Reddit Training Programs Compared: Which Program Fits You?

On Reddit, training plans quickly start to feel like football clubs: GZCLP, nSuns, Greyskull, PHUL, PHAT, StrongLifts, Starting Strength — and behind every name stand people convinced that this particular system changed everything.

The more useful comparison does not start with “which plan is best?” but with four other questions: how often can you train? How much volume do you tolerate? How much decision support do you need? And do you mainly want fast linear progress, or to organise your training over a longer horizon already?

This article sorts seven popular programs by exactly those criteria.

The big comparison table

“Assessment” here is not a scientific grade. It describes what the program is practically good for. None of these programs has been tested as a complete system against all the others in a study.

What the science says about good programming

Training science can judge individual program components — volume, frequency, load, proximity to failure, periodization. But it can rarely say: “Program A is 18 % better than program B.”

So the following points are guardrails, not a checklist where a plan needs six ticks to count as “evidence-based”.

Volume: 10-20 sets per muscle group per week

The old 10–20 rule is known as rough orientation, but it is too precise as a universal sweet spot.

The more recent dose-response literature shows: more sensibly executed weekly volume is associated on average with more muscle growth, though with diminishing returns. A direct set for a muscle counts differently from an indirect set, and ten sets ended far from failure are not the same as ten hard sets.

For comparing programs, that means: it is not only the number of sets that counts, but where they land, how hard they are, and whether you can recover from them. Which is why minimum effective volume can help as a mental model but should not be treated as a fixed biological boundary.

Frequency: 2×/week per muscle group

“2× is optimal” is too absolute as well.

When weekly volume is equated, newer meta-analyses find no clear hypertrophy advantage of two or three sessions per muscle group over one. Higher frequency can still be practically valuable, because you spread a lot of work across several days and therefore overload individual sessions less.

For strength, higher exercise frequency can additionally mean more specific practice. So frequency is a tool for distributing work, not automatically a muscle-growth multiplier in its own right.

Periodization: variation beats monotony

For maximal strength, periodised programs come out slightly ahead of entirely unvarying ones on average. Undulating models can have advantages over linear periodization in trained lifters. For muscle growth, by contrast, linear and undulating models are very comparable at similar volume.

That argues for variation, but not for the old claim that DUP broadly doubles strength gains.

GZCLP varies loading across T1/T2 and the failure stages. PHUL and PHAT separate heavy from more moderate days. nSuns changes percentages and reps within the week. StrongLifts is considerably more uniform at its core — which can be exactly its strength at the start.

Autoregulation: adapting to the day

RPE-based training is a direct form of autoregulation. AMRAP sets provide feedback too, but they are not the same as a complete RPE system.

Greyskull and nSuns use open sets to make performance visible. GZCLP responds systematically to failure. PHUL and PHAT give more practical rules like “don’t take every set to failure”, but no precise load steering based on daily readiness.

Autoregulation is not a mandatory feature, though. A beginner can train very well on clear fixed rules. It becomes relevant mainly when daily readiness and recovery fluctuate more.

The programs in detail

Greyskull LP — the smart 3-day entry point

Who for: complete beginners who want a very short barbell program on three days per week.

The current r/Fitness Basic Beginner Routine is a modified version of Phrak’s Greyskull LP and is explicitly described by the wiki as “training wheels”: a program for learning the main lifts and building a training routine, not a long-term complete solution.

• 3×5+ on every exercise — the last set stays open, but 1–2 reps in the tank are wanted
• rows or pull-ups in every session — horizontal and vertical pulling alternate
• small linear load increases after successful sessions
• a 10 % reset when the required total rep count is no longer reached

Strengths: extremely simple, short sessions, a clear learning focus. Weaknesses: little exercise variety and deliberately limited volume. The wiki recommends around three months at most before a more comprehensive plan makes sense.

GZCLP — the well-designed beginner program

Who for: beginners who want more structure and several loading ranges.

GZCLP separates work into three levels:

• T1: heavy main work
• T2: more moderate volume work
• T3: light accessory work
• Failure stages: 5×3+ → 6×2+ → 10×1+ for T1, instead of resetting everything after one bad day

That is not classic periodization in the sense of multi-month peaking. But it is a good example of not cramming load, rep range and exercise role into a single 5×5 block.

Strengths: clear roles for exercises, good pulling integration, systematic handling of failure. Weaknesses: more rules than the Basic Beginner Routine; T3 selection and the weekly rhythm require a bit more planning.

StrongLifts 5×5 — the problematic classic

Who for: people who want maximum simplicity and deliberately choose a very squat-heavy 5×5 system.

StrongLifts 5×5 is often portrayed online as worse than it actually is. The base program does contain barbell rows — that is, horizontal pulling. What is missing is a vertical pull in the core plan.

The most striking feature is the squat: 5×5 in each of the three weekly sessions. That produces considerably more squat work than deadlift work, because the deadlift only appears in workout B with a single working set.

