Everyone starts their journey by taking a pre-built training program and trying it out.
I made my first program choice after a three-minute perusal of my local supermarket’s magazine rack. That month’s copy of Men’s Health advertised a program promising 10 pounds of gains in 6 weeks, which was exactly what my 6’2, 149 lb, 16-year-old self needed. I took £35 of my £90 per month salary from the shelf filling work I did at the same Tesco supermarket and signed myself up for a gym membership around the corner.
I gained 9 lbs reasonably quickly as my appetite increased and then stalled. From that point, I program hopped from one thing to the next. This continued for years. I ‘knew’ that my problem was just that I had to find the right program because there were jacked bros at my gym who didn’t seem to be training any smarter than I. It took a long time to occur to me that their years of effort (and genetics) might be a factor and that my answers lay elsewhere.
I went down the rabbit hole of internet fitness industry BS, quickly finding the kings of it, and dutifully buying all the supplements bodybuilding.com told me to.
Every time I found a program which I was convinced was ‘the one’ I would hang out in online communities that fed my own confirmation bias and this somehow overpowered the reality of my stagnation which stared back at me in the mirror each day.
Perhaps this story has a familiar tone for you that echoes your own frustration. It’s a pattern that is repeated all too often.
At the time, reading up on training theory was not something that occurred to me to do in any serious way. Even if it had, I’m not sure I would have known where to look because most of the resources I have learned from and now recommend didn’t yet exist.
What is now clear to me that wasn’t back then is that there comes a time for everyone when in order to continue to progress, you need to learn how to build your own training program (or get a coach to manage that for you). The point at which this is necessary will differ from person to person — genetics, environment, circumstance, grit, luck with injuries, and the quality of the program and guidelines they initially stumble across all factor into this.
I don’t think I’d recommend that a rank novice read this article though.
If you are completely new to training, the motivational boost from getting some quick initial gains will help you build the training habit. This is arguably more important than the theory covered here because you won’t understand the value of it yet. My advice is to choose a training program (here’s my guide on how to do that), modify the exercise selection if you need to (here’s our guide on how to do that), and then run it, using these progression guidelines and this plateau troubleshooting guide, until you get stuck. With any luck, that will be well over a year.
For the rest of us, the need for an article on how to build your own program is abundantly clear. (When I put it to a vote on my Instagram account this was the winner by a long shot.) If you can learn how to do it right, you become the master of your strength and muscular potential.
I hope you enjoy this guide taken from The Muscle and Training Pyramid book I co-authored with Eric Helms and Andrea Valdez.
– Andy
How to Build Training Programs
This is a sample chapter from our Muscle and Strength Pyramid Training book. It links the main points from each chapter, a six-part step by step guide to teach you how to build a training plan. We’ll take you through each level of The Pyramid, highlighting the main points and the subsequent decisions you’ll have to make from each as they relate to building a program.
Remember, this is a quick start guide, so it won’t include the full breadth or depth of knowledge or its explanation from the book’s previous chapters. Rather, it is designed to create an actionable plan to build from. As you gain more understanding of the principles, you can use the program you will build as the foundation to lay other concepts on top of.
Step 1: Adherence
While there is a lot to learn from Level 1, one of the best biggest practical applications of the information relates to how many days per week you train. Specifically, choose a realistic number of training days that would not put stress on your life or schedule. Truly, this value can be anywhere from 2–6 days per week.
Determine whether fewer, longer sessions fit better with your life, or more frequent, shorter sessions. Also, your training age interacts with this decision, as at a certain point it is next to impossible for most people to make progress without training at least three times per week. So, if you are a novice, you can make a two day per week program work, but after that, the decision boils down to whether you want to train 3–6 days per week as two days per week becomes infeasible with the often-requisite volumes (sessions become far too long, practically, and training quality will tend to degrade towards the latter half of the sessions).
Once you’ve come up with a number, this results in a number of possible microcycle-level setups (AKA ‘splits’) that could fulfill the frequency requirements of Level 2—training each movement/muscle group a minimum of twice per week), a maximum of every day.
