September 2026 Lift and Read Program and Book Club

Lifting Program: PPL 3X

Each session has 3 (or more) specific workout variations. 

For example, 1 pull day will have regular pullups. The next pull day will be neutral grip chins. And the 3rd pull day will be wide grip pullups as the vertical pulling exercise. Each pull session, pick 1 of these 3 pullup variations. 

This routine is very flexible as far as exercise variations, volume per exercise, and even frequency. Use autoregulation and your own common sense to adjust training schedule and session to session volume as necessary.

Generally speaking, you should train anywhere from 3-6 days per week.

Personally, I like using PPL when I want to train nearly every day (which is most of the time). You don't need to train 5-6 days per week with this program, but I usually do and will continue to do so. I have a gym in my garage along with a passion for basic exercises that I can do with kettlebells, dumbbells, or even just my own bodyweight and good ole gravity defiance. I do very well – mentally and physically – with the structure of near daily, reasonable, 20-30 minute resistance training sessions. I tend to find frequent training – cycling through pull, push, and leg workouts – to be effective for getting more muscular and stronger. I'm one who likes spreading my volume out throughout the week and a nice pump makes my day better.

Also, generally speaking, you should do anywhere from 2-5 sets per exercise. Again, I'm taking the approach of maintaining high frequency at all cost, so if I have to do just 2 sets and get a session done within 15 minutes – that's a plus. Every day that I stimulate the muscles is a day of progress.

Each session is made up of 3 exercises, excluding the warm up.

Rest 1-2 minutes between sets. We want to recover between sets but we also want the workout to maintain a good pace so we can be time efficient and maximize that beloved pump.

The warm up should be something similar to the following:

1-2 rounds of an ab/core exercise, glute bridge variation or other glute activation (clam shells, doneoy kicks, etc), and something for the shoulders (haloes, band pull aparts, light rear delt flyes, or Indian club stuff)

The above warm up template should only take 2-5 minutes to complete.

Here's the template. Remember, begin each session with the quick warm up. Each session will have 3 options for each exercise. Make sure to rotate through these 3 exercise variations throughout the program. This will provide reasonable variation that'll keep things interesting for the mind and the body, and – especially if you're no longer a young buck – the planned mild variations may prevent potential overuse injuries.

In essence, you should be rotating through 3 different Pull sessions, 3 different Push sessions, and 3 different Leg sessions. For the sake of efficiency and finger tapping preservation, I'm not going to write 9 workouts. Instead I'll just put commas between the 3 variations to alternate through for each exercise. If there's a variation you're unable to do, use a regression or similar exercise variation. For example, if you can't do pullups, make use of resistance band assisted pullups or eccentric pullups.

Pull

Ex 1: pullups, neutral grip chins, wide grip pullups-2-5x5-12

Ex 2: single arm row, inverted row, single arm alternating rows-2-5x6-15

Ex 3: incline dumbbell curls, concentration curls, incline hammer curls-2-5x6-12

Push

Ex 1: single arm kettlebell clean & press, single arm kettlebell overhead press, dumbbell lateral raise-2-5x6-15 (if doing lateral raises, do these as the 2nd exercise on push day)

Ex 2: incline dumbbell bench press, decline pushups with 5 second eccentrics, flat dumbbell bench press-2-5x6-15

Ex 3: diamond/close grip pushups, single arm cable pushdowns, skull crushers-2-5x6-15

Legs

Ex 1: Bulgarian split squats, split squats, box step ups-2-5x6-15

Ex 2: single leg hip thrusts, kettlebell swings, single leg RDLs-2-5x6-15

Ex 3: offset calf raise, single leg calf raise, single leg seated calf raise (with KB or DB on knee)-2-5x10-20

Book Club

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Okay, let's get down to what I'm reading this month.

For my physical culture interests, I'm still thumbing my way, slowly but surely, through "The Complete Keys to Progress" by John McCallum. Tons of great – or at least entertaining – articles about training and eating in this book. It's interesting reading the perspectives of a southern gym owner and physical culture writer during the 1960s and 1970s. Some of what he talks about is simply outdated and poor advice. Much of what he says still holds true. A good bit of the articles seem like total fiction. But it's all great to read, regardless.

For fiction, I'm finishing up Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It; and other stories." Specifically, I'm finishing up the last story in the collection of 3, titled, "USFS 1919."

I've got just a few more pages left in that, and then I'm switching gears and will be reading Charles Bukowski's "Factotum." I'm looking forward it. Both Maclean and Bukowski have very fun (and funny) writing styles.

In the faith and personal development department, I'm reading "The War on Christian Men; and Other Writings," by Juan Dominquez Del Corral. Juan is one of those great, thought provoking writers I discovered on substack when I first created an account 2 years ago. He formerly went by the moniker, "Simple Man." I've read many of his articles and a couple of his earlier books – all specific to Christianity and living a life founded in Christian faith as a young man of the current era. It's good stuff. 

That's all for this month's lifting program and reading list. I'm sorry I'm about a week late getting this out to your inboxes. Enjoy, and, if you follow the program or happen to read any of these books, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Have a great September!