How to write your own workout program for strength

Make them in this order, because each depends on the one before. Exercises come third, after the days and the split, because the split decides how much fits in one workout.

Start from the days you can actually train, not from a split you have seen online. Count the days you can manage in an ordinary week with work, family and sleep, then pick the split that fits them.

When the number of sets per week is the same, a meta-analysis of 25 studies found no significant difference in muscle growth between training a muscle once, twice or three or more times a week (Schoenfeld, Grgic and Krieger 2019), and the 2026 ACSM position stand reached the same conclusion. For strength, the same position stand recommends at least two sessions a week. Twice a week per muscle is a practical default: it spreads the sets so no single workout gets too long, and a missed day still leaves every muscle trained once.

Whatever you pick, keep the same split for the whole run so you compare like with like. If you are choosing between the three common splits, our 5×5 vs push pull legs vs upper/lower guide puts them side by side.

Four to six exercises is enough for most workouts: with 2 or 3 working sets each, that is 8 to 18 sets, which fits in about an hour with warm-ups. Across the week, cover these movement patterns.

• Squat (knee-dominant): back squat, front squat, leg press, Bulgarian split squat.
• Hinge (hip-dominant): deadlift, Romanian deadlift, hip thrust, back extension.
• Push: bench press, incline dumbbell press, overhead press, dips, push-ups.
• Pull: rows, lat pulldown, pull-ups or chin-ups.
• Extras if there is time: lateral raises, curls, triceps extensions, calf raises and trunk work such as planks.

Put the hardest compound lift first while you are fresh, then the other compound lifts, then single-joint exercises. Order matters for strength rather than size: in a meta-analysis, lifts gained the most strength when they came first in the workout, while muscle growth was the same in any order (Nunes et al. 2021). So start with the lift you most want to get stronger at.

Choose exercises you can load safely, with the equipment you actually have, and that you can do with the same technique every week. You do not need a barbell: a dumbbell press or a leg press is progressed the same way, by adding reps and then weight.

Write a rep range rather than one number, such as 8–12. The range is what you progress through: add reps until you reach the top in every set, then add weight. Pick the range by goal.

The research behind the weekly figure: the 2026 ACSM position stand, an overview of 137 systematic reviews, concludes that higher volumes of 10 or more sets a week improve muscle growth, and that heavy loads of at least 80% of your one-rep max, for 2 to 3 sets at the start of the workout on at least two days a week, improve strength (Currier et al. 2026). Earlier, a meta-analysis had found that each extra weekly set added a little more muscle (Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger 2017), and a 2026 meta-regression found that more sets keep adding muscle with diminishing returns, and that the returns diminish much faster for strength (Pelland et al. 2026). Muscle grows across a wide range of loads when sets are hard, but a heavier max needs heavy sets (Schoenfeld et al. 2021). If you are new to lifting, start nearer 6 to 10 sets per muscle and add more only when progress stalls and you recover well.

Count only hard working sets, not warm-ups, and count a set for the muscle that does most of the work: a bench press counts for the chest, a row for the back.

Reps in reserve (RIR) is how many more reps you could have done when you stopped the set. Writing it into the program is what makes the rep range meaningful: 8–12 reps with 2 in reserve means you choose a weight you could lift 10 to 14 times, and stop 2 short.

Leave 2 to 3 reps in reserve on heavy compound lifts, where a failed rep is risky and tiring, and 0 to 2 on isolation exercises such as curls and lateral raises. Estimates are rough at first, so record them anyway and check them now and then by taking the last set of an isolation exercise to failure; Helms et al. (2016) advise new lifters to record RIR before steering their training by it.

Training to failure is not required. A meta-analysis found at most a trivial advantage for muscle growth from sets taken to failure (Refalo et al. 2023), and the 2026 ACSM position stand says failure is not necessary: sets that end near failure, at about 2 to 3 reps in reserve, are enough. Growth does improve as sets get closer to failure, while strength gains are similar across a wide range of RIR (Robinson et al. 2024), which is why small exercises can go a little closer.

Rest 2 to 3 minutes between sets of compound lifts and about 90 seconds on isolation exercises. Write the rest into the program so you do not rush the heavy sets or drift into five-minute breaks on light ones.

In one study of trained men, resting 3 minutes instead of 1 built more squat and bench press strength and more thigh muscle over 8 weeks (Schoenfeld et al. 2016), and a 2024 meta-analysis found a small advantage for muscle growth from resting longer than 60 seconds, with no appreciable difference beyond 90 seconds (Singer et al. 2024). Across reviews, the 2026 ACSM position stand found that rest length did not change strength gains, so the main reason to rest is to repeat the reps. If you are short of time, cut a set rather than the rest.

Log every working set: the exercise, the weight and the reps. Progress is the same set getting heavier or longer at the same RIR. Without the log you cannot tell a good week from a bad one.

The simplest rule is double progression. Say your last bench press session was 60 kg for 10, 9 and 8 reps with a range of 6–10. Keep 60 kg until you get 10 reps in all three sets at the planned RIR, then add the smallest step you can, such as 2.5 kg, and work back up the range from the bottom. Adding reps and adding weight both work: in a study of trained lifters, adding reps gave slightly more muscle and adding load slightly more strength, and the authors judged both progressions viable (Plotkin et al. 2022).

Judge each exercise across weeks, not sessions. One bad workout after a short night means nothing; three sessions in a row without a single extra rep or kilogram on the same sets is a signal.

Run the program for 6 to 8 weeks before you judge it as a whole. Then keep what worked, change what stalled, and start the next run from the weights in your log rather than from scratch. Our progressive overload guide goes deeper into choosing the next weight and reps yourself.

• Writing for your best week. Plan for the week where work runs late; you can add sets later, but an unfinished workout teaches you to skip.
• Changing exercises every week. New exercises feel productive, but you lose the comparison that shows progress.
• Not logging. Memory rounds up; a log tells you what you lifted.
• Taking every set to failure. It adds fatigue for little extra muscle; keep failure for the last set of small exercises.
• Copying an advanced lifter's volume. Their 20 sets a muscle took years to reach; start lower and earn more.