Life After the 1×20 Program: A Matt Thome Roundtable

Based on Episode 81 of the Just Fly Performance Podcast, a roundtable with Jeff Moyer, Matt Thome, and Ryan Bracius, hosted by Joel Smith, recorded in 2017.

The 1×20 program asks an athlete to do one set of twenty reps on each lift and add weight slowly over months, and three coaches who built their results on it sat down to talk about what comes after that. Jeff Moyer of DC Sports Training, Matt Thome of Michigan Tech, and Ryan Bracius of Wisconsin-Whitewater all learned the system from Josef Johnson, who was mentored by its inventor, Dr. Michael Yessis. They have seen the same thing: athletes get strong on the 20s, the 14s, and the 8s without getting beat up, and the strength comes so easily that max strength stops being the limiting factor. The real question of this episode is what you do with an athlete once they are strong enough, and the answer turns out to be velocity, not more load.

Key Takeaways

• The 1×20 program builds strength with almost no soreness. Athletes start with five to eight exercises at one set of twenty, build to around eighteen to twenty-three exercises, and gain strength while staying fresh enough to train the sport hard.
• Most athletes get strong enough in the 20s and 14s. By the time the 8s arrive, strength is rarely the limit, so the coaches turn the 8s into speed work rather than max-effort sets.
• Life after 1×20 is velocity based training. They put a device on the bar, hold the load light, and chase bar speed; beat last week’s meters per second before you add weight.
• Strong enough beats as strong as possible. An eight-rep max over 500 pounds or a 605 three-rep squat is plenty; the coaches struggle to justify grinding down to a true one-rep max.
• Progress by changing the variation, not the volume. Borrowing from Anatoliy Bondarchuk, they hold volume and intensity steady and use a new exercise variant as the stimulus, which is how special strength work keeps producing.

What the 1×20 program is, and why these coaches switched to it

The 1×20 program is a slow-cooked strength system. You start an athlete with a handful of general exercises, one set of twenty reps each, and you add a little weight only when the current weight stops being hard. Over time you add exercises until nearly every joint action is covered. Jeff Moyer ran a clean comparison when he first tried it, splitting a high school football team between the 1×20 and a Jim Wendler 5/3/1 model.

The improvements in those jumps was almost two to one, the 1 by 20 to the 5-3-1. So for every two-inch broad jump it would go up four-inch broad jump for the 1 by 20, and same with vertical, and the lifting numbers were the exact same.

What sold him was not just the jump numbers but the cost. The athletes were not beaten up by the work.

The athletes weren’t getting very sore from it, so I converted everyone over and became a believer.

Matt Thome saw the same pattern somewhere less expected, coaching a high school wrestling team. The year he put the team on the 1×20, the surprise was not in the weight room.

What I was most amazed with was his improvements in general coordination, his stance improved, his ability to pick up techniques improved, and then that was reflected in his performance on the mat.

For a coach weighing the switch, the takeaway is that the 1×20 trades the heavy-barbell look for low soreness and high transfer, which is exactly what an in-season or skill-heavy athlete needs.

Running the program: the 20s, the 14s, and the 8s

The phases are not on a fixed calendar. The coaches hold an athlete in the 20s until progress slows or technique slips, then drop to 14s, and eventually to 8s. With a fresh group it is a long teaching block. Thome walked through a typical college timeline.

If we have freshmen starting in August, it’s probably gonna be about Thanksgiving time until they’re dropping down to 14 reps, and that’s when I see the group as a whole beginning to slow down in their progression and plateau out.

Ryan Bracius runs a similar arc at the Division III level, and he keeps reintroducing the 20s each year while shortening the time veterans spend there.

Freshmen will ride the 20s for that seven-week period. We hit spring ball, we’ll move them down to the 14s, and then when we head to the summer, we’ll start moving them into the eights.

The practical rule across all three: the more training age an athlete has, the shorter every phase gets. A first-year athlete might spend a full semester in the 20s; a fourth-year athlete may readdress them for three or four weeks and move on.

Why one set of 20 works: coordination before connective tissue

Twenty reps looks like an endurance set, and there is a connective-tissue and capillary-density argument for it. But when Thome pressed Dr. Yessis on the reason for twenty reps, the answer was about skill, not stamina.

If you’re trying to improve a skill, do you want to do many reps or do you want to do a few reps? Obviously we want repetition, so I think that’s one of the more overlooked aspects of the one-by-20, that there are large increases in coordination.

Thome framed the mechanism as motor control built one joint action at a time, three times a week, at a load low enough to keep technique clean.

We’re using a low load, we’re going through a large range of motion, and we’re highly focused on technique in each joint action. And what that results in is very good control in each joint action, just so you’re reinforcing it over and over again.

