method manual is on the site.
Which version should I pick?
Version 1 if you’re trying to bring up your deadlift, since it’s the one that actually deadlifts five days a week. Version 2 if your deadlift is fine and pulling that often would wreck you, which is the more common situation. Version 2 also gives you a real overhead press day and fills in the accessory slots.
Can I add conditioning?
Version 2 already pencils it in on three days. Keep it easy. The sessions are short and submaximal, so there’s room for it, but the recovery budget is going toward five days of barbell practice.
What else has Greg Nuckols put out?
The 28 free programs collection is the big one, and it includes high frequency templates at 3x, 4x and 5x per week. The rest of his work on the site is collected on his creator page.
Updates
- Added the week by week percentages and set/rep schemes, which were previously only inside the spreadsheets. Corrected the frequency (Version 1 is 5 days per week, not 6) and clarified that the 3 week block repeats off a new training max rather than ending. Stronger by Science retired the source article, so it now points at an archived copy, and Greg’s calculator spreadsheet is called out as the working replacement for its dead embedded calculator. Noted that applying the block to all three lifts at once is the spreadsheet authors’ extension of Greg’s per-lift prescription.