In the chart below you will see sample options for hypertrophy or strength (setup for powerlifting). Find the number of days you can train in the left column and then you will see your training split options in the row to the right:
*S = Squat, B = Bench, D = Deadlift, “/” indicates performed in the same session, commas separate days.
Remember, your choice will dictate the volume per movement/muscle group per session, and subsequently the time it takes to complete each session.
If you were to choose six ‘full body’ days, for example, you’d end up with fewer exercises per muscle group, sets per exercise, and time spent in the gym per session. Likewise, if you were to choose two ‘full body’ days, you’d end up with more exercises per muscle group, sets per exercise, and time spent in the gym per session.
On the strength side, it is organized around how often you train the bench press, and how often you train squats and deadlifts combined (as there is significant overlap between the two in terms of stimulus and stress). If you choose a very high frequency, again, you end up doing very few working sets per exercise per session, and vice versa.
Either very-high or very-low frequencies can be problematic depending on the individual. Most obviously, you don’t want a session to be too overloaded for a given movement or muscle group or training quality degrades as the marathon session drones on. However, for some people, certain movements cause connective tissue stress somewhat independently of the total volume and/or load. Thus, high frequencies of any significant volume or load become problematic. Simply put, for 90% of people I’d recommend training 3-5 days per week with a muscle or movement frequency of 2-4 times per week, as this typically strikes the best balance between stimulus and recovery.
So, pencil in the split you’ve chosen for now, because in step two we’ll discuss some other potential considerations that might impact your decision.
Step 2: Volume, Intensity, Frequency
As a reminder, these are the broad starting guidelines appropriate for most people:
Volume: 10–20 sets per muscle group/movement pattern per week
Intensity:
- Strength: ⅔–¾ of volume in the 1–6 rep range, remaining volume in the 6–15 rep range at a 5–10 RPE
- Hypertrophy: ⅔–¾ of volume in the 6–12 rep range, remaining volume in the 1–6 and 12–20 rep range at a 5–10 RPE
Frequency: 2+/week per muscle group or movement pattern.
These variables are how you ensure overload occurs, and how you organize it.
Frequency is already penciled in. Next, let’s choose an appropriate volume. In an ideal world, you’d have meticulous training records showing rates of progress and volume levels at each point of your career and you could make an educated start to what would be appropriate given the large individual variance in optimal volume. However, if you’re reading a quick start guide to program design, there is a strong possibility that’s not the case.
The appropriate volume might depend on a lot of factors, which could logically include: training history, training age, genetics, habitual sleep quantity and quality, biological age, total body mass, nutritional status, psychological resilience to stress, personality, and perhaps sex. Unfortunately, we don’t have the relationships of all these variables teased out, but there is good anecdotal evidence, a theoretical basis, and limited scientific evidence to suggest that on average, more experienced lifters need more volume to continue progressing. Thus, with all else being equal, here are some decent guidelines for establishing volume within the 10–20 set recommendation.
Note, the higher your volume, the more it makes sense to spread it over more sessions to prevent individual sessions from becoming too long and stressful. This maintains session quality. As you can see in the column on the right, there is a generally recommended weekly frequency at each volume step to better spread stress. If this doesn’t match up with your split choice from Step 1, consider a different amount of volume, or a different split.
With your volume level and frequency chosen, whether your goal is hypertrophy or strength, you will spread that volume for each muscle group, or each movement (bench, and split between squats and deadlift patterns), across the week. Once again, just pencil this in to get an idea of how your week is shaping up. For example, let’s say you are an intermediate doing 13–15 sets with a 4-day, two times per week muscle group frequency doing a 1: Legs, 2: Push, 3: Pull, 4: Full Body split. Spreading things out, you’d probably do 4–6 sets per muscle group on your Full Body day, leaving 9–11 sets per muscle group for your Legs, Push, and Pull days.
Lastly, you’d assign intensity; both the load and the effort. See the two charts below that show appropriate repetition ranges and RPE values for strength and hypertrophy based on exercise and microcycle organization.
