🧠 Stop Programming Strength Like It’s 1983: Why Linear Periodisation Is Killing Your Progress
Josh Hezza- Apr 23
- 15 min read
Updated: Apr 24
🧠 “Stop Programming Strength Like It’s 1983: Why Linear Periodisation Is Killing Your Progress”
📍 The Zombie Programs Still Roaming Around
You’ve probably seen it.
Twelve-week Excel sheets where everything fits neatly into a box. Sets across, linear jumps in intensity, predictable volume drops, a “taper” week where you pray you didn’t peak too early — or too late. It’s what you were taught in your PT cert. It’s what most “advanced” training templates still push. And it hasn’t worked for the average lifter in decades.
But here it is, still haunting commercial gyms and group programs like it’s 1983.
These aren’t bad programs because they’re evil. They’re bad because they’re static, linear, and outdated for how modern strength development actually works. They’re built on assumptions that no longer apply: that recovery is simple, that progress is linear, and that effort can be precisely mapped 12 weeks in advance on a spreadsheet.
🧟♂️ The Living Dead of Strength Training
Linear Periodisation. High Intensity Training. Classic Block Periodisation.
All three are relics of an era when:
Strength training was reserved for athletes with perfect recovery environments.
Sports science was still in its infancy.
GPP was misunderstood or completely ignored.
And lifters peaked once or twice per year — maybe.
Fast forward 40 years and many lifters are still being run through the same cycles that were built for Olympic track athletes in Eastern bloc systems with full-time coaching, massages on tap, and pharmaceutical recovery support. Now we’re applying those same cycles to desk-bound lifters with three kids, a 9-to-5, and a dodgy shoulder.
And we wonder why progress stalls.
📏 Breaking Down the Structure
Let’s define what we’re dealing with.
Classic linear and block templates follow a simple structure across training cycles:
Microcycle (weekly): Usually involves fixed lifts, fixed percentages, and rigid accessory work.
Mesocycle (monthly): Intensity climbs, volume drops. Often very little movement variation.
Macrocycle (long-term): Usually 8–16 weeks of the above, culminating in a peak or test.
On paper? Neat. In the real world? Unresponsive. Rigid systems break when the athlete changes. And athletes always change.
🎯 Why This Article Exists
This isn’t just a critique of old-school templates.
It’s a roadmap out of them.
You’ll learn what makes modern programming actually work — not in a lab, but in a busy gym, with lifters who have normal lives and real recovery limits.
You’ll see:
Why rotating movements weekly exposes and fixes weak points faster than static blocks.
How to program for strength and speed year-round.
What true Conjugate structure looks like — and why it solves the problems those 12-week spreadsheets never could.
Because you’re not a Cold War athlete. You’re a 2025 lifter. It’s time to train like one.
📉 What Is (and Was) Linear Periodisation?
🤔 What People Think It Is
Linear Periodisation is often sold as a “scientific” method of strength progression: start with high volume, gradually increase intensity, and taper into a peak.
But most people running it today aren’t using true periodisation. They’re copying diluted versions of outdated Olympic cycles that were never built for the average lifter.
In theory, here’s how the classic model works:
🧱 The Three Phases of Linear Periodisation
Accumulation Phase
High volume, lower intensity
Goal: build general work capacity, hypertrophy, and technical skill
Intensification Phase
Volume decreases, intensity climbs
Goal: increase strength and move toward heavier efforts
Transmutation Phase
Low volume, high intensity, sport-specific lifts
Goal: peak the athlete for competition or testing
At first glance, this seems logical. It works well — if your only job is to train, eat, sleep, and maybe pass a drug test every four years. And that was the case for many of the athletes it was originally written for.
🧠 Where It Came From (and Why That Matters)
Linear periodisation didn’t come from commercial gyms or lifters juggling shift work. It came from:
Military prep programs
State-sponsored Olympic training camps
Soviet and Eastern bloc methodologies, heavily reliant on chemical recovery
In fact, many classical periodisation structures (including the ones cited in Western sports science) were never truly drug-free, nor were they designed to be. The long accumulation-to-peak model was structured around drug testing windows and timing performance to pass protocols — not because it was the most effective standalone system.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Verkhoshansky, Medvedev, and others began moving away from strict linear sequencing long before the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Even Soviet texts acknowledged the limitations of volume→intensity→peak progression, especially for long-term development and strength-speed sports.