Strengths: an extremely understandable progression, high exercise repetition, a low barrier to entry. Weaknesses: a heavy squat weighting, little built-in exercise variety, and a progression logic that long-term hangs almost entirely on the weight on the bar.

That does not make StrongLifts “suitable for nobody”. It only explains why more modern beginner programs bring more tools for many goals.

Starting Strength — dogma over evidence

Who for: beginners who deliberately want to learn the Starting Strength system and its technique/barbell philosophy.

Starting Strength is frequently summarised as though it consisted permanently of nothing but squat, press and deadlift. But the official novice program develops in phases: at first you deadlift often, later power cleans join, and in phase 3 chin-ups do too.

So the critical point is not “no pulling exercise” but the narrow specificity of the system. It prioritises particular barbell movements and technique concepts far more heavily than a general muscle-building plan.

The GOMAD idea often associated with Starting Strength is likewise not a necessary condition for running the training program. Nutrition advice and set/exercise structure should be judged separately.

Strengths: a very clear exercise progression, a lot of technique material, high specificity. Weaknesses: a limited exercise selection for pure hypertrophy goals; some community and nutrition recommendations are considerably more dogmatic than training science requires.

nSuns 5/3/1 LP — the volume machine

Who for: lifters who already have a simple LP behind them, tolerate high workloads and do not mind long sessions.

nSuns takes the idea of percentage-based loading waves from 5/3/1 but accelerates the progression and stacks a great deal of work into T1 and T2.

• 9 T1 sets with changing reps and percentages
• 8 T2 sets of a complementary main movement
• AMRAP-based feedback for the following training week
• accessories of your own choosing

Strengths: a lot of specific work, clear percentage prescriptions, motivating AMRAP sets. Weaknesses: very high fatigue, long sessions, and hardly any protection against a motivated lifter piling too much extra work on top.

“More volume = the fastest strength gains” would be too simple. nSuns is interesting mainly when exactly this workload matches your recovery budget.

PHUL — DUP for intermediates

Who for: lifters who want to combine strength and muscle growth across four days.

PHUL combines two power days with two hypertrophy days:

• heavy compounds early in the week
• more moderate rep ranges on the hypertrophy days
• an upper/lower split with two exposures per muscle group
• considerably more isolation work than classic beginner LPs

Strengths: a good distribution of different rep ranges, a manageable four days. Weaknesses: the original prescribes no particularly worked-out long-term progression logic; you have to organise load increases cleanly yourself.

PHAT — the ambitious DUP system

Who for: lifters with five days per week and good volume tolerance.

Layne Norton’s PHAT is larger than PHUL:

• two power days
• three hypertrophy days
• speed sets at the start of the hypertrophy sessions
• a lot of additional back, shoulder and arm work

Strengths: a broad mix of heavy work, explosive work and bodybuilding volume. Weaknesses: high recovery demands, and no reason to take on the full example volume immediately. Norton himself recommends that people entering the system cut assistance work at first.

The decision tree

The most important filter is not your favourite name but your everyday life.

How many days per week can you train?

3 days → Greyskull LP

• if you are completely new and want as little complexity as possible

3–4 days, beginner → GZCLP

• if you already want more structure, exercise roles and failure management

4 days, intermediate → PHUL

• if strength and hypertrophy should sit side by side as equals

4-6 days, LP exhausted, plenty of time → nSuns

• if you deliberately want a lot of main-lift volume and can recover from it

5 days, intermediate+ → PHAT

• if you want a bodybuilding-heavy hybrid with speed and power work

“I want to do Starting Strength or StrongLifts” → read the comparison first

• not because either is “forbidden”, but so you know their strengths and limits

Typical program progression over time

A fixed ladder of months sounds neat but does not hold up individually. A competence-based progression makes more sense:

Start:          a short beginner routine while you are still learning the main lifts
Then:           a more comprehensive LP such as GZCLP or 5/3/1 for Beginners
LP stalls:      a slower or higher-volume intermediate system
Long term:      pick the program by goal, recovery and preference

Switching after “month 3” is not automatically right. Some lifters need more structure sooner; others can use a simple progression productively for considerably longer.

Frequency and volume compared

Program names often make volume look simpler than it is. Compounds load several muscle groups at once, so tables like this are always estimates.

Sets per muscle group per week (estimated)

Direct and indirect sets cannot be equated cleanly 1:1. The current volume research argues for counting indirect work at least partially.

The most important correction to the old version: StrongLifts does not have zero back sets. The barbell row is one of its five core exercises. The real imbalance lies more between very frequent squatting, infrequent deadlifting and a missing vertical pull.

Why the Reddit wiki removed StrongLifts & Starting Strength

The heading is put a little too definitively in historical terms. What can be established for certain: StrongLifts and Starting Strength are not currently on the r/Fitness wiki’s recommended routines page. The wiki instead recommends the Basic Beginner Routine to complete beginners and subsequently lists GZCLP and 5/3/1 variants, among others.