As you can see, for hypertrophy, the higher the fatigue generated by the movement, and the greater the technical demand, it makes more sense to curtail the RPE and rep range. This avoids fatigue bleeding into the rest of a session, may reduce the risk of injury, and also ensures that the volume you perform is effective because as discussed in previous chapters, it’s harder to accurately rate RPE on high-rep, fatiguing movements. Therefore, compound movements are generally a better vehicle for doing the portion of your volume that is lower rep and thus heavier. Likewise, isolation exercises and machines are better vehicles for the higher-rep, lower-load portion of your volume.
For strength, rep and RPE ranges are largely dictated based on whether you are performing a main lift or accessory, and your goal with the movement. For main lifts and variants whether you are building specific strength in the lifts (or strength that easily transfers to them), specific hypertrophy and workload capacity with those lifts, or whether you are performing technique work which is heavy enough to be useful, but light enough to allow recovery, different RPE and rep ranges are appropriate. Likewise, rep range and RPE will change depending on whether you are performing compound accessory movements intended to build general strength (which are more taxing and technically demanding), or machine and isolation accessories (which are less taxing and technically demanding) for hypertrophy purposes.
When you combine this information with Step 3, you can really start to see how your program unfolds.
Step 3: Progression
At this stage, the program really starts to take form, and we get to start assigning reps and sets across the week and the mesocycle. How this shapes up is dictated by the type of exercise (isolation or compound) and the rate of progress you can reasonably expect (training age).
As a quick recap, linear progression (linear load increases) is simply adding more weight to the exercise while keeping reps and sets the same each time you repeat a session.
Linear periodized progression is keeping sets the same, reducing reps each session, while increasing load.
Block periodized mesocycles are a sequential approach where you do an accumulation mesocycle of higher volume at a moderate RPE and higher rep ranges (but specific to your goal), followed by an intensification mesocycle of lower volume at a high RPE and lower rep ranges (but still specific to your goal), and then taper and test—or simply rinse and repeat after a deload if you can gauge your estimated strength in training (e.g. starting some days with a single at a 6–9 RPE).
For a novice, you would simply spread your 10–12 sets per muscle/movement across your days of training, and each week when you repeat a day’s session, try to increase load (typically the smallest increment available to extend progression longer).
For an intermediate, you’d spread 13-15 sets over your days, and follow a linear (load up reps down) approach week to week, and double progression for your isolation movements.
Finally, an advanced lifter could set up an accumulation cycle of building number of sets, followed by an intensification mesocycle similar to how an intermediate would progress, and then taper and test, or rinse and repeat.
To continue our example, sticking with our 4 days per week, 2/week muscle group training frequency setup as an intermediate with hypertrophy goals doing 13–15 sets per week, things start to take shape:
Showing how this plays out in a strength program is a little easier once we discuss exercise selection and break things into categories.
Step 4: Exercise Selection
For a bodybuilder or hypertrophy-focused trainee, you can slot in various exercises to fill the weekly muscle group volume goals. If you view the table below you can see which muscle groups a given exercise “counts” for.
As it currently stands, we know an exercise that trains a muscle group indirectly (secondary) probably doesn’t provide quite as much stimulus to the muscle as something that trains it directly (primary), but the scientific data up to this point has counted secondary and primary muscle group volume the same. So, count everything on a one to one basis for each muscle group, just be aware that you don’t want all your volume for a given muscle group coming from indirect work.
For a powerlifter, however, things are little easier to categorize. As almost the entire body is trained and utilized in the performance of the big 3, but we aren’t necessarily looking for complete muscular development everywhere. Thus, you can view things as seen below:
Understanding the above, here’s how the same intermediate choosing a 4-day per week, 2/week movement pattern training frequency might set up a powerlifting program with the S, B, D, B split (see the training split matrix for strength) doing 13–15 sets per week:
This example meets the guideline of having 13–15 sets for Upper Body Push, Upper Body Pull, and Lower body from a muscle group perspective, as there are 9 sets of bench, and 6 sets of non-bench upper body pushing (for a total of 15), 10 sets combined between squat and deadlift, and 3 sets of lower body accessories (for a total of 13), and 5 sets of deadlift and 8 sets of upper body pulling (for a total of 13).
Globally, we also meet the guideline of having 50–75% of volume from the main lifts, as out of a total of 36 sets, more than half (19 sets) come from the big three. As a reminder, here are the guidelines for how to distribute volume over exercises for strength and hypertrophy.
