Clusters are my favorite method to increase strength as fast as possible. They're powerful, but because they're so neurologically demanding you can easily miss out on the benefits if the rest of your lifting contains a lot of hypertrophy work.
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To get the most rapid strength gains from clusters, it's best to design a program centered around them. This is the program you should be doing if you want to unlock to power of clusters.
I recently wrote an article on the best cluster variations which includes everything you need to know about them. Here's a recap:
Clusters are extremely effective at increasing strength. The higher rep variations (Poliquin, Milller extensive and Mentzer clusters) are also effective for building muscle mass, especially in advanced lifters.
This program should allow you to significantly increase your strength over 12 weeks. I've seen progress as high as a 40 kilogram gain on squats in an advanced athlete (world class track cyclist), going from 180 kg up to 220 kg. His bench also went from 100 kg to 140 kg.
Editor's note: One kilogram is 2.2 pounds.
Not everybody will gain as much strength, of course. But an increase of 10-20 percent on the big lifts is pretty huge.
While it's not a bodybuilding program, it will still allow you to build mass in the process of getting strong. A pro football player I work with gained six pounds of muscle in a couple months on a cluster program. That might not seem huge, but that was without any increase in fat, and it was on the frame of someone who's been lifting hard for a decade.
If you're lean enough, it'll also make you look hard. This type of training increases myogenic tone (tonus) more than any other approach. Myogenic tone is nothing more than a partial state of muscle activation. And the more efficient your nervous system is, the higher your muscle tone becomes. Clustering is the best method for improving neurological efficiency.
Another benefit? It gets you really comfortable and efficient at handling near-maximal and maximal weights. This will not only help make you stronger on 1RM lifts, but it'll decrease the stress response that comes from future heavy lifting sessions, allowing you to do them more often or recover faster.
There are five main variables that can increase cortisol and the resulting adrenaline output during a workout. And while both (cortisol and adrenaline) are necessary to perform optimally, too much can lead to a decrease in performance and gains.
We easily understand how excessive cortisol can lead to decreased muscle growth: it increases muscle breakdown, reduces protein and glucose uptake by the muscles, can increase myostatin, and – in the long term – lead to lowered testosterone levels.
But why is too much adrenaline a bad thing? Well, if you produce too much it will linger in your body for a longer time, staying attached to the beta-adrenergic receptors. These receptors are prone to downregulation/desensitization.
A study by Fry and colleagues showed that two weeks of very intense lifting (maxing out five days a week) can decrease receptor sensitivity by close to 40 percent.
When that happens, your body has a much lower response to your own adrenaline. This leads to lowered force and power production, less focus and motivation, lower energy levels, etc. It'll also lead to higher cortisol levels for the same stress levels: the body has to produce more cortisol to get the job done.
Why is that important and relevant to this program? Let's look at the five main training variables that can have an impact on cortisol and adrenaline production:
One of the main functions of cortisol is energy mobilization. The more energy you need, the more cortisol you produce. A higher volume approach will therefore lead to a higher cortisol level.
This is how hard you're pushing your sets. The closer you go to failure, the more the body perceives that set as an intense stress. The response is to increase cortisol, which will increase adrenaline. This boosts your strength, mental awareness, and motivation to survive.
If a weight (or task) is intimidating and even scares you a little, the body will release more cortisol, which increases adrenaline so that you'll have the physical and mental resource to fend off any potential danger. In weight training, this is often associated with maximal or near-maximal weights, especially on exercises where the spine is under load.
This refers to how hard your nervous system must work during the session. Some training-related factors that will increase neurological demands are: using more complex exercises, using exercises you haven't mastered yet, having lots of exercises in a workout, going heavy, doing explosive work, alternating two exercises (A1/A2), doing circuits, using several completely different methods and intensity zones in a workout.
The higher your work-to-rest ratio is, the more adrenaline will stay elevated. This means both higher cortisol and adrenaline production.
In the cluster program, the intensiveness is high, the psychological stress is very high, and the neurological demands are fairly high because of the exercise selection (big compound movements) and the heavy loads used.
The last thing you want is to increase neurological demands even more by adding a lot of assistance work. So you'll now have three cortisol/adrenaline producing factors very high. Not sustainable for more than three weeks for most.
