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How to use this app
- Add your lifts, in Lifts. Enter a movement and your current 1RM. The app works out your base training weight for you (90% of that max, rounded up — tweak the percentage and rounding in Settings any time).
- Pick your cycle, in Lifts. New lifts join your library switched off. Toggle "Add to cycle" on the 1–4 you're running for the next 5 weeks — the counter at the top warns you if you've gone past 4. Hit End Cycle when a block is done to clear Today and choose your next lifts, without losing any history or maxes.
- Run your session, in Today. Set Week and Day, and every active lift shows its sets, reps, and exact working weight for that day. Tap the numbered dots as you finish each set to keep count — the Log button lights up once you've tapped through them all.
- Log the set, in Today. Tap Log to record what you actually did (weight, reps, notes). It's optional but it's what fills in History.
- Work accessories, in Extra. Open a muscle-group category, log any move — weight and reps are optional since a lot of this is bodyweight or band work — or tap Shuffle for a random pick when you want variety. "Add your own move" saves a custom exercise to that category for next time.
- Review your work, in History. Every logged session — main lift or accessory — lands here, newest first.
- Everything else lives in Settings — your base percentage, rounding rules, and the full 5-week percentage table for reference.
What follows is the why: where this program came from and the research behind it.
01 Where it came from
This program — now called Blue's Lifting Cycle, originally just "Blue's Squat Program" — started as a note scribbled down in November 2016, tested by the author and a training partner, "Ronnie G," then refined again by 2019 after another full run-through. It was built, by the author's own account, as "a culmination of my experience using Smolov, Wendler 5-3-1, Starting Strength, CrossFit, Powerlifting (Westside Barbell) and other training programs" — years of certifications and hands-on coaching packaged into one simple structure.
The name says "squat," but the book is explicit that the method isn't squat-specific: the same rep/set/percentage skeleton has been run on bench press, biceps curls, and shoulder presses with the same result. That's why this app lets you run it against any lift you add.
02 The volume/intensity backbone: Prilepin's Chart
The book credits the rep/set scheme to "Prilepin's Chart for Hypertrophy." The original chart is real, well-known coaching material in weightlifting circles: Alexander Sergeyevitch Prilepin was a Soviet coach who led the USSR's junior (1975–80) and senior (1980–85) national weightlifting teams. His chart came from training logs across roughly 1,000 elite Soviet lifters through the 1960s–70s, and it describes one consistent pattern — as the load goes up, the total number of reps you can productively do goes down.
| % of 1RM | Reps/set | Optimal reps | Total range |
|---|---|---|---|
| 55–65% | 3–6 | 24 | 18–30 |
| 70–80% | 3–6 | 18 | 12–24 |
| 80–90% | 2–4 | 15 | 10–20 |
| 90%+ | 1–2 | 4 | ≤10 |
Prilepin's original chart — built for competitive weightlifters chasing max strength, not size.
That original chart runs too low-rep for hypertrophy work, which is why a modified "hypertrophy" version (popularized by coach Scott Dixon) shifted the same idea toward higher reps at lighter loads:
| % of 1RM | Reps/set | Optimal reps | Total range |
|---|---|---|---|
| <70% | 6–10 | 32 | 20–40 |
| 70–80% | 5–8 | 30 | 20–30 |
| 81–90% | 5–7 | 21 | 15–25 |
| >90% | 1–2 | 7 | 4–10 |
The hypertrophy adaptation — still the same inverse relationship, just shifted for size instead of a 1-rep max.
Blue's Lifting Cycle takes that same inverse relationship and pushes it further into volume territory — 2×30 down to 5×8 across a week, percentages climbing from the mid-20s to the mid-60s across four weeks. It's the same underlying logic as Prilepin's chart, extended past what either version above prescribes.
03 The variation piece: the Conjugate Method
The book's instruction to rotate bars, stances, and angles — "one day I may use a straight bar and the next day I may use a Safety Squat Bar" — comes straight out of Westside Barbell's conjugate method, built by Louie Simmons from a blend of Soviet high-volume methodology and Bulgarian near-max-frequency training. Westside's own framework runs on three legs: max effort (true heavy loading to keep the nervous system strong), dynamic effort (lighter loads moved fast, often against bands or chains), and repeated effort — non-maximal loads to near-failure, which is where accessory work lives and typically makes up the bulk of total training volume.
The mechanism behind rotating exercises has a name: accommodation. A body adapts to a repeated, unchanging stimulus and the rate of improvement flattens out — the same reason a program that never changes eventually stalls. Constantly varying the bar, stance, and angle is a direct countermeasure, which is exactly the justification the book gives: "the only way to grow is to avoid adaptation."
04 Why the accessory work matters
The book's own accessory list is organized by muscle group for a reason: heavy, repeated squatting builds the quads and spinal erectors hard, but it can leave the hamstrings, glutes, upper back, and core comparatively undertrained relative to what they need to keep the joints they support stable under a growing load. The accessory categories in this app exist to close that gap — direct hamstring and glute work to balance the quad-dominant main lift, upper-back and rear-delt work to keep the shoulders healthy under a bar, and core and erector work to keep the trunk able to brace the weight you're adding to the main lift.
Accessory work also carries volume that builds muscle without the joint and nervous-system cost of a heavy main lift — the book's rationale for stacking Bulgarian-style near-max frequency with Soviet-style volume in the first place.
05 What to actually expect
- Week 1 feels manageable. The book says as much directly — the load is genuinely light. Don't mistake that for the program being easy.
- Week 2 is where it starts to bite. Volume stays fixed while percentages climb, so fatigue compounds session to session, not just week to week.
- By Week 4 you're doing real work. 5×8 at the mid-60% range is a legitimate volume day, not a warm-up.
- Week 5 ("Gnarlyville") is optional overreach — a harder push week for once you've proven you can recover from Weeks 1–4.
- This is a size/work-capacity block, not a max-strength peak. You're not testing your 1RM during this program — you're building the base a peaking phase would later be run on top of.
- Recovery is not optional. The book is blunt about this: eat well and get rest. A volume block this size outruns poor sleep and poor food fast.
06 Further reading
The real sources behind the sections above, if you want to go deeper yourself.
Base weight calculation
Per the book: base = 90% of your 1RM, rounded up. A 330 lb max gives a 297 base, rounded up to 300. Every week's percentage is applied to that base, not the raw max. Bump this to 93–95% if you want it more aggressive — the author notes it still works.
Working weight rounding
This is what gets applied to your day-by-day working sets, after the base weight above is set.
Full program reference
Week 5 ("Gnarlyville") is the optional extra push week from the book — same set/rep scheme, higher percentages. Sets × reps never change across weeks, only the percentage of your base weight does.
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