Step 5 and 6: Rest Periods and Tempo
At this stage, you don’t have much left to do. If you’d like, you can set up your upper body push and pull exercises with antagonist paired sets (APS). Likewise, if your goal is hypertrophy you can set up APS for leg extension and leg curl, and biceps and triceps as well.
Also if you are time-pressed and your current setup is pushing the limits of what you think you can reasonably accomplish, you can perform some of your accessories or single-joint movements for hypertrophy as drop sets or rest pause sets.
Beyond this, just make sure you rest appropriately, control the eccentric to some degree, and perform forceful concentric contractions and you’ve made your way through The Pyramid. All that remains is making it more flexible and a bit more specific to your needs.
Customizing Your Program with Autoregulation
Now that you’ve got the basic structure, there are some things you can do to better match this program to your specific needs.
Autoregulating Days Off or Training Days
If you recall from the Adherence chapter, training hard when you are most recovered, and matching easier sessions with days you are less recovered has been shown to benefit strength and adherence. So, you can apply this by not having fixed training days (e.g. Monday, Wed, Fri) within the week, or by having floating off days when you feel you need them the most. This helps with not only your life schedule but may aid performance.
The former strategy, flexible training days, works best when training 2–3 time per week, as you have more off days than training days. The latter strategy, flexible off days, works best when training 4 or more days as you have fewer off days than training days.
Autoregulating Load
I’d advise programming with both percentage 1RM and RPE on exercises you test or determine an actual or estimated 1RM on. You can program with percentage 1RM, say 3x8x70% but also provide an RPE range, like 6–8, and then if the first set at 70% wasn’t in that range, increase or decrease load to something that you think will be.
For exercises you don’t estimate or test your 1RM on, you can just use RPE. For novices who don’t yet have the training experience to accurately gauge RPE, just track it for now without using it to set or modify load. Give it a few months at least to develop competency with RPE before doing so.
Autoregulating Deloads
After each mesocycle of training (for intermediates when you’ve completed a progression cycle, for advanced when you’ve completed a block), use the chart from Level 3 to assess whether a deload (or a high-rep week maybe with BFR) might be beneficial:
Make sure to do this just in case every third mesocycle no matter what if you haven’t run one yet. See Level 3 for specifics on how to implement a deload.
Autoregulating Exercise Selection
Giving yourself more choice in exercise selection may allow you to enhance your enjoyment, pay heed to any current aches and pains, and subsequently improve performance as discussed earlier in the book.
For those interested in hypertrophy, you can change to a different ‘horizontal pull’ or ‘vertical push’ or ‘hip hinge’ (etc.) mesocycle to mesocycle (so long as you come back to it every few mesocycles) instead of sticking with one all the time. Likewise, for isolation movements, you can even give yourself the choice to change session to session. If you do so, just make sure to record your training loads. This allows you to know where you left off so you can pick back up with the appropriate load upon returning to it.
Similarly, those who want to gain strength can choose a different variant on the main lift when they are far from a competition (closer to the competition you should choose the competition lift). Additionally, strength focused trainees can switch between variations of accessory movements session to session (so long as it trains the same movement pattern or muscle group) like a hypertrophy focused trainee does on isolation movements.
How to Adjust Training When Cutting
A final consideration for your training plan is how to modify it if you are cutting. If it is a brief or non-aggressive cut to sustainable levels of leanness, you probably don’t need to modify training at all. However, if you are going on a longer-term or more aggressive cut, as is typical when dropping a weight class, or certainly if you are dieting for a show, changes should probably occur.
Some very general guidelines are (you can modify the sample programs from the next chapter using this information as well):
- Step down one category of volume (e.g. from intermediate to novice, or advanced to intermediate) to accommodate reduced recovery. You probably don’t need to do this immediately, but maybe at some point into the first third of a diet, it’s a good adjustment to make to ensure a better balance between stimulus and recovery (again, only if you’re dieting to unsustainable levels of leanness, or with a sizeable deficit).
- Switch from doing deloads based on how you score on the checklist, but to doing them automatically after every mesocycle to facilitate better recovery.
- Using the autoregulation strategies preceding this section so that you can account for your performance being more variable.