These models were never designed for lifters who train 3–4 times per week and have to be ready year-round.
🔍 Linear vs. Block Periodisation: Are They the Same?
They’re close cousins. Block periodisation is a restructured, more “modular” form of linear programming:
You still separate accumulation, intensification, and transmutation.
But you chunk them into blocks — 3–6 week phases that “stack” toward a peak.
While block is more flexible than traditional linear, it still suffers from the same problem: you’re betting that the lifter progresses in a straight, predictable line — and that fatigue management, joint strain, technical breakdowns, and life stressors won’t derail the whole thing.
Spoiler: they do.
⚔️ Conjugate vs. Linear
Linear Periodisation | Conjugate Sequencing | |
Main Lifts | Fixed weekly, progress over 8–16 weeks | Rotated weekly to avoid stagnation |
Effort Methods | One at a time (volume → intensity → taper) | Concurrent (Max, Dynamic, and Repetition weekly) |
Adaptation Focus | Separated by phase | Developed simultaneously |
Response to Fatigue | Static progression, little room to pivot | Auto-regulated, variation-based |
Accessory Work | Often underemphasised | 80%+ of volume — where most progress comes |
💡 Why It Used to Make Sense (and Why It Doesn’t Now)
Linear periodisation made perfect sense when:
Athletes were full-time.
Drug protocols were aligned with performance windows.
Competitions were few and far between.
Training cycles lasted 16–24 weeks between performances.
But for most lifters now? It’s a mismatch:
You’re not peaking for an Olympic final every four years.
You don’t have dedicated recovery staff or weekly massage therapy.
You don’t need to build work capacity for 12 weeks before you’re “allowed” to lift heavy.
If you’re trying to stay strong year-round, handle inconsistent life stress, and improve multiple qualities at once — you need something better.
You need a method that adapts, rotates, and progresses in the real world.
That’s where Conjugate comes in.
🔄 The Real Problem: Accommodation and Repetition
“If your lifts aren’t improving weekly, you’ve hit accommodation — and no taper or volume tweak will fix that.”
This is the silent killer of progress. Not overtraining. Not bad technique. Not even bad genetics. Just doing the same thing for too long and expecting it to keep working.
🎯 What Is Accommodation?
Accommodation is what happens when the body stops adapting to a repeated stimulus. Louie Simmons called it out decades ago: “The law of accommodation states that the response of a biological object to a constant stimulus decreases over time.”
In real terms? If you bench 5x5 for six weeks in a row with the same bar, grip, and setup, you’re not building strength anymore — you’re just rehearsing it. That’s not progressive overload. It’s programmed stagnation.
🧠 Why Rotation Beats Progression
The Conjugate Method solves this by rotating the stimulus:
Max Effort lifts change weekly or bi-weekly.
Dynamic Effort lifts rotate grips, bars, and tempos.
Accessory work evolves every few weeks based on what’s lagging.
This isn’t randomness — it’s planned variation. Because the truth is, you don’t need 6 weeks of accumulating volume before lifting heavy. You can — and should — train effort methods concurrently.
By mixing and rotating stimulus:
You keep adaptation rolling.
You avoid mental burnout and boredom.
You don’t detrain qualities you just spent weeks building.
🔁 The Average Gym-Goer’s Hell Loop
Here’s what happens in most linear or block setups:
Week 1–2: It feels easy. No stimulus, no growth.
Week 3–5: It gets hard, but repetitive.
Week 6: You’re tired and bored.
Week 7: Deload.
Week 8: Try to peak — but you’re stiff, weak, and flat.
That’s the reality for most lifters following “evidence-based” spreadsheets. You’re either under-stimulated, over-fatigued, or just plain bored.
