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Protocols

Structured routines and habits that compound over time. Vote for the ones that work.

26 protocols
467
StrengthAdvanced

75 Hard

The original mental toughness program. Two workouts per day (one outdoor), follow a diet, drink a gallon of water, read 10 pages, take a progress photo. Every day. Miss any task, restart from day 1. This isn't a fitness plan — it's a test of who you are.

75 days
3 tools
394
StrengthBeginner

Beginner Strength Program

A simple, proven 3-day full-body program for people who are new to barbell training or coming back after a long break. Three compound lifts per session, linear weight progression, no fluff. This is how you build a foundation that lasts decades.

12 weeks / 3 days per week
4 tools
341
SleepBeginner

Caffeine Cutoff Protocol

Caffeine has a half-life of 5–6 hours. That means a 2pm coffee still has 50% of its caffeine in your blood at 8pm. This protocol structures your caffeine intake so it fuels your morning without wrecking your night. Simple rules, massive impact on sleep quality.

Daily / ongoing
2 tools
312
StrengthBeginner

Progressive Overload Protocol

The basic rule behind every useful strength program: do slightly more over time while keeping form intact. This protocol gives beginners a simple progression model they can apply to almost any lift without guessing.

Ongoing / every training block
3 tools
278
SleepBeginner

Sleep Consistency Protocol

The single most impactful sleep variable isn't temperature, darkness, or supplements — it's consistency. Same bedtime, same wake time, every day, including weekends. Your circadian rhythm can't optimize around a moving target. This protocol locks it in.

Daily / ongoing
2 tools
256
StrengthIntermediate

Weekly Training Split

The default next step after a beginner linear program. Two upper days and two lower days give each lift enough weekly practice without turning every session into a two-hour grind. Simple, repeatable, and easy to run in a home gym.

8–12 weeks / 4 days per week
4 tools
238
RecoveryIntermediate

Cold Exposure Protocol

Structured daily cold water immersion for recovery, stress tolerance, and mental discipline. 2–5 minutes at 39–55°F. Consistent timing, consistent temperature. The discomfort is the point.

Daily / ongoing
2 tools
196
SleepBeginner

Wind-Down Protocol

A 90-minute pre-sleep sequence that systematically shuts down every stimulus keeping you awake. Light, temperature, screens, stimulation — each one gets addressed in order. This is how you fall asleep in under 10 minutes.

Daily / 90 min before bed
2 tools
189
RecoveryBeginner

Post-Workout Recovery Stack

A layered recovery sequence that moves from percussion to compression to cold in the 45 minutes after training. Each modality targets a different system — soft tissue, lymphatic, and inflammatory. Do this after hard sessions and you'll notice the difference the next morning.

45 min post-training
3 tools
173
SleepBeginner

Sleep Temperature Protocol

Your body needs to drop 2–3°F in core temperature to initiate deep sleep. This protocol uses your smart mattress and room climate to engineer that drop automatically — cooling aggressively at sleep onset, holding cold through deep sleep, then warming before your alarm.

Daily / ongoing
2 tools
167
StrengthBeginner

Conditioning Protocol

The unglamorous conditioning base that makes strength work easier. Low-intensity aerobic sessions improve work capacity, help you recover between hard sets, and make high-rep lower-body work less miserable.

30–45 min / 2–3x per week
2 tools
124
RecoveryIntermediate

Sauna Rotation Protocol

A structured weekly sauna rotation that alternates session length, temperature, and contrast to maintain heat adaptation without plateauing. Most people sit in the sauna the same way every time — this protocol forces variation.

3–4x per week / ongoing
2 tools
112
SleepIntermediate

Jet Lag Reset Protocol

Your circadian clock shifts about 1 hour per day naturally. A 6-hour time zone change takes nearly a week to adjust — unless you force the reset. This protocol uses light, temperature, and meal timing to collapse that adjustment period to 2–3 days.

3–5 days per trip
2 tools
94
RecoveryBeginner

Red Light Therapy Protocol

Structured red and near-infrared light exposure for recovery, skin health, and joint pain. The evidence is strong but the dosing matters — more is not better. This protocol gets the wavelength, distance, duration, and frequency right.