If you have found this helpful, you might be pleased to know it is just a small section taken from our Muscle and Strength Training Pyramid book. The second edition, along with the Nutrition companion book, was released this January 2019.
Join 17,000+ other readers, get your copies here.
Thank you for reading. Questions welcomed in the comments.
– Eric, Andy, and Andrea
Please keep questions on topic, write clearly, concisely, and don't post diet calculations.
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Great article!
There is however one little thing that is not clear to me, hopefully you can clarify:
You mentioned in the rest section that if we don’t have much time, we can use rest pause sets. I am not really pressed on time, but love the idea to complete a workout in less time.
Now, I wonder, when we can complete an equally effective workout in less time, why do we not always do rest pause sets instead of straight sets? (Maybe with the exception of heavy squats and deadlifts because that’s probably too exhausting, but I am only doing Bulgarian split squats and single leg RDLs anyway)
Are straight sets more effective (for muscle growth) after all? Or what could be the reason?
Hi Andrew, thanks for the question.
My co-author Eric actually released this article — “How can rest-pause/Myo reps and long rest periods BOTH be optimal for hypertrophy?” — last week which covers it. I’ll paste the conclusion and takeaway points, but the whole thing is worth a read:
—
This leads us to our final revision of our logical conclusion: whatever rest period allows for the theoretical “optimal” number of sets of at least ~5-6 reps, above ~30-40% of 1RM, at a sufficient proximity to muscle failure, so long as reductions in reps and load are primarily due to local rather than central fatigue, should be ideal for hypertrophy.
Is this the definitive answer to the question? Probably, but it’s possible something else might be going on. But as a hypothesis, it’s a pretty solid one that fits the data, is logical, and squares with anecdotal observations and experience.
The practical take-homes are as follows:
Would you alter anything about design to accommodate resistance band-only (plus chin ups) training? Or give advice to someone wanting to use that as a primary method of hypertrophy?
I have a selection of bands that provide resistance from 5 kg up to 170 kg (and will buy more).
I’m late intermediate/ lowadvanced long-term trainee.
I’ve toyed with a few programs on my own but nothing feels “right” or gives too much fatigue. For example the couple of weeks of myo-rep band stuff just smashed me.
Ideally something like 4 days full-body. Would I do something like 4 sets per muscle 4 times a week rising to 5. What RPE though? Hinge I can load HEAVYl. Squat pattern mostly single leg split squats.
Hi Michael, I have an article on that here: How To Adapt Your Training Program For Home. You’ll find lots of videos I filmed using resistance bands too.
As for finding the right volume: let’s say you swapped the exercises and sets like as I describe in that guide and you’re very sore.
Soreness when doing any new exercise is natural and shouldn’t be taken a sign that what you’re doing is inappropriate. It takes a few sessions for the repeated bout effect to kick in and for this to subside.
(A band row, for example, hits the lats in a slightly different way and will cause more soreness than whatever regular row you’re used to)
But if that same level of soreness is still there a few sessions in and hasn’t gotten much better, then lower the number of sets per exercise or the number of exercises per body part.
Thanks Andy, I saw that article right after I posted and it was very helpful.
Yes, i’ll do what it said and just do my normal gym program sets/reps/split. The weird thing is I never thought of that as an option under lockdown if you were pretty strong.
I’m going to do that and focus on the RPE/RIR and try to hit that with a reasonable number of reps (4-20). Should be far more enjoyable.
Do you think if someone was band-only do you think they could build a similar amount of muscle compared to free weight? It obv be less but how much less?
I’m really tempted to try that as sort of “life-challenge” even after lockdown. Found I love bands and their versatility.
I am a novice with less than a year of experience. I love the 6 day LPP split but I am not making much strength progression. Should reduce volume withe LPP or should I switch to a U/L split
Hi Drea, see my article on progression (How to Keep Progressing as a Novice and Intermediate Trainee) and then troubleshooting progression (How to Break Training Plateaus [Decision Tree & Checklist]).
Hello,
I can only train on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Is it better to do a 3x week Full Body workout (but then I would train on back to back days, and I’m not sure if this would be ok), or FB on Wed and Upper/Lower on the consecutive days (which may represent less volume)?
