Home / Programs / All Pro's Simple Beginner Routine
All Pro's Simple Beginner Routine
All Pro's Simple Beginner Routine is a three-day full-body barbell program written by the bodybuilding.com forum poster known as All Pro. The same seven lifts every session, at heavy, medium and light loads, with the reps climbing each week instead of the weight. It is built into Ægir Iron and free to load.
What this program is
Three sessions a week, and every session is the same seven lifts for two work sets each, in this order. The three days differ only in load: heavy is your full working weight, medium is 90 percent of it and light is 80, which is what lets a beginner squat and press three times a week without burying themselves.
The rep ladder
The weight does not move inside a cycle. The reps do: eight in week one, then nine, ten, eleven and twelve, on every lift and on all three days. Week five's heavy day is the test. Get all twelve reps on both work sets of a lift and that lift earns 10 percent more for the next cycle. Miss a single rep and it keeps its weight for another five weeks, which All Pro is deliberately strict about.
What it leaves out, on purpose
There are no regular deadlifts and no direct triceps work. The stiff legged deadlift covers the back of the legs without the cost of squatting and deadlifting heavy in the same beginner week, and the presses are already all the triceps work you need. The routine asks you to add nothing for at least three cycles, then at most one assistance movement, for one set, after the calf raises.
At a glance
| Discipline | General strength |
| Experience level | Beginner |
| Length | 5-week cycles; load 3, 4 or 6 of them (15, 20 or 30 weeks) |
| Training days | 3 per week |
| Equipment | Barbell and a rack |
| Loading | Heavy, medium and light days at 100, 90 and 80 percent of a working weight; reps climb from 8 to 12 |
| Price | Free for individual lifters and rostered athletes |
Free for individual lifters and for athletes on a coach's roster. Coaches pay only for roster tools.
How it works in Ægir Iron
All Pro has you test a 10 rep max to start. Ægir Iron reads one off your saved max instead, so the heavy day comes out at 75 percent of your one-rep max. Warm-ups are prescribed on the squat, bench and row only, at 25 and 50 percent of that day's weight, which is the routine's own rule.
When you load it you choose how many cycles to run, and whether the sixth lift is curls, as All Pro wrote it, or upright rows, which the spreadsheet's FAQ prefers as the better whole-body movement.
Because the percentages are identical every cycle, the step up comes from your maxes. At the end of each cycle the app offers to advance them and proposes its own standard step, so type 10 percent over it for each lift that passed its test and leave the ones that did not.
Original source
Ægir Iron's template is built from this source. Under it is what the template takes from it.
- All Pro (bodybuilding.com forum poster); spreadsheet extended by tr3pid (n.d.). All Pro's Simple Beginner Routine. LiftVault spreadsheet (original at workout-calculator.com).Three days of the same seven lifts at 100, 90 and 80 percent, the 8-to-12 rep ladder over five weeks, and the 10 percent step for a passed test
Start All Pro's Simple Beginner Routine
Open Ægir Iron, go to Program and choose New Program, then the Program Wizard. On the first screen pick Strength & Muscle, then choose All Pro's Simple Beginner Routine from the cards under WHAT DO YOU WANT TO RUN? It is free on iOS, Android, and the web, with your data synced across all three.