Not a template. Tell us your goal, your joints, your equipment and your week. A board of strength coaches, physical therapists, sports scientists and nutrition experts builds a program for you alone, with your protein and calorie numbers, and checks every number before it reaches you.
Two people can both say "I want to get stronger" and need completely different programs. Here's the difference.
| Goblet box squat (to a bench) | 3 × 8–10 |
| Dumbbell Romanian deadlift, light | 3 × 12–15 |
| Step-up, low box (right leg leads) | 2 × 10 each |
| Glute bridge | 3 × 12 |
| Suitcase carry | 3 × 30 m |
| Calf raise | 2 × 15 |
Why it looks like this: a box squat to a set depth instead of a free squat keeps the sore knee in a pain-free range. Low step-ups replace lunges.
When to add weight: when you hit the top of the rep range on every set with 2 reps to spare.
Your numbers: protein about 1 g per pound of goal weight, split over 3–4 meals.
Most online programs pick one of a few templates for you. Here, a panel of experts each look at your answers from their own discipline, argue it out, and a quality auditor recomputes every number before anything reaches you.
Goal, training history, a standard health screen, injuries and limitations, your schedule and equipment, recovery, and how you eat. About eight minutes.
Hypertrophy, periodization, biomechanics, aging and joints, protein and muscle metabolism, energy balance, supplements, and a clinical screen. Each writes a brief.
A draft program goes back to every specialist. They say what must change and why, citing the research. The head coach rules on disagreements.
Weekly sets per muscle, session length, progression rules, protein per meal, calories, sodium. Nothing ships until it passes. Then it's emailed to you.
Each coach is modeled on a real credential profile and cites the published research of the labs behind it — the same science the best performance staffs in the country work from.
Runs like the performance staff of a pro team: a head coach, seven specialists, and an auditor.
Muscle-first, protein-anchored. Modeled on the dietitians and researchers behind performance nutrition for pro teams and the science of aging muscle.
The coaches are credential archetypes, not impersonations. They cite the published work of the research groups that defined modern strength and nutrition science — and a change to any rule has to come with a paper.
No. It's coaching. The questionnaire includes the standard pre-exercise health screen every good coach uses; if it raises a flag, the panel holds your program until you confirm a physician has cleared you for vigorous exercise. Your physician outranks anything the panel says.
Those are general templates. This one is built from your answers — your joints, your equipment, your week, your goal — and the numbers are recomputed for you by the auditor. If you have an old shoulder, a three-day week and a home gym, the program knows.
Free programs are built once. Max members check in every two weeks and the panel re-plans monthly — calories, volume, exercises — from what actually happened.
Steve Main — 40 years running gyms, owner of Parkway Athletic Club, author of Stronger After 50 — set the standard the panel works to and reviews its output. The panel does the analysis; Steve keeps it honest.
Start with the questionnaire. Your free program arrives by email, and you can come back for Max when it opens.
Get my free program →