Thank you for the amazing post!
Probably the latter. But with some focussed effort, you’ll likely be able to keep the same volume.
Thank you for the answer! Any post/comments on how to better structure specifically a full body routine?
As you said, Pedro: Full body, upper, lower.
Hey Andy, If you were counting a chin-up towards your weekly bicep volume and bench press towards you weekly tricep volume, would you count those movements as a 0.5 set or 1? I was following the RP model which focused on 0.5:1 (Secondary:Primary) basis of counting for each muscle group, but in MSP and James Krieger Volume bible it’s stated as 1:1 basis. It creates so much confusion as if I implement the RP style then I get a lot of direct isolation work (arms, delts etc.) in my workout plan, whereas if I follow the MSP and Krieger style then it takes away most of the direct work.
What is your opinion on this and what’s a better way for most of the general population clients?
Hi Varun, thanks for the question.
Mike has his RP volume counting guidelines that fit his program building and programming guidelines.
We have our volume counting guidelines that fit our program building and programming guidelines.
The issue isn’t that they’re different or one is better than the other, it’s that you’re trying to mix the two. This is like trying to build a Mercedes using a BMW build manual, or a car using a hybrid of the parts. — It’s not going to work. But there is no disputing the fact that both make great standalone cars.
Hi Andy I find the way you count sets per musclegroups to be very confusing. In the Muscle and Strength Training Pyramid book, first sample routine page 92-93 you count biceps to 12 sets although the routine has 12 sets total for back and 6 for biceps. The same goes for triceps. I would count those to 18 sets as the book says under description for back and chest that they work the bicep and tricep.I would really like to understand this as this would help me in building my own program
Hi Michael, at the top of page 93 it says: “As far as volume, there are 15 sets for glutes, 13 sets for chest, quads, and hams, 18 sets for biceps and 19 for triceps, and 12–16 sets for the delts, depending on which head (anterior, middle or rear) you are talking about.”
I have “As far as volume, there are 15
sets for glutes, 13 sets for chest, quads, and hams, 12 sets for biceps
and triceps, and 12–16 sets for the delts, depending on which head
(anterior, middle or rear) you are talking about”
Gotcha. Thought this was a familiar question. We updated that bit after someone pointed it out. Update your copy by clicking “Support” » “Update your copies” in the menu.
Full update log here. I’ll add that to the menu now. Thank you for the idea.
Hi Andy, for a natural stalemate, what do you recommend? My training is T / P 4 times a week, my diet is a normocaloric with 14% fat, I do not want to make volume because I am very good at raising more fat than mass. Thank you for your advice, Greetings from Chile.
Hi Claudio, thank you for the question, greetings from Tokyo, Japan.
Two articles that address stagnation from both the diet and training sides:
• How to Break Training Plateaus [Decision Tree & Checklist]
• Should I Cut or Bulk? The Definitive Guide
To accelerate / jump start fat loss, any benefit to training legs 3x / week with some other lifts mixed in (push & pull), but making the main focus legs? I’ve read varying the volume by session (ie. 5×5, then 3×8-12, then 3×15-20) is best. The idea supposedly is legs expend the most energy and will burn the most body fat. I’ve read people trying this for 2-3 months. Thoughts? Thanks!
No. Strength training is there to tell the body to hang onto muscle while dieting. You want enough training volume to do that, without being more than you can recover from.
A calorie deficit is what leads to fat loss and FAR the most efficient way to achieve that is through dietary control. The calorie burn from additional training is so small that it won’t make any meaningful difference to the weekly balance, but it could certainly put you in a recovery deficit, leading to burn-out or injury. Don’t mix the two.
Hi Andy, I was doing a 4-day split but I’m busy with school. What do you think about doing the same routine but only 3 days a week so that the 4-week mesocycle becomes a 5-week mesocycle? This way I don’t want to change the routine.
Hi Teo,
Better to re-organize the routine across the three gym sessions you have time for each week. Otherwise, you’re effectively cutting weekly volume by 25% which could kill your progress.
