Strength Made Simple
Bodybuilding vs. Simple Strength
Back in my earlier years of training, I used to read all the bodybuilding magazines to steal workout ideas, splits and new exercises…
”Bro-ey” words like “pump”, “juicy”, “dry” and my personal fav “vassy” (as in vascular) were thrown around in the these articles encouraging 60kg boys like myself to get in the gym and pump some iron.
From my “deep research”, I concluded that I needed a bit of plan before going into the gym to train…
My workouts went like this…
I’d train 4-5 days a week for hours
hit all my main muscle groups at least once (legs, back, chest, shoulders and arms)
apply the same “3 sets of 10” to every single exercise
and pray that I’d get some resemblance of results in the process
I later found out that this method had been coined the “classic bodybuilder split” and nowadays, the overwhelming volume of variations on this concepts would fill your instagram feed ten times over!
This cult classic from the 90’s, is the “go-to” workout for a lot of people in the gym these days and for the most part it works pretty well…kinda.
This type of training generally works because of the “spray and pray” style approach. If you hit every inch of your body and cast a wide enough net, you’re bound to catch something!
However, there are two main deal-breaking issues with this classic “bodybuilder split”:
the time commitment is huge (5-6 training hours a week)
not everyone wants to be a goddamn bodybuilder!
Fast forward to 2025 and everywhere I look, there’s another spinoff of the same style of training.
What’s worse is the confusion among gym goers is real and for those who want to train for health and not just for engorged, “vassy” muscles…good luck!
Now, when I opened the gym back in 2017 and started to run group classes, I knew that this was going to be a real problem.
Our members didn’t have the energy, goals or time of an 18-year old…
An “arms day” simply wasn’t gonna work!
Instead, they wanted to focus on getting stronger, moving better and being healthy.
The fix was two part:
Don’t train muscle groups, train movements
Listen to Dan John (generally and always)
Let me explain…
Dan John (for those who don’t know the guy) is a pretty clever and legendary coach.
For the last 40 years, he’s been coaching everyone, from elite teams to those with chronic health conditions.
He also came up with his version of the perfect training split…”The Big 5”.
It’s simple, straight forward and has a bias towards general strength and health.
“Bingo!”
“The Big 5” consists of 5 major movement patterns:
a hip hinge
a press
a pull
a squat
and a carry
Dan reckoned that if you hit each of those these movements in your weekly training routine that it would get you on the right path to developing real strength, mobility and health.
Dan was right.
All of sudden, the age of old question of “how do i organise my training” and my own dilemma on how to program for groups was solved!
And If you’re a regular here at Valkyrie, you may have noticed that the structure of our classes follow the overall concept of Dan John’s “Big 5” each and every week.
Here’s an example of how I’d use this in an actual weekly program:
train 2-3 times a week for a bout 30 mins (inclusive of a warm-up)
in each session, pick two of the “Big 5” and train them for 20 minutes
use “comfortably hard” weights and keep the reps under 8
on the next session, pick another two movements
increase the weights as they get too easy
repeat until strong!
Training like this is intuitive, flexible and guarantees long-term results (without all “bro code words”.
It’s also how Dan prepares his top athletes for competition or a long sporting season.
Because at the end of the day, we just need be “strong enough” to do the things we love!