10–20 min / 4–5x per week
3 tools
87
LightBeginner

Morning Light Protocol

Get bright light in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking. This is the single most impactful thing you can do for circadian rhythm, energy, and sleep quality. Sunlight is best. Circadian lighting is the backup.

Daily / first 30 min after waking
2 tools
83
StrengthBeginner

Deload Week Protocol

A structured easy week that keeps the habit alive while letting fatigue drop. Deloads are not time off and they are not failure. They are how you keep a long training block from becoming a slow-motion stall.

1 week / every 6–10 weeks
3 tools
0
StrengthBeginner

3-Day Full-Body Hypertrophy

A simple muscle-building template for people who want more size and general strength without committing to five training days. Every session touches squat, hinge, push, pull, and accessories so missed days do not wreck the week.

8 weeks / 3 days per week
3 tools
0
RecoveryIntermediate

Contrast Therapy Protocol

The oldest recovery stack on record, run cleanly. Alternating rounds of sauna and cold plunge create a peripheral pumping action that neither modality produces alone. Heat first, cold second, three rounds, end on cold for alertness or heat for sleep — that is the whole tradition and most of the benefit.

45–60 min / 2x per week
3 tools
0
RecoveryIntermediate

Morning Cold Plunge Ritual

A cold plunge is the single highest-leverage 3 minutes you can spend before 7am. The norepinephrine bump replaces the second coffee, the dopamine response stays elevated for hours, and you start the day having already done the hardest voluntary thing you'll do all day. This is the ritual that builds the identity.

3–5 min / daily
3 tools
0
SleepBeginner

Evening Sauna Wind-Down

A short, moderate-heat sauna session 2–3 hours before bed triggers a deeper core-temperature drop afterward — one of the strongest sleep interventions available. The heat is the stimulus; the rebound cooling is the payoff. Timed correctly, this is worth more than any sleep supplement you can buy.

20 min / 2–3 hours before bed
4 tools
0
RecoveryAdvanced

Heat Acclimation Protocol

A progressive 6-week sauna protocol that builds heat tolerance the way a strength cycle builds a squat. Start at 15 min and 170°F; finish at 30 min and 195°F. Endurance athletes who run this protocol see measurable gains in plasma volume, VO2max, and time to exhaustion — without adding a single mile of running.

6 weeks / 4x per week
4 tools
0
RecoveryAdvanced

Cold Plunge Breathwork Protocol

Cold plunge + deliberate breathwork trains autonomic control under stress in a way nothing else does. The cold provides the involuntary stress; the breath is the only lever you have to respond. Run this protocol for a month and your resting HRV, panic tolerance, and focus under pressure all move in the same direction.

10 min / 3–4x per week
2 tools
0
RecoveryAdvanced

No Wi-Fi at Home

Run the house on ethernet. No Wi-Fi, no 2.4/5 GHz broadcast from the router, no cellular inside the walls — everything hardwired. The protocol is environmental, not habitual: once the infrastructure is in place, RF exposure inside the home drops to near-zero by default. Extreme by any normal measure. Common among the serious-about-this crowd.

Ongoing / architectural
0 tools
0
RecoveryIntermediate

Zero-Detergent Laundry

Swap conventional detergent for ozone + hot water. A dedicated ozone generator injects O₃ into the wash cycle, breaking down organic residue without fragrance, dyes, or surfactants. Clothes come out clean, your skin stops reacting to whatever was leaching out of the old detergent, and the wash water is safe enough to water plants with.

Ongoing
0 tools
0
SleepIntermediate

Grounded Sleep

Sleep with a direct electrical connection to the earth. A conductive bed mat wires to a copper grounding rod driven into the dirt outside — bypassing the building's electrical ground entirely. The theory is contested; the practice is cheap and the proponents are unusually consistent in their results. Try it for 30 days, track HRV, decide for yourself.

Every night / ongoing
1 tool
0
LightBeginner

Morning Sun Before Screens

The rule is embarrassingly simple: sunlight hits your eyes before your phone does. No exceptions, no 'just checking one thing.' This single boundary recalibrates your circadian rhythm more than any sleep supplement, blackout shade, or smart mattress combined. It's the cheapest, highest-leverage protocol on the list — and the one most people refuse to do.

Daily / first 30 min after waking
0 tools