Mutating Your Program

Let's say that we want to make some fundamental changes to your Pronto program, which looks like this.  

Day 1

• 3 x Squat
• 3 x Bench Press
• 3 x Barbell Row
• 3 x Curl

Day 2

• 3 x Deadlift
• 3 x Overhead Press
• 3 x Lat Pulldown 
• 3 x Tricep Pushdowns

Day 3

• 3 x Front Squat
• 3 x Romanian Deadlifts
• 3 x Incline Press
• 3 x Seated Row

In Day 3, we followed the standard Lower Body, Push, Pull, Accessory pattern.  To balance things out, we picked a Lower Body accessory (Romanian Deadlifts), and placed them immediately after the squats (since you're already in the squat rack), although you could put them at the end of the workout if you wanted.)

What if you wanted to make some changes?

Compression: 2-Day Version

Let's turn it into a 2-day program by shuffling things around.  

Day 3 has 2 Upper and 2 Lower exercises, let's split them both evenly into the first two days.  These will both be full-body days.  Exercise selection is about (1) picking exercises that are diverse, covering all the muscle groups you want to hit that day, and (2) don't interfere with other exercises, either on the same day or later that week.

Front Squat -  There's no point in putting it next to the squat--if you're only working out 2x a week, you need to spread out your muscle groups.  Let's put it near the front of the day, so you'll be fresh (except for the deadlifts prior).  If you're using a platform, you can move from deadlift to front squat set up easily.

Incline Press - It has some overlap with both bench press and with OHP, so you could place it in either day.  Let's put it near the bench press.

Seated Row - This is another horizontal row, so let's keep it away from the barbell row in Day 1.  It goes in Day 2.

Romanian Deadlift - Let's put it in Day 2.  It can be a good way to back the hamstrings/hinge off of the squats prior.

Day 1

• 3 x Squat
• 3 x Romanian Deadlifts
• 3 x Bench Press
• 3 x Incline Press
• 3 x Barbell Row
• 3 x Curl

Day 2

• 3 x Deadlift
• 3 x Front Squat
• 3 x Overhead Press
• 3 x Lat Pulldown 
• 3 x Seated Row
• 3 x Tricep Pushdowns

Your days are a bit longer, but this is still very doable.

Expansion: 4-Day Version

With the three day version, it's easy to have three full-body days.  But now that we're increasing frequency to 4x a week, at least two of those workouts are going to be back-to-back, without a rest day in between.  You don't want to put two full-body days next to each other (unless you're working different muscle groups).

The simplest solution is to split this into an Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower scheme.  Let's make a pile of Upper exercises and a pile of Lower exercises.  

With a general Lower day, we don't want to double down on Quads until we have a good Hinge exercise in there.  (And vice versa.)

Likewise, with a general Upper day, it's best to spread it out, so we know we don't want to double down on any of the following categories:

• Horizontal Push
• Horizontal Pull
• Vertical Push
• Vertical Pull

So here are our piles.

Upper Pile

• Pressing
• 3 x Bench Press (horizontal press)
• 3 x Overhead Press (vertical press)
• 3 x Incline Press (sorta both)
• Pulling
• 3 x Barbell Row (horizontal pull)
• 3 x Lat Pulldown (vertical pull)
• 3 x Seated Row (horizontal pull)
• Accessories
• 3 x Curl
• 3 x Tricep Pushdowns

Lower Pile

• Quad
• 3 x Squat
• 3 x Front Squat
• Hinge
• 3 x Deadlift
• 3 x Romanian Deadlifts

Let's split them up.

We have two horizontal pulls (Seated Row and Barbell Row) so let's make sure that they go on different days.

We also have three presses (Bench, Incline, and Overhead).  I chose to put Bench and Overhead on the same day since they are more different from Incline, but they can be effective in different arrangements.

It looks like we have three pulls and three pushes, so one of our Upper days is going to have more Push exercises, while the other is going to have more Pull exercises.  Let's make the Pull-heavy day start off with Bench, because Bench is awesome.  Let's make the Push-heavy day start off with Barbell Row, because that one is a bit more technical than the other types of Pull.

The Lower days have their own issues, but I'll talk about them in the next section.  For now let's just double the sets so that the days have the same volume as the first two days.

Upper 1

• 3 x Bench Press
• 3 x Overhead Press
• 3 x Seated Row
• 3 x Curl

Lower 1

• 6 x Deadlift
• 6 x Front Squat

Upper 2

• 3 x Barbell Row
• 3 x Lat Pulldown
• 3 x Incline Press
• 3 x Tricep Pushdowns

Lower 2

• 6 x Squat
• 6 x Romanian Deadlifts

Splitting and Variety

Wait a minute.  Look at those Lower days again.  What happened here?  Well, we're changing programs and going from 33% Lower volume to 50% lower volume.  The upper volume is staying the same, week to week, but the Lower volume is doubling.  (We're going from a total of 36 sets per week to 48 sets per week.)

Six sets of deadlift followed by six sets of front squats?  Fuck that.  That sounds brutal, especially since this is supposed to be a beginner program.  Both Deadlifts and Front Squats are pretty grueling, so let's add something easy in there.  How about calves?  We'll keep it at 12 sets per day.

Lower 1

• 4 x Deadlift
• 4 x Front Squat
• 4 x Calves

The second Lower day seems a little easier, but we could still use some variety.  Squats hit the quads and the hips.  Romanians hit the hips and the hamstrings.  It looks like hip extension is pretty well covered, so how about if we add one exercise to target the quads, and another exercise to target the hams.

Lower 2

• 3 x Squat
• 3 x Romanian Deadlifts
• 3 x Leg Press
• 3 x Leg Curl

That seems like a pretty good way to finish the week--melting your legs on the Leg Press.