It's also why the overall volume needs to stay low, which is another reason to avoid adding a lot of assistance work. Because of the minimal nature of the program, the density is low, so that's not an issue.
There are four workouts per week. Each workout focuses on a big lift: a squat variation, a horizontal press variation, a deadlift/hip hinge variation, and an overhead/incline press variation.
One multi-joint assistance exercise is added after the main lift and one or two minor movements are done after that. Both the main and the primary assistance exercises use a cluster approach, for two or three work sets.
The minor exercises are done using an intensification technique like rest/pause or mechanical drop sets for one to two work sets to failure.
As you can see, the volume is fairly low: seven to nine work sets per workout, allowing you a higher intensity and intensiveness.
Because there will be 20-60 seconds of rest between reps in the main exercises, and up to four minutes between sets, the density is very low too. This, and the lower volume, are super important to be able to tolerate the high intensity for the duration of the program.
The program is segmented into three-week blocks and there are four of them total. Each block uses a different cluster approach, gradually increasing in intensity.
Each workout will include three to four exercises. The first two multi-joint exercises of each session are done as clusters. The primary movement is your main lift of the day, the one you want to increase the most. It stays the same for the duration of the program.
The main assistance lift is a movement aimed at strengthening the primary lift. It can be a variation of the primary lift, a partial movement, or a different exercise hitting key muscles in the primary lift. The main assistance movement can change every block.
The last two exercises are less demanding neurologically. They'll be either isolation lifts or multi-joint lifts done on machines or pulleys. These are not done as a cluster. You'll use either a drop set, myo-reps, or rest/pause, depending on the block.
Now let's look at the template for exercise selection, so that you can easily design the program yourself.
You can use whatever primary exercises you want, as long as you respect the logic of the program. Pick from:
Now select the exercises you'll do after the main lifts:
Different squat variation than primary lift from the same list. For example, if your primary lift is the back squat you can do front squat, Zercher squat, or box squat.
Choose an overload squat exercise:
No main assistance lift (to allow more work on the primary)
Different bench press variation than primary lift from the same list.
Choose an overload bench exercise:
No main assistance lift.
Different deadlift/hip hinge variation than primary lift from the same list.
Choose an overload hip hinge movement:
No main assistance lift.
Different vertical/incline press variation than primary lift from the same list.
Choose an overload vertical/incline press movement:
No main assistance lift.
The role of these exercises is mostly to hit what's neglected by the two main lifts. For instance, the back and hamstrings would be the most important to work on. You could use two upper back exercises on each upper-body session and two hamstring exercises for the lower-body sessions. That's what I recommend.
What about arms? This program is aimed at maximizing strength while also giving you an overall thicker, denser, and bigger physique. You can spend more time on your arms after the program is done. But during this program, you'll be doing a lot of heavy pressing work. I guarantee your triceps will grow even without direct stimulation.
Pick one exercise from each category in the list for each workout. You can also use your own preferred movements.
The program has four blocks lasting three weeks each. The methods/loading scheme changes at every block.
In reality you want to use a load that represents an effort of around 9/10, where maybe you could've gotten one more cluster rep.
It's perfectly fine to start conservatively on the first set and add weight if you can reach the top of the zone. It's also fine to go down in weight if you overestimated your capabilities.
For example, if you finished week 1 with 300 pounds for 5 reps on your heaviest cluster and it was a 9/10, maybe you can start your first set of the next week there. Then adjust the weight for your other sets based on how that set went. I'd like to give you a precise mathematical formula to select the weekly weight, but clusters are different than normal sets. Predicting progress is almost impossible to do.
It's possible to do it, in small amounts. Ideally, the conditioning work would be done separately, either as a second workout in the day or on one of the days off. You can also add 10-15 minutes of low intensity cardio pre and post-workout without problems.
Yes, no problem. It causes very little systemic and neurological fatigue. I'd add it at the end of the lower-body sessions.
These also can be added. However, I don't want you to shotgun additional work. Adding ab work is fine, adding one bicep exercise is fine, adding forearm work is fine. But adding two of them in a session isn't recommended.
It's possible. The volume is low and most of the stress is neurological, so you should be able to recover. No program will yield maximum gains when you're in a caloric deficit though.
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