Worse — you start detraining key qualities mid-cycle:
You drop assistance work.
You stop doing hypertrophy.
Your GPP and conditioning vanish.
You’re not building momentum. You’re leaking strength.
🧱 The Boring Grind Kills More Lifters Than Overtraining
Nobody talks about this:
You lose muscle as you “intensify.”
You lose movement variation and expose yourself to overuse.
You kill your love of training by repeating the same stuff in smaller, heavier doses.
And then? You miss your peak. You deload again. You start over — with less muscle, less momentum, and even less enthusiasm.
This isn’t smart planning. This is just periodised misery.
🚫 "Block Pacing" Is Loser Talk
The popular excuse now is “you have to pace yourself across the block.” What that really means is:
Don’t train too hard.
Get ready to be bored for a month.
Hope you still have something left for the peak.
If you need a spreadsheet to tell you not to go hard until Week 6, your program isn’t the problem — your mindset is.
✅ Rotate. Push. Adapt.
The solution isn’t complex:
Rotate max effort lifts every week or two.
Keep a small, effective pool of Dynamic Effort variations and wave your intensity.
Change accessories every two weeks.
Keep hypertrophy and GPP alive year-round.
Your body will keep adapting. Your training will stay interesting. And your results won’t flatline just because the spreadsheet says so.
📈 The Strength Curve Nobody’s Using
"If your entire program lives between 70 and 90 percent, you're missing most of the curve."
Strength isn’t one-dimensional. It’s not just about how much you can lift slowly. Yet that’s exactly where most training lives — in the middle zone.
🧠 Understanding the Force–Velocity Curve
Let’s break it down simply:
Max Effort (ME): High force, low velocity → Think 1–3RMs, grinders, limit lifts. Builds neural drive, limit strength, and strain tolerance.
Dynamic Effort (DE): Moderate force, high velocity → Think 50–75% lifts with band/chain tension done fast. Builds bar speed, coordination, and rate of force development.
Repetition Effort (RE): Moderate force, moderate velocity → Think 8–15 reps with moderate loads. Builds muscle, joint resilience, and technical consistency.
The full strength curve spans all three — and real Conjugate programming trains all three, every week.
But the average gym lifter? They train one band of that curve — the boring middle:
4x5 at 75%
5x3 at 80%
3x2 at 85%
Week after week. Block after block. Too slow to be fast, too light to be strong, too low in volume to build anything.
💣 Why That Middle Zone Is a Dead Zone
It’s just safe. It feels “hard” enough to tick the box. But it doesn’t develop anything in particular.
It’s not enough volume for growth.
It’s not enough intensity for neural drive.
It’s not fast enough to build explosiveness.
You’re just getting tired. Not better. It’s effort without intent — and it’s where most failed programs live.
🧪 What Real Conjugate Programming Does Differently
A proper Conjugate layout touches all three effort methods every week:
Monday: Max effort lower (e.g. Safety Bar Squat to 1RM)
Wednesday: Max effort upper (e.g. Board Press to 3RM) → High force, low velocity
Friday: Dynamic lower (Box Squats at 60% + bands)
Saturday: Dynamic upper (Speed Bench 65% + chains) → High velocity, technical refinement
Then:
Accessories and RE method work: Good mornings, rows, dips, leg presses, GHRs, ab circuits → High volume, muscular reinforcement
That’s not fluff — that’s the foundation. Over 80% of your weekly volume should come from RE work.
📉 Why Linear Systems Flatten the Curve
Linear and block setups tend to skew training into tight zones:
Accumulation Block: Lots of slow reps at 60–70%
Intensification Block: Fewer slow reps at 80–90%
Transmutation or Peak: Low volume at 90–95%
And during that whole arc?
No speed work.
No real hypertrophy.
No intelligent volume balance.
By the time the taper rolls around, you’re under-muscled, under-recovered, and under-stimulated.
🚀 Train the Curve = Own the Bar
Want to be strong and fast? Built and explosive? Then train every part of the curve:
Chase PRs on Max Effort days.
