How to use The Space Program

Learning how to train in new ways—whether you are a lifetime athlete or a beginner—can feel daunting.

Let’s simplify it.

Let me explore

The foundation of The Space Program is creative exploration. Each session is built around an idea, a concept, or a question, which we explore through movement and effort. While there are proven ways to improve performance and physical metrics, this program also delves into structures and combinations that can reveal new sensations and conscious states.

This program doesn’t follow a single, rigid approach. Instead, it offers helpful guidelines for exploration. Each week, new sessions are released on Sunday at midnight, providing a variety of options. You can start at the beginning, jump into the most recent sessions, or browse randomly—your journey is entirely up to you.

What Is The Space Program About?

At its core, The Space Program focuses on training that supports the highest quality of broad fitness attributes over the longest possible timeline. This is rooted in General Physical Preparedness (GPP), which balances training across three major energy systems:

  • Endurance

  • Strength/Strength Endurance

  • Aerobic Capacity

We use a diverse range of exercises and movements, often introducing completely new or invented patterns to keep training fresh, engaging, and challenging.

How to Approach Training

We recommend training at least three sessions per week, with a balance across energy systems. For example:

  • 1–2 sessions focused on strength/strength endurance

  • 1–2 sessions focused on capacity

  • 1 session focused on endurance or recovery

Mobility is naturally integrated into many sessions, so it doesn’t require a specific focus unless you’re recovering from an injury or addressing a deficit.

Each session includes detailed explanations and links to movement demonstrations. If you’re limited on equipment or need modifications, our Substitutions Page provides helpful alternatives.

Abilities to Enhance Your Experience

  • Session Tracker: Save sessions for later by marking them with a star, or mark them complete to unlock notes where you can track your thoughts and progress.

  • Main Menu: Access links to the forum, video archive, and session videos with in-depth explanations.

Where to Start

If you’re new to our methodology, we recommend starting with the Escape Velocity program. This 12-week structured program provides a balanced introduction to our training style. Many participants find that transitioning to the Free Fall program afterward helps them explore creative ways to personalize and mix their sessions.

Why The Space Program?

The Space Program is designed to make training more than just a chore. It’s about making training the best part of your day while building a community of capable, well-rounded individuals.

We hope you enjoy the journey and look forward to seeing your thoughts and experiences in the comments.

Things to Consider

We are OLLIN is rooted in the most advanced theories and concepts in sports science. However, our innovations in physical training have placed us at the forefront of the fitness industry, pushing boundaries and redefining what training can achieve.

The Obvious but Overlooked

Training is more than just building strength or speed—it’s a ability to reinforce and solidify behavior traits. While this can be understood on a muscular level, the benefits run much deeper. Training reveals patterns rooted in the psyche, uncovering connections between physical attributes and conscious thought. It’s in these moments—when we push past self-imposed limitations—that true revelations occur.

Our training style is designed to act as a lens, revealing the deepest parts of ourselves. Through effort and movement, we gain clarity about who we are and what we’re capable of.

Quitting vs. Failing

One of the defining aspects of hard effort is how it forces us to confront the decision to continue or stop. What often goes unexamined is the inability to distinguish between failure and acquiescence. Training becomes a practice in this internal negotiation, helping us refine our understanding of these moments. With experience, we can improve this misunderstood aspect of human nature, learning to persist when it matters most.

Fitness Isn’t a Temporary Achievement

Modern culture has shifted the perception of fitness, tying it to specific sports, aesthetics, or the ability to win a game. But fitness was once defined by survival traits—qualities essential to life itself. The truth is, fitness is not a finite goal or a temporary achievement.

Fitness is an infinite game. It’s not something you win; it’s something you cultivate. It’s a set of features and traits that require persistent effort and care.

Like hunger, fitness is not something you satisfy once and for all. It’s a need that must be continually maintained, nurtured, and fed.

Assessment

The Misunderstood Path to Lasting Fitness

One of the most misunderstood aspects of developing and maintaining meaningful fitness levels is how to progress beyond the typical 2–3 month program cycle. This is where the majority of fitness “programs” fall short—they focus on short-term results without addressing the long-term journey.

At OLLIN, we take a different approach. We program on the day, working within the framework of a current theme or system we aim to improve. The first step in this process is simple but essential: assess your condition. How do you feel today?