The wiki texts criticise traditional LPs above all for defining progress very heavily through more weight from session to session. More comprehensive programs additionally manage volume, intensity, exercise variety and fatigue.

Our own assessment adds to that:

1. StrongLifts is heavily squat-weighted. That is a design decision, not an automatically ideal volume distribution for every goal.
2. Both programs are very specific. For general muscle building, additional movement and rep ranges are missing compared with more modern templates.
3. Linear load increases come to an end. That is normal and not a program flaw — after that, training simply needs more tools.
4. Accessory work is limited. That can be pleasant at the start but later becomes a bottleneck for more individual goals.
5. Simplicity is also their strength. Anyone who learns from them to train regularly and perform the main lifts cleanly has done nothing “wrong”.

So it would be dishonest to sell the current wiki selection as scientific proof that SL or SS do not work.

What all good programs have in common

The programs look very different, but productive training systems solve similar problems long-term:

1. Progressive overload — the stimulus has to develop over time; that can mean more weight, more reps or better work at the same load.
2. Sufficient, recoverable volume — not as many sets as possible, but enough high-quality work for your goal.
3. Specificity — anyone wanting to get stronger in a movement has to train it, or a very close variation, regularly.
4. Fatigue management — through conservative loads, resets, deloads, exercise rotation or autoregulated decisions.
5. Sufficient movement coverage — depending on the goal; a powerlifter needs something different from a bodybuilder.
6. Practical feasibility — a theoretically brilliant plan is worth nothing if you cannot train it consistently in real life. Deloads are a tool here, but not every good program needs a rigid deload calendar.

Which is also why the bare question “which program is scientifically best?” rarely helps.

How hitPR makes choosing a program easier

The hitPR catalogue includes the following programs and adaptations, among others — with clear progression rules where the original prescribes them or where hitPR deliberately adds a practical implementation:

• Basic Beginner Routine: a simplified hitPR adaptation with fixed 3×5 targets, no AMRAP, and linear load increases
• GZCLP: T1/T2/T3 with the failure stages of the GZCLP system
• Reddit PPL: linear progression on compounds and double progression on accessories
• nSuns: percentage-based T1/T2 sets with AMRAP-driven progression
• PHUL: power and hypertrophy days with a clear double-progression implementation

The advantage of an app here is not picking the “best” plan. It mainly takes the rules off your hands once you have decided. The Muscle Heatmap additionally helps you see how your template’s actual volume is distributed across muscle groups.

Conclusion

Most well-known Reddit programs work not because their names are particularly good but because they get people to train in a structured way over weeks and months.

For complete beginners, the current r/Fitness Basic Beginner Routine is deliberately minimal. GZCLP offers more structure afterwards, or right away if you are willing to learn a little more. PHUL and PHAT connect strength and hypertrophy work. nSuns is a special case for lifters who want and can handle a lot of main-lift volume.

StrongLifts and Starting Strength are not “scientifically refuted”. They are simply built more narrowly than many of today’s alternatives — which is why they are no longer at the centre of current r/Fitness recommendations.

For long-term progression, 5/3/1 remains a different category: less aggressive load increases, but more room for cycles, supplemental work and fatigue management.

So the best decision is usually unspectacular: take a plan whose structure fits your goal and your week, learn its rules, and train it long enough to judge whether it works at all.

Sources

• The Fitness Wiki. Recommended Routines and Strength Training / Muscle Building. https://thefitness.wiki/routines/
• The Fitness Wiki. r/Fitness Basic Beginner Routine. https://thefitness.wiki/routines/r-fitness-basic-beginner-routine/
• The Fitness Wiki. GZCLP. https://thefitness.wiki/routines/gzclp/
• StrongLifts. StrongLifts 5×5 Workout Program and Progression Settings. https://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5/workout-program/
• Starting Strength. Starting Strength Training Programs. https://startingstrength.com/article/programs
• Campbell B. Power Hypertrophy Upper Lower (PHUL). Muscle & Strength. https://www.muscleandstrength.com/workouts/phul-workout
• Norton L. PHAT: Power Hypertrophy Adaptive Training. BioLayne. https://biolayne.com/articles/training/phat-power-hypertrophy-adaptive-training/
• Pelland JC et al. (2026). The Resistance Training Dose Response: Meta-Regressions Exploring the Effects of Weekly Volume and Frequency on Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Gains. Sports Medicine, 56(2):481–505. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-025-02344-w
• Schoenfeld BJ, Grgic J, Krieger J. (2019). How many times per week should a muscle be trained to maximize muscle hypertrophy? Journal of Sports Sciences, 37(11):1286–1295. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30558493/
• Moesgaard L et al. (2022). Effects of Periodization on Strength and Muscle Hypertrophy in Volume-Equated Resistance Training Programs. Sports Medicine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35044672/