Move crisp and aggressive on DE days.
Attack accessories with intent, not fatigue.
Rotate variations to keep the curve alive.
Your programming should be a spectrum — not a tunnel. Because if you only train slow lifts slowly, don’t be surprised when you peak slow too.
🧱 Weekly Programming That Actually Works
“You don’t need percentages to train with precision. You need purpose.”
Forget 16-week spreadsheets with fake percentages, imaginary maxes, and a taper that assumes you slept 9 hours a night and never had a rough week. That’s not real life — and it’s not smart programming for most lifters today.
Real training meets you where you are. It adapts to your strengths, your schedule, and your recovery.
That’s why the Conjugate Method — when done properly — works so well for raw lifters, shift workers, and anyone who trains hard but doesn’t live in a fantasyland.
🧠 The Weekly Template (4 Days)
Here’s how a real Conjugate week might look:
📅 Monday – Max Effort Lower
Main Lift: Work up to a 1–3RM on a rotated squat or deadlift variation (SSB squat, deficit pull, box squat, etc.)
Back-off: 2x3–5 @ 80–85% of top set
Accessories: Hamstrings, glutes, abs, one quad isolation movement
🎯 Goal: Expose technical breakdowns and build absolute strength
📅 Wednesday – Max Effort Upper
Main Lift: Work up to a 1–3RM on a rotated press variation (board press, Spoto press, pin press, etc.)
Back-off: 2–3x2–5 @ 80–85% of top set
Accessories: Upper back, triceps, shoulders, biceps
🎯 Goal: Build pressing strain tolerance and expose weak links
📅 Friday – Dynamic Effort Lower
Main Lift: Box Squats (60–75%) against bands or chains, 10x2
Pulls: Speed Deadlifts, 6x1
Optional: Work up to a fast single @ RPE 7–8
Accessories: Posterior chain, trunk, unilateral leg work, quads
🎯 Goal: Move with intent and speed — not grind. Improve bar control and RFD.
📅 Saturday – Dynamic Effort Upper
Main Lift: Speed Bench (8x3 @ 60–70% using a 3-week wave)
Optional: Work up to a crisp single @ RPE 7–8
Accessories: Back, triceps, delts, arms
🎯 Goal: Build bar speed, refine technique, reinforce pressing pathways
This isn’t guesswork — it’s a framework that:
Keeps variation high enough to avoid accommodation
Balances effort methods for full-curve development
Gives raw lifters space to train, not burn out
Avoids over-reliance on calculators or velocity trackers
Allows for individualisation — without losing the system
💡 Why It Works
Not everything has to be maxed. You don’t need to grind every week. RPE 9–10 means top effort — not missed reps.
Not everything needs a calculator. Some days you go heavier. Some days you don’t. Speed is your guide, not a spreadsheet.
Not every movement needs to stay forever. Rotating your lifts lets you train longer without injury or stagnation.
🧩 Who This Works For
Raw lifters who don’t benefit from classic peaking
Neurodivergent athletes who need variety and structured flexibility
Busy adults who can’t guarantee every session will be perfect
Recovering lifters who need more intelligent volume
Coaches who want a better diagnostic tool for their lifters
You’re not training to be a spreadsheet hero. You’re training to be a stronger, more resilient, more complete athlete.
This template builds that — every week.
The GPP Nobody Programs
“You can’t build a skyscraper on sand.”
Let’s be honest: most modern programs ignore the foundation. They talk about specificity, peaking, recovery — but forget that none of that matters if you don’t have the general physical preparedness to back it up.
You don’t get to peak if you can’t recover. You don’t stay strong if you’re constantly injured, gassed, or crumbling under your own training volume.
That’s where GPP comes in — and why Louie was right to hammer it home in every seminar, article, and conversation until the day he died.
🛠 What Counts as GPP?
Forget the treadmill. This isn’t cardio. It’s work that builds capacity, durability, and mental grit:
Sled Drags and Pushes – Forward, backward, lateral — endless variations. Easy on the joints, brutal on the lungs.
