If you walked into Pulse on a Monday morning and asked me what programme to follow, I'd give you the same answer I gave the very first member who signed up in 2019: do three things, do them well, and add weight to the bar every week. Squat. Bench. Deadlift. That's the answer. The Big 3.
It's not a sexy answer. There's no "secret" in it. But it's the answer that has built every strong person I've ever trained, including me. And the more I coach, the more I realise that most people aren't held back by a lack of fancy programming — they're held back by jumping between programmes before any of them have a chance to work.
Why these three movements?
The squat, the bench press and the deadlift aren't sacred lifts. They aren't the only good lifts. The reason they sit at the centre of almost every serious strength programme is simpler than people make it: they let you move the most weight, with the most muscle, in the safest, most learnable patterns.
Each one trains a fundamental human movement pattern:
- The squat — you sit down and stand up. Hips, knees, ankles, core, upper back, all working together.
- The bench — you push something away from your chest. Chest, shoulders, triceps, with stabilisation through the whole upper body.
- The deadlift — you pick something heavy off the floor. Hamstrings, glutes, back, grip, the whole posterior chain.
Train these three and you've trained nearly every major muscle in the body. Train them in the right rep ranges with progressive load and you'll add muscle, bone density, joint integrity, work capacity, and yes — the kind of all-over strength that shows up in the rest of your life.
The physiology, briefly
Heavy compound lifts trigger a hormonal response that isolation movements simply don't. When you squat or deadlift close to your maximum, you recruit a huge volume of muscle fibres at once. That places a systemic demand on the body that drives growth hormone and testosterone elevations post-workout. That's not bro-science — it's well-documented in strength & conditioning literature going back to the 1980s.
There's also a neurological component. The Big 3 are technical lifts. Getting better at them means getting better at coordinating force production across multiple joints under load. That neural skill carries over to every other movement you do, including the ones that don't involve a barbell at all.
Most people aren't held back by a lack of fancy programming. They're held back by jumping between programmes before any of them have a chance to work.
Time efficiency — the underrated benefit
Most members at Pulse have full-time jobs, families, commutes. The question isn't whether you could spend two hours a day in the gym. The question is whether you can get a meaningful training stimulus in 45-60 minutes, three to four times a week. The answer with the Big 3 is yes — provided you're disciplined about the work.
A typical Strength session at Pulse is built around one of the Big 3 plus two or three accessories. That's it. We don't try to train every body part every day. We train the movement that matters most that day, then we add a few targeted assistance lifts, and we go home. Sustainable, repeatable, and brutally effective when you do it for six months.
Want to train the Big 3 properly?
Our Strength class runs twice a day, six days a week. Your first session is on us.
Book a Strength trial →The three lifts, explained briefly
Let me give you the short version of each. The detailed version is what we coach in class — this is just the framing.
Squat. Bar on your upper traps, brace your core, sit down between your feet keeping the bar over the middle of your foot, stand back up. Depth depends on your hip structure, but as a rule we aim for thighs at least parallel to the floor.
Bench press. Lie on the bench, retract your shoulder blades, plant your feet, take the bar in straight arms, lower it to your sternum under control, press it back to lockout. The leg drive and arch matter more than most people think.
Deadlift. Bar over the middle of your foot, hinge at the hips, grab the bar, set your back flat, push the floor away. There are sumo and conventional variants — both work, pick the one that fits your body.
What about the rest?
I'm not saying don't curl, don't press overhead, don't do pull-ups. I'm saying: if you're going to spend four hours a week in the gym, spend three of them on the lifts that will move the needle most, and use the remaining hour for the supporting work. Don't invert that ratio.
If you're new and reading this, the takeaway is simple. Pick a programme that's built around the Big 3 — whether that's Starting Strength, StrongLifts, or our in-house Strength class — and run it for at least three months before changing anything. Track your numbers. Add weight when the programme says to. Eat. Sleep. Show up.
That's it. That's the whole game. Strong people aren't strong because they have a secret. They're strong because they've squatted, benched and deadlifted, with intent, for years. The sooner you start, the sooner you'll be one of them.
Marcus Hayes
Head Strength Coach & Founder of Pulse Gym. National-level powerlifter, 15+ years coaching, NSCA-CSCS certified. Marcus writes about strength, programming and the long game.