That distinction matters for programming. If the early gains come from coordination and connective-tissue health rather than maximal force, then there is no reason to rush an athlete into heavier, lower-rep work before the pattern is clean. The low neural cost is the point, not a compromise.

Life after 1×20: velocity based training

Once strength stops being the limit, the coaches move to velocity based training, and the cleanest entry point is the set of eight itself. Moyer described how the 8s quietly turn into speed work.

Eights end up being more velocity based stuff where it’s more of a speed eight than it is like a max effort eight. The strength comes so easily in the 20s and the 14s that by the time we’re done with those phases, I don’t think they need more.

From there the bar gets a device on it and the athlete chases a number. Moyer uses a GymAware to set a speed target and only adds load once the athlete beats it.

Let’s say how fast you can move this 14 reps, and let’s just say it’s 0.81 meters per second. Next time, let’s beat that. And if you beat that, then next time we’ll go up in weight.

Thome structures it across the week, mixing fast days with a single heavier exposure to hold onto the strength already built.

I’ve seen some really good success with using three velocity based sessions, and then one session where we do a set of eight, so it would look like every other week we’re hitting something to readdress or retain the strength that we’ve built.

For a coach, the model is simple to copy: keep the reps low, keep the load honest, measure bar speed, and treat a periodic heavy set as maintenance rather than the main work.

Strong enough, not as strong as possible

The thread running through the whole roundtable is a minimum-effective-dose view of strength. The coaches want an athlete strong enough for the sport, then they stop chasing the number. Moyer put it plainly about his own athletes.

We kind of check that box off and move on to the other types of strengths. As far as max strength anymore, we check that box off, we’ll move on.

Bracius reached the same place from the testing side. Watching a player put up a 605-pound three-rep squat, he questioned the value of grinding any lower.

Do we necessarily need to get that low? I’m finding it hard for me to justify going that low in the reps from what I’m seeing.

The application is a mindset shift more than a method. If a college lineman is already moving heavy weight for sets of eight, another five-pound max is not worth the nervous-system tax, the soreness, or the risk. The job becomes holding that strength while spending the athlete’s recovery on speed and skill.

Special strength: change the variation, not the load

So how do you keep progressing once you are not adding weight? Thome leans on Anatoliy Bondarchuk’s complex method, which keeps the load steady and uses novelty as the driver.

Bondarchuk came up with his own method where he said, let’s keep volume and intensity relatively stable and just use novelty as the stimulus to continue to adapt.

He gave a concrete example of how far that idea reaches: one coach he learns from changed an athlete from four sets of five to twenty sets of one, same weight and same exercise, and still got a fresh response purely from the new set-and-rep shape. Moyer applies the same thinking to the specialized lifts, where a single movement can be run many ways.

There’s four, five, six different ways to do lunges, maybe more, the explosive lunges and stuff like that, so that way each year we can keep getting adaptations.

The coaching lesson is that special strength does not require constant overload. A lunge done with bands, then a barbell, then eccentrically, then as a jump is a progression in its own right. That is what lets these coaches drop heavy barbell maxing without losing the training effect.

Frequently asked questions

What is the 1×20 program?
It is a strength system, taught by Josef Johnson and invented by Dr. Michael Yessis, where an athlete does one set of twenty reps on each of five to eight general exercises, adds weight slowly, and builds to roughly eighteen to twenty-three exercises. When progress on the 20s stalls, the athlete moves to one set of 14, then one set of 8.

What do you do after the 1×20 system?
You move to velocity based training. The coaches in this roundtable turn the sets of eight into speed work, put a velocity device on the bar, chase bar speed instead of load, and keep one heavier set every week or two to retain the strength already built.

How long should each phase of the 1×20 last?
There is no fixed length. Hold the 20s until progress slows or technique breaks down. A first-year athlete may stay in the 20s for a full semester, while a veteran with a strong base might readdress them for only three or four weeks before dropping to 14s and 8s.

How strong does an athlete need to be?
Strong enough for the sport, not as strong as possible. Once an athlete is moving heavy loads for sets of eight, the coaches stop chasing a true one-rep max and spend the recovery on speed, special strength, and skill instead.

About the authors

Jeff Moyer is the owner and a coach at DC Sports Training, a private athletic development facility, and a frequent Just Fly Sports contributor who helped popularize the 1×20 system on the podcast.

Matt Thome is the head strength and conditioning coach at Michigan Tech University, where he works with football and basketball. He was mentored in the 1×20 system by Josef Johnson.

Ryan Bracius is a strength and conditioning coach at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, developing NCAA Division III football athletes with low injury rates.

Joel Smith is the host of the Just Fly Performance Podcast and the founder of Just Fly Sports, a former collegiate strength and track and field coach focused on speed, power, and athletic development. Listen to the full roundtable on Just Fly Sports.