Thank you Andy
Hi guys,
I’ve got several questions:
1. You always talk about the recommended amount of sets, but isn’t the total volume per week much more important?
2. My ideal plan would look like this: 2 full body workouts and then upper, lower. Is it possible to perform the same exercises on each day using different rep ranges? Let’s say I’d do two volume days with 8-12 reps and 1 strength-based with 3-6 reps. So I would be hitting Squats, Bench Press and other exercises 3 times a week, but with different volume and intensity.
3. I would like to incorporate bench press and weighted dips. Is it possible to do them both (in the same workout) in the routine I mentioned above?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Tobias, thank you for the questions.
1. There are a few ways to measure volume. In the first edition of our book (which is where the recommendations in this article from), we gave volume recommendations as reps per body part per week. This was based on a 12-year old systematic review (Wernbom 2007) on training volume that looked at reps per body part, per week.
The more current meta-analyses we have today are based on ‘hard sets’ per body part/movement per week, so that’s why we present volume in this way.
2. Sure.
3. Yes, but the proof of any pudding is in the tasting. (Try it, see how you do, adjust if necessary.)
Thanks a lot for your answers! Really helped me… I’ll definetly give it a try and see if it works for me. I just got one more question, which exercise do you personally favor, the Bench Press or the Dips? Are there any studies showing which of these builds more muscle?
Sorry btw for my bad english grammar skills, I am from Austria…
The Bench Press.
Dips are a great chest and triceps developer, and it feels awesome to have a couple of plates clanging between your legs as you knock out a few sets of 8, but the risk-reward ratio is skewed in the wrong direction I feel.
What I mean is, it’s very easy to cause yourself an injury with this exercise, especially as you start adding a lot of weight. If you go too deep once, or a little too deep often, this can lead to shoulder issues that can mess with the rest of your pushing exercises.
When there are safer alternatives that are equally effective (pushups, the close-grip bench press), I see no point in taking the risk with dips. I no longer do them myself, and I no longer recommend them to clients.
Hi! I’m interested in doing a 5 day Full Body routine but not sure where to start. Looking to bring up my Back, Lateral Delts and Triceps (Long head) but I don’t know how to organize doing this. Any idea what would be best to do?
Many thanks!
Hi Neil, thank you for the question.
Right, so I take it you’re looking for a smarter answer here then the classic, “do more,” which is often correct, but there’s clearly nuance to it.
1. First thing’s first, if you’re a novice (I don’t know you, this isn’t a judgment), you have no specific weak points, everything is weak, just train.
2. If what you have been doing up until now differs considerably from our guidelines here, I’d start with setting up a program as if you didn’t have any weak points, giving it a good go, and seeing what the next three months bring. Often, when proper programming is implemented (like when proper form is implemented), fucked things un-fuck themselves.
3. If after that you find that these areas haven’t grown to your liking, taper off the volume in the areas you are happy with and add to the areas you are not, on a set-for-set swap basis. This isn’t the only way to do it, but it’s not a bad place to start.
Make sense? Note that I’m purposefully not getting into the specifics of exercise selection here to keep this as something everyone can benefit from as the principles apply to all.
Hi Andy, Wasnt the original recommendations from the books in reps and not sets; why the change?
Hi Paul! Yes, I’ve written up the reasons in the last item on the FAQ page.
Hey Andy,
Just had a question on how to incorporate RPE regulation with wave loading. Would placing an RPE cap on weight increases work?
For example
3x8x100 kg @ 8 for Week 1
Then increase the weight 5-10% from last weeks weight as long as it stays within a certain RPE range like 7-8?
Thanks
Hi Julian, yes. You’ll see in our sample programs that we recommend fixing the first set RPE to control fatigue.
Hi,
I have a question regarding volume.
If I understand, volume goes up with training age, meaning that an advanced lifter would have many muscle group frequency to be able to spread out that weekly volume.
I’ve read the contrary a lot. Meaning that beginner lifters can hit muscle groups often as they don’t manage to “damage” the muscles due to lack of recruitment.
Pro bodybuilders often use a once per week per muscle group split to allow a recovery due to “deep” muscle recruitment and tiredness.
I’m intermediate and getting confused on if I should train more frequently or less. Seems like I had better results doing back/bis ; chest/tri ; legs 1/week rather than all 2/week.
