Even Easier Power—the next great idea you’ll probably ignore

The 'Even Easier Power' program was something I came up with to give friends and clients a bit more direction with the high frequency strength and health training philosophy.

I really like to refer to this idea as ‘EEP’ but my friend Emilio calls it 532. Even though it has nothing in common with 5/3/1, and the rep scheme isn’t really the definining characteristic here. At any rate—if you're not familiar with dan john's '40 day plan' or pavel's 'power to the people' it's easy enough to figure out what those are with a bit of internetting. This is the eccentric love child of those routines.

--This has planned progression unlike the original 40 day plan

--It is much more sustainable and well rounded than PTTP by the book

--This is not a beat my 1rm PRs next week program. It's a 'feel really healthy and strong and help me live longer' program that if you use it properly can easily set you up to crush PRs on your favorite lifts in the near future if you want.

Let's get into it.

Step one: choose your movements

Choose three compound movements. Either push/pull/squat, or push/pull/hinge.

It goes without saying that these movements should not cause you pain. If you can, choose a movement that involves a lighter load on the bar than the biggest lifts, ie snatch grip pulls instead of conventional DL, or larsen presses or standing inclines instead of flat bench. If you have access to things like specialty bars, fatbells, chains etc do use them if they help you load pain free.

Watch your recovery and choose accordingly, too. If the three movements cross over each other too much you might regret it.

The minimum you do every day is these three movements plus some sort of easy locomotion.

The maximum you will do involves adding anterior chain work (2-3 sets), kb ballistics (50-100 total) and some bodybuilding (2-3x10-15) on ONE weak point. Preferably a phasic muscle group trained with an isolation exercise. And loaded carries.

Step two: the program itself

One set of 5, one set of 3, one set of 2 all with the same weight. That's it.

Every training day (preferably 5-6 days per week) you will alternate between a heavy day and a light day.

Heavy days are a progressive cycle. You will add 'a bit' (2.5-5% 1rm if you need a number) to this every heavy day.

Light days you do the same sets and reps, but with the same easy weight every single time. This does not increase it's just constant weight. Starts easy and gets even easier over time. Maybe 70-75% 1rm for upper body, 55-65% for lower.

*At the start of a cycle, the heavy day might start out in the same place as the light day. This is fine.

Step three: heavy day progression

Here's how you deal with the heavy day as it continues to progress. You should begin heavy day with something you can comfortably and easily hit for the 5,3,2 without any warmup sets. As it gets heavier, you can do up to two sets of 5 on each movement for a warmup. If you have to do more than this, you're probably going heavier than the basic concept here.

Never miss. When you can't do the first set of 5 on heavy day, time to back off and start over.

If this happens again without an improvement on the first stall point, it's time to start over with 3 new main movements. Also take a look at your recovery here and possibly juggle your extras.

Light day progression

There isn’t any.

Step four: the extras

The minimum you'll be doing is the 3 movements, alternating heavy and light days every day you train, and 120-150 minutes of EASY zone 2 locomotion each week. Do this however you want. It can be walking, rucking, step ups, pulling a sled, easy running, or cycling/rowing/something else entirely.

**If you can't recover, go heavy day (just the lifts + abs), light day (the lifts plus easy ballistics), locomotion on a third day then repeat. It's basically two on one off or heavy/medium/light depending on how you look at it.

**If you can recover from more, add the abs, kb ballistics, and hypertrophy for one weak point to your heavy day. Carries are good here as well; I love the cook drill.

My 'cook drill reloaded' is: 10 steps waiter walk right hand, 10 steps racked carry, 10 steps suitcase carry, then 10 one arm swings. Switch arms and repeat with the other side. Then, grab the bell, drop into a squat and do some goblet curls. That's one round. Don't wear yourself out too much. You can do more than 10 steps if you want, or if you don’t have room sub the walking for marches in place.

**If time to train is your issue, on heavy day ONLY do the movements and their warmup sets as needed. On light day, do the movements plus ONE extra (abs or ballistics or hypertrophy or carries). Locomotion just fit in where you can.

**If neither time nor energy is your limiting factor, do this:

Heavy day: 2x5 warmups (optional), 5,3,2 following the progression, then abs, hypertrophy, and ballistics plus carries.

Light day: your constant weight 5,3,2 then all of the same extras. If you’ve already done a few cycles and are getting bored, you can check those ‘extra’ boxes with different things than the heavy day.

Try to do 180min or more of locomotion over the course of the week. If you've been doing this for a while, do sprints one day and the easy zone 2 the other days.

An example:

Push, pull, squat—

Low incline bench press, pendlay row, front squat.

Abs: hanging leg raises

weak point: glutes

Locomotion: ruck

Carries and ballistics: cook drill reloaded for 10-15 minutes

Another example:

Push, pull, hinge—

Barbell press (taken off the rack), jefferson lift, neutral grip pullup.

Abs: standing band crunches

weak point: rear delts

Locomotion: easy run

Carries and ballistics: sandbag 'however you want' just switching up the positions out and back across the yard 10 times. One very light set of 50 two hand swings.

EEP should, in theory, be sustainable more or less forever. It’s a system, not a set workout, and having both planned progression as well as days just grooving the movements keeps it productive longer than a few months at a time. Rotating the movements when stalled and playing with the extras also provide an awful lot of flexibility in terms of scheduling etc no matter what else you have going on at the time.

As the title says… I doubt you’ll do this. But if you do, drop me a line! I enjoyed it and so have the people I’ve given it to. It’s a fun program and it does just make you feel great. No one’s made the jump to doing it forever though. Not yet!