Challenging the “Toughen Up” Mentality

The dominant narrative in fitness culture tells you to toughen up, push through, and ignore your body’s signals. “Shut up and do what you’re told” is the mantra. We find this approach short-sighted.

This mindset is often based on the condition of the average person—someone who is out of shape and unable to accurately assess how they feel. For someone just starting, everything feels terrible, making it nearly impossible to distinguish between productive discomfort and harmful strain.

Our Daily Flow

Our approach is rooted in a paradox: each day is an opportunity to either prove you’re not lazy or prove you’re not reckless. To be clear, both hard work and compassion for your recovery state are essential for achieving lasting fitness.

By listening to your body and balancing effort with recovery, you can break free from the cycle of burnout and stagnation. This is how we create sustainable progress—by respecting the process and adapting to the needs of each day.

Session Structure

Most of our sessions follow a predictable and intentional pattern, designed to maximize effectiveness and ensure a well-rounded training experience:

1. General Warm-Up

The session begins with 5–10 minutes of light movement to increase blood flow and assess how your body feels. This phase helps you tune in to your physical state and prepare for the work ahead.

2. Specific Warm-Up

Next, we focus on movements that directly relate to the exercises and energy systems featured in the work portion. This phase elevates your heart rate and prepares your muscles and nervous system for the demands of the session, ensuring smooth transitions into higher-intensity efforts.

3. Priming/Mobility/Prefatigue (Optional)

This section, while not always included, is used to influence the outcome of the work portion:

  • Prefatigue: Pre-exhausting the target muscles or energy system to enhance the focus and challenge of the main work.

  • Mobility: Creating space for increased range of motion, which allows for improved contraction rates in connective tissue and better movement quality.

4. Work Portion

This is the primary focus of the session—the desired stimulus or "signal" that drives adaptation.

5. Supplemental/Finisher

The finisher is an additional component designed to complement the work portion without overshadowing it. It adds variety and reinforces the session’s goals, providing a well-rounded conclusion to the main effort.

6. Cooldown

After high-intensity work or significant nervous system engagement, the cooldown phase helps calm the system and kickstart the recovery process. Often overlooked, cooldowns are one of the best opportunities to enhance fitness attributes by resetting the body and preparing it for future sessions.

Guide Me

Introducing the Training “Tasting” Profile. To help give you a sense of each structured program

Welcome to the Ollin “Guide Me” Pipeline

The “Guide Me” track is your gateway to our unique training methodology, ideas, and formats—no prior background in physiology required, and no need to overthink your daily training. This track is designed to simplify the process, helping you build the habit of consistent, effective training without the burden of decision-making.

Step 1: Escape Velocity

We begin with the Escape Velocity program, a 9-week General Physical Preparedness (GPP) course. This program introduces you to our training style with fully detailed explanations and a structured approach. Each week is divided into four sessions, focusing on different energy systems such as strength, capacity, and strength endurance. This phase is designed to expose you to the variety of methods and structures we use, setting a strong foundation for your fitness journey.

Step 2: First Contact

After completing Escape Velocity, you’ll move into First Contact, a 48-session program that builds on GPP principles. This phase delivers a consistent and balanced training stimulus, with 2–3 strength endurance sessions and 1–2 capacity sessions per week. First Contact is simple yet highly effective, giving you a deeper understanding of how we design and implement GPP training. By the end of this program, you’ll have a solid grasp of our approach to fitness.

Step 3: Foundational Training

Next, we introduce foundational and principled training, focusing on four key areas: Strength, Endurance, Capacity, and Mobility. Each focus area spans 12 weeks, providing enough progression to guide your training for the next year and a half. This phase ensures you don’t have to worry about “what to train” while building a broad, robust fitness base.

Strength phase will be launched in June 2025 with the revision of our Strength Manual.

Modifications

At any point the beauty of the program and the depth of content allows you to move freely within it. You may enter the Free Fall program at any point to learn about designing your own sessions based on our structures. and any of these cycles may be repeated with different focus or emphasis.

Why Follow the Guide Me Pipeline?

This framework is designed to develop well-rounded fitness capabilities while addressing fatigue and balancing individual needs for optimal performance. It’s structured as a course, so your progress is saved, and you can pause at any time to explore or focus on other areas through The Space Program.

With the “Guide Me” pipeline, you’ll gain the abilities, knowledge, and structure to make fitness a sustainable and rewarding part of your life.