Strength Training Manual: The Agile Periodization Approach by Mladen Jovanović

Strength Training Manual represents my ongoing pursuit in understanding both strength training and training theory in general, by providing an overview of the conflicting opinions, but also giving practical, heuristic solutions to common problems and their reconciliation. The framework for such an approach is the Agile Periodization, which approaches planning from uncertainty perspective, iterations, and experimentation while providing satisficing and robust solutions.

Besides being very rich in theory, Strength Training Manual is also rich in forum-for-action solutions, including reference tables, useful heuristics, and more than 1,900 set and rep schemes provided and analyzed. It also provides the best practices from other experts tinkering in this field.

Paperback edition of the Strength Training Manual comes in two volumes: Volume One & Two, and Volume Three. Volume One and Two of this manual is an in-depth look into strength training planning and general training theory, as well as an introduction to the Agile Periodization framework. I believe that I haven’t left any stone unturned in Volume One and Two. But to do that I had to go full circle: I had to go deep into nitty-gritty details, show issues, assumption, flawed reasoning, and finally present simple solutions or even different paradigms.

Volume Three is straighter to the point and represents a collection of all the useful tables and heuristics from Volume One and Two that you can use as a starting point when designing your strength training programs. Volume Three is my original writing intention, but when I started writing I realized that some things needed a more thorough description and explanation (and besides, I went off-the-track to explore some concepts that emerged during the writing process), rather than do-this-and-not-this perspective.