Loaded Marches – Belt squat marches, heavy yoke walks, sandbag carries. Teaches you to grind while breathing.
Medley Circuits – Rows, swings, ab rollouts, step-ups. Rotate them, wave the volume, stay explosive.
Reverse Hypers and Back Raises – GPP for the spine. This is recovery and injury prevention disguised as strength work.
🧠 Why It Matters
Improved Recovery GPP builds the base your body uses to recover from high-effort lifting. Think better blood flow, faster DOMS clearance, and a stronger aerobic floor.
Better Work Capacity If you’re gasping for air after accessories or need 10 minutes between deadlifts, your ceiling is too low. GPP lets you do more — and recover faster.
Fewer Injuries Most overuse injuries come from underprepared tissues. GPP keeps the connective tissue strong, the small muscles active, and the engine running clean.
More Productive Training Blocks A lifter with real GPP can train harder, tolerate more volume, and actually get something out of their peak — instead of spending half of it banged up.
🔗 Want GPP You’ll Actually Use?
I’ve got full plug-and-play circuits, medley templates, and wave-based GPP options inside my Conjugate for Strongman ebook: 👉 The 12-Week Strongman GPP & Conjugate Plan
It’s not just for strongmen — it’s for lifters who want to stay in the game long enough to get strong.
GPP isn’t optional. It’s what makes the rest of your programming work. Every athlete who lifts heavy should be dragging a sled and breathing hard at least once a week.
Because you can’t build a skyscraper on sand. And if your foundation sucks — your peak will too.
What You Should Be Doing Instead: Burn the Old Templates
Let’s keep it simple.
If your training still looks like a 12-week linear chart with gradually rising intensity and falling volume… If your idea of programming is plugging in last year’s 1RM and hoping it doesn’t break you before Week 10… It’s time to burn the old templates.
Here’s what to do instead — and what actually works in the real world for raw lifters, shift workers, strongman competitors, and anyone not training in a lab:
✅ The Conjugate Checklist for Actual Progress
🔁 Rotate Max Effort Lifts Weekly or Bi-Weekly Stagnation comes from accommodation. Keep the strain high, but the pattern fresh. Example: Safety Bar Squat (Week 1) → Front Squat (Week 2) → Box Squat (Week 3)
📊 Use 3-Week Dynamic Effort Waves Speed drives carryover — but only when it's structured. Wave the percentages every three weeks and reset: 60–65–70%, then back to 60 + a new bar or tension.
📌 Keep Accessories for 2–3 Weeks at a Time You can’t track progress if you’re always changing. Pick 3–4 targeted movements and hammer them for 2–3 weeks. Then rotate.
🏃♂️ Train GPP 2–3x Per Week, Even If It’s Light Sleds, marches, circuits — even 20-minute sessions count. GPP lets you handle hard training and recover faster between sessions.
🧠 Stop Chasing Spreadsheets — Start Chasing Feedback Rate your bar speed. Track your recovery. Adjust your top sets based on how you feel, not how the Excel doc says you should feel. Training isn’t about numbers. It’s about response.
🔥 Want a System That Already Does All of This?
That’s why I wrote The Full Conjugate System — A full year of training broken down into templates, waves, peaking options, and progressions that reflect what lifters actually need.
✅ ME rotation
✅ DE wave programming
✅ Assistance plans
✅ GPP cycles
✅ Built-in feedback loops
✅ Raw, equipped, and hybrid options
It launches May 1st, 2025. Pre-order is live now. 👉 Grab your copy here
The truth? Your program shouldn’t look like it came out of a textbook from 1983. It should look like it was written by a coach who’s actually trained people since then.
And now, you’ve got the tools to start building it that way.
You Don’t Live in 1983 — Your Program Shouldn’t Either
Let’s call it what it is.
We’ve got bar speed trackers, force plates, specialty bars, velocity-based apps, and more data than ever before…
And yet half the strength world is still running a program built for Cold War-era Olympic cycles and military athletes in drug-tested peaking blocks.
