Dose is four things multiplied
“Minimum effective dose” gets used to sell ten-minute workouts. Used properly it is a question with four parts, and a programme has to answer all of them.
| Dial | What it means | Too little | A floor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frequency | How often each movement pattern is trained | Once a fortnight | Twice a week per pattern |
| Movements | Which patterns are covered | Only what you like | Squat, hinge, push, pull, core; single-leg when time allows |
| Effort | How hard the sets are | Stopping when it gets uncomfortable | The last two or three reps of each set are genuinely hard |
| Progression | Whether anything goes up | Same weights for months | Load or difficulty rises whenever the current level is beaten |
Turn any dial to zero and the product is zero. Ten minutes of curls twice a week fails on movements. Five days of the same weights fails on progression. Two full-body sessions with a rule that raises the load passes all four, which is why it is the floor and not just a small number.
The floor test
If this were all I did for a year, would I be stronger at the end of it?
That is the whole test. It disqualifies the things that feel productive and are not, and it rescues the things that feel too small and are not. A 20-minute session of squats, push-ups, rows and a plank twice a week passes. A weekly hour of whatever the class is doing usually fails, because nothing in it goes up.
The subtraction ladder
Start with a conventional five-day programme and remove one thing at a time until the floor test fails.
- Five days, body-part split. Passes the test. Also fails to happen for most people with jobs, which is a different test.
- Four days, upper/lower. Passes. Each pattern twice a week. Still four appointments.
- Three days, full body. Passes comfortably. Each pattern three times. A good programme if three days reliably exist.
- Two days, full body, alternating A and B. Passes. Each pattern twice. This is the last rung where every dial is still on. It is where BANKED stops.
- One day, full body. Each pattern once a week. For most people this maintains more than it builds, and progress becomes hard to see. A maintenance floor, not a progress floor.
- Zero. Fails.
Two people, one year
Illustrative, not measured. Same starting point, same kit at home.
| The five-day plan | The two-day floor | |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1–4 | Excellent. Noticeably stronger, quite sore, very proud | Fine. Slightly stronger, mildly sore, slightly bored |
| Weeks 5–8 | Travel week breaks the split; two catch-up weeks; the plan is now “behind” | Travel week done in a hotel at 20 minutes; nothing behind |
| Weeks 9–20 | Attendance drifts to two or three; the programme was not built for that and the results stall | Two a week, most weeks. Weights climbing every few weeks |
| Weeks 21–52 | Stopped in week 23. Restarted twice. Currently “getting back into it” | Missed six weeks across the year. Banked the other forty-six. Squatting roughly double |
The five-day plan is the better programme. The two-day floor is the better year.
How BANKED turns the dose into a week
- Frequency: two alternating full-body sessions; every pattern twice.
- Movements: squat, hinge, horizontal and vertical push and pull, single-leg, core; mobility when there is time.
- Effort: rep ranges with a hard top, so the last reps are the difficult ones, and a time model that trims sets rather than lets you coast.
- Progression: about 2 kg per hand when every set hits the top of its range; one rung up the bodyweight ladder otherwise. Automatic.
- And one more dial: the week banks at two. Twenty minutes counts in full. That is not part of the dose; it is what keeps the dose being taken.
Fair questions
- Isn’t the minimum effective dose different for everyone?
- The dials are the same for everyone; where the floor sits on each moves a little with experience. Beginners progress on very little. Advanced lifters need more volume to keep progressing and are the group for whom two days becomes maintenance sooner. BANKED is built for the large group in between.
- Is one session a week worthless?
- No. It keeps a habit alive and holds more strength than zero. It is a maintenance floor. If one is genuinely all a week has, do the one and call it that; BANKED will show it as 1/2 and start the next week at zero.
- Why not three sessions as the floor?
- Three passes the test too and progresses faster. It also fails the other test, the one about whether it happens, for many more people. A floor has to be the number most weeks can hold. For people with lives, that is two.