The Simple Strength Program: A Full-Body Plan for Beginners

New to lifting? Good. Listen up.

The best program is the one you’ll actually run for months. Not the one with forty exercises and a color-coded spreadsheet. This one is six big compound lifts, three days a week, and one rule for adding weight. It follows the American College of Sports Medicine’s guidelines for novice lifters.¹ It works whether you eat carnivore or not.

The guidelines behind it

The ACSM’s position stand on resistance training is the closest thing this game has to a rulebook. For novices (no lifting experience, or haven’t touched a bar in years), it recommends:¹

• training 2–3 days per week;
• loads you can lift for 8–12 reps (an “8–12 rep max”);
• big multi-joint lifts before small ones;
• adding 2–10% to the load once you can do one or two reps more than your target.

That’s it. Everything below is those four lines turned into a week.

The program

Three non-consecutive days. Monday, Wednesday, Friday works. Alternate Workout A and Workout B. Week one is A–B–A. Week two is B–A–B. Keep going.

Workout A

Lift	Sets × reps
Back squat (or goblet squat)	3 × 8–10
Bench press (or push-up)	3 × 8–10
Barbell or dumbbell row	3 × 10–12
Plank	3 × 20–40 seconds

Workout B

Lift	Sets × reps
Romanian deadlift	3 × 8–10
Overhead press	3 × 8–10
Lat pulldown or assisted pull-up	3 × 10–12
Farmer’s carry	3 × 30–40 metres

Rest 2–3 minutes between sets of the main lifts. The ACSM recommends at least that for heavier multi-joint work.¹ One to two minutes is plenty for planks and carries. Put the phone down.

How to progress

Start lighter than your ego wants. Pick a weight you could lift for the top of the rep range, clean, with a couple of reps left in the tank.

Every session, try to add a rep. When you hit every set at the top of the range with good form, add weight next time. Roughly 2–5 kg on squats and deadlifts, 1–2.5 kg on presses and rows. That keeps you inside the ACSM’s 2–10% guideline.¹ Then climb back up the rep range.

Stalled for two or three weeks straight? Check your sleep and your food before you blame the program. It’s almost never the program.

Learning the lifts

Form first. Weight second. Ego never. A few rules carry across every lift:

• Brace before every rep. Big breath into your belly. Tighten up like someone’s about to punch you in the gut.
• Control the way down. Don’t dive-bomb a squat. Don’t bounce the bar off your chest.
• Use a range you can own. Depth and mobility come with practice.
• Film a set from the side now and then. Cheapest coach you’ll ever hire.

If you can swing it, book a session or two with a qualified coach to check your squat, deadlift and presses. My squat and deadlift form guide covers the details.

Eating for it on a carnivore diet

Good news, meat-eaters. Protein is rarely your problem. The International Society of Sports Nutrition recommends 1.4–2.0 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day for most people who train, ideally spread across the day in doses of roughly 20–40 g.² A big meta-analysis of 49 trials found that gains in fat-free mass from protein supplementation levelled off around 1.6 g/kg/day.³

For an 80 kg lifter, 1.6 g/kg works out to about 130 g of protein a day. Check the labels on your meat and eggs. On a meat-based diet, it usually isn’t hard to reach.

Now the honest caveats:

• Almost no research has looked at lifting on an all-meat diet specifically. Most low-carb training studies involve broader ketogenic diets, and results for strength and power vary. Expect a few weeks of adjustment if you just cut carbs. Judge the program after that, not during.
• Eat enough total food. Simply not eating enough is a common reason beginners stall. Lifts going nowhere and scale dropping fast? Eat more fat and protein.
• Salt your food and drink water, especially in the first weeks of low-carb and on training days.

Recovery

You don’t get stronger in the gym. You get stronger recovering from it. Rest days are rest days. Go for a walk. Sleep. If a joint hurts (not normal muscle soreness), drop the weight, check your form, and see a professional if it doesn’t clear up. More in my recovery guide.

The bottom line

Three days a week. Six lifts. Add a rep, then add weight. Eat your protein and enough total food. Do it for six months and you’ll be surprised what you can pick up. Then come back and we’ll talk intermediate programming.