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General Gainz Bodybuilding
General Gainz Bodybuilding is Cody Lefever's body-part split, built on his General Gainz framework and published free on his Swole at Every Height blog. He ran it through 2021 and put on twenty-one pounds while adding about three percent bodyfat. It is built into Ægir Iron and free to load.
It prescribes no percentages at all
Every other pre-built program in Ægir Iron prices at least one set off a saved max. This one prices nothing, and that is the framework rather than a gap. General Gainz replaces the percentage with a REP MAX: you work up to a heavy set of six, take four more sets of three at that same weight, and then over the following weeks you hold that weight and push the top set from six reps toward twenty before you add anything to the bar. When you finally do add weight, you start the climb again from a lower rep max.
So there is no PR page to fill in first and no training max to maintain. The program asks you to do four things and names them: Find a weight, Hold it, Extend the number of sets, Push the reps. Ægir Iron writes his own twelve-week example of that climb, and every row is editable.
There is no heavy tier
GZCL programs are usually described in three tiers, and this one deliberately spends none of the week in the heaviest of them. Lefever is direct about it: it is not a powerlifting training plan. The heavy work here is the second tier, in the six to twenty rep range, and everything else is the third: four sets in a fifteen to twenty rep range, each set taken near its limit but never to failure, held at the same weight until all four sets reach twenty.
The supersets are the program
Every workout is four supersets, and he does not treat that as optional: if you cannot superset in your gym, he says he is uncertain the program will work for you. The pairing is what fills the gap between a hard top set and the easy follow-up sets behind it, which is how the volume stays high while the effort stays repeatable.
Ægir Iron has no way to pair two exercises into one block, so instead every row names the movement it goes with, and the order on screen is the order to train in. Nothing enforces it. We would rather say that plainly than let you find out halfway through a session.
At a glance
| Discipline | Bodybuilding and hypertrophy |
| Author | Cody Lefever (GZCL) |
| Experience level | Intermediate |
| Length | 12 weeks, then repeat it heavier |
| Training days | 4 per week |
| Equipment | Full gym with machines and cables |
| Loading | Rep maxes only. Nothing is priced off a training max, so no maxes are needed to load it. |
| 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
The light work carries a rep range rather than a fixed number, which puts it under the app's own double progression: hold the weight until you clear the top of the range on every set, then add the smallest jump you have. That is exactly the rule Lefever gives for the third tier, so nothing had to be bolted on for it.
He publishes three versions of every training day and says outright that which one you run is a recovery decision you make on the day. A template cannot make that decision for you, so Ægir Iron loads his first version of each day, and offers his second leg day and his second arm-day pairing as choices when you load it. His third versions, the ones for a day when you are behind on recovery, are left to you to build, which takes about a minute on the Program page.
Start General Gainz Bodybuilding
Open Ægir Iron, go to Program and choose New Program, then the Program Wizard. On the first screen pick Strength & Muscle, then choose General Gainz Bodybuilding 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.