Training Programming 101: How to Intelligently Structure Your Training

When I first started lifting in summer of 2009, there weren’t many informational resources online about how to build muscle and strength optimally. Hell, I wasn’t even thinking about that when I first started lifting as a teenager. My train of thought was simply that lifting weights multiple times per week until you couldn’t lift them anymore was the only thing you needed to know about how to get jacked. Meanwhile, I was training at a Planet Fitness while doing a typical bodybuilder bro split routine. You know, the chest day, back day, shoulder day, arm day, and leg day….. Or most likely just replace leg day with another arm day.

Back then, everyone was following this routine. Bodybuilding.com forums were pretty much the only place to get any information on fitness and they all sung the praises of the bro split. Needless to say, I pretty much spun my wheels in terms of muscular development for years after making my somewhat lackluster novice gains. For anyone who doesn’t know, novice or noobie gains refers to the initial muscular development that is pretty much inevitable from any sort of weight training for someone who is previously completely untrained. As long as you’re lifting weights with even the slightest semblance of structure, if you’re previously untrained you will build muscle. A bit of a side note, but we’ll come back to that again in a bit!

I thought I was doomed with terrible genetics after I came to a complete stand still in progress. I had put on maybe ten to fifteen pounds of