Thanks!
Hi Sascha,
For natural trainees, the current state of the scientific literature is fairly clear that hitting each muscle group more than once per week will likely lead to better results. I stand by the recommendations in this guide.
Hi Andy – first just wanted to say thank you for all of the great information you have here on your site and taking the time to answer questions people may have. It is really appreciated!
I was curious if you had an opinion on “resensitization” phases. Basically a month or so off from high volume hypertrophy training in an attempt to resensitize your body to the effects of high volume training. This is recommended by the folks over at RP. They have deloads in between each high volume Mesocycle and then run the resensitization afterwards.
Would you apply those as well if you chose to build a program following your guide here or is that kind of what the deloads are hoping to solve?
Hi John, thanks for the comment.
It’s not a strategy I typically use with clients, so I’m not familiar enough to add anything meaningful to what Mike will have already said about it.
Hi I just read your 6 step guide to building training programs. First of all, thank you! Most programs are designed in a symmetrical manner, either full body or push-pull-legs with appropriate rest days in between. I would like to build my program on a Tuesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday schedule (weird, I know). I was thinking a full body Tuesday and push-pull-legs on consecutive days (th-fr-sa). Do you think that’s an appropriate program for hypertrophy? Do you have a better suggestion? Thanks again!
Hi Sedar, please refer to the four day split recommendations.
Hi Andy, if I’m following your intermediate bodybuilding program is it a good idea to repeat the same exercise for each movement pattern? Let’s say for horizontal push I do barbell bench press two times a week, and for vertical pull I choose the lat pull down machine, again, two times a week. Or should I choose two different exercises? I couldn’t find the answer on the article or the training book, thank you in advance.
Hi Alejandro. Stick to one movement for any lifts you need to build technique proficiency on.
So, if you’re well-versed in bench, feel free to use another horizontal push like DB presses on your other day(s). But if your squat could use work, don’t use another variation, just work on that.
I have a question about minimal volume for hypertrophy when we only have 3 days per week. If we would like to do FBW 3 times a week and then we would take one exercise for movement pattern from your hypertrophy exercise and muscle group trained table we would have 8 exercises plus isolation.
But let’s skip isolation and fly movement pattern and we stay with 7 exercises. Now to reach a minimum of 10 sets per muscle group/movement per week we would need to do 3 sets of each exercises per training (that would give 9 in total). If we have 7 exercises with 3 sets with some of them compound and with high RPE we are looking at at least 1,5h in gym. How can we increase volume without adding day?
Hi Robert, thanks for the question.
You have to train longer.
The problem with this is that training quality typically degrades as the training session gets longer. This is where what you can do — train only three days — dissects with what you should do — add a day.
Hi Andy, for already a long time I’m using your website and articles to setup my own trainingsprogram.
What I’m struggling with, are the 4 and the 5 days program, especially because I want to move from novice to intermediate. It is very difficult for me to add another day, I tried but a busy job, family etc, it’s not really easy to add another day, and when I did it was quite stressfull. Could I still do a 5 day program and spread them for instance over 2 weeks? So just continuing the program in the new weak where you left? Or should I really focus on a 3 day program and try to increase working volume in the days I train
Hi Michel!
Better to put the volume you need into the time you have, which is four days. Just put the compound exercises of the last two days we have in our Intermediate Bodybuilding Sample Program together into one.
If I choose neutral grip dumbbell incline press in the novice bodybuilding routine instead of an overhand grip, will my side delts still get enough work as a novice?
Hi Rob,
You’re forcing me into a few assumptions here. The short answer is yes.
If you’re substituting this for a vertical press, you can expect the overall shoulder activation (all three heads of the delts) to be slightly lower: the further you angle it toward horizontal; the lower it will be. Note though, there is still activation, even with horizontal pressing, and this is not the only exercise that will train your shoulders (yes, all three heads), because there is also activation with your pulling exercises.
Thus, whether this will make a meaningful difference to development at this stage is questionable.
Further, I assume you’ve substituted this exercise because it feels better, right? I do something similar. My shoulders just don’t like to go vertically anymore, so I press with an angle. So, the decision is made and it’s not worth worrying about anyway.