Your goals have evolved. Your training needs have changed. So why are you still clinging to a 12-week taper from a textbook older than most lifters?
The reality is simple:
📌 Strength is multi-dimensional.
📌 Progress is non-linear.
📌 You need a system that adapts.
Conjugate works because it rotates, responds, and rebuilds. You train effort, speed, and repetition — not just intensity. You collect data, not just grind blindly.
😤 If You’re Feeling Personally Attacked By This Article…
…it’s probably because you’ve internalised an outdated model. But don’t worry — this next part isn’t just criticism. It’s a mirror. If you're like OMG but conjugate....
Here's where I already answered all your concerns and debunked your biases:
&
Want a System That Trains the Way You Actually Live?
The Full Conjugate System is built for lifters who want more than guesswork and spreadsheets. It’s the whole year mapped out — with structure, strategy, and flexibility baked in.
52 weeks of programming
Peaking, meet prep, and deload guidance
Rotation schedules and DE waves
Raw, equipped, and hybrid options
GPP integration and accessory progression
Built for results — not outdated dogma
Want to test this for yourself before diving into the full system? 👉 Grab the FREE 9-Week Conjugate Powerlifting Base here
🔥 Common Mistakes Coaches Still Make
Even the ones who think they’ve moved on from linear:
❌ Not rotating Max Effort lifts or effort methods
❌ Living in the 70–90% barbell zone with no variation
❌ Relying too heavily on “ideal” percentages or RPE, ignoring readiness
❌ Using deloads as a band-aid for poor fatigue management
❌ Skipping intent cues, bar speed, and autoregulation entirely
You don’t need to tear it all down. But you do need to stop pretending those old models still work.
This article gave you the roadmap.
Now it’s time to train like it’s 2025 — not 1983.
❓“But Linear Periodisation Still Works, Right?” – Common Defences Debunked
Even after all this, you’ll still hear the same tired arguments — usually from people clinging to tradition, not results.
Let’s break them down.
🧠 “But it worked for me/my coach/this one elite lifter.”
Yes — and they likely:
Were already genetically gifted.
Had elite coaching and recovery.
Were on PEDs or had years of training history behind them.
Survivorship bias doesn’t make a method universal.Just because some succeed despite linear periodisation doesn’t mean it’s optimal — or that it’s working for you.
📚 “But it’s evidence-based!”
Evidence from when? The 1960s?
Most of the “science” behind linear models:
Was conducted on Olympic athletes in tightly controlled environments.
Ignored real-world stress, injuries, shift work, and training inconsistency.
Doesn’t reflect the needs of raw lifters, strongmen, or busy adults.
Conjugate isn’t anti-science — it’s practical application based on evolving understanding.
📆 “But it gives structure!”
So does prison.
If your structure doesn’t adapt to your progress, your recovery, and your life, it’s not structure — it’s shackles.
Good programming isn’t just tidy. It’s responsive.
🔁 “But I need progression!”
Exactly. And rotating max effort movements is progression.
Progression isn’t just adding 5kg every week to the same barbell lift.It’s:
Exposing new weaknesses.
Overloading new positions.
Staying one step ahead of stagnation.
That’s progression that builds, not just repeats.
😴 “But deloads work…”
Deloads are what you use when your programming broke you.
If your training forces you to pull back just to survive, you’re not progressing — you’re repairing.
Conjugate doesn’t eliminate fatigue — it manages it.Variation keeps stimulus high and strain tolerable — so you can train harder, longer, and more often without system-wide crashes.
💊 “But not everyone needs to train like a powerlifter or strongman.”
And not everyone should.
But everyone can benefit from:
Variation
Intent-based effort
Rotated movement patterns
Built-in feedback and adaptability
Conjugate is a system, not a sport. It adapts to whatever you’re training for.
🧨 Final Word
Linear periodisation isn’t evil — it’s just outdated. Conjugate isn’t magic — it’s just evolved.
You can’t run old timey spreadsheets and expect postmodern results.
If you’re still defending linear because it’s familiar — you’re not coaching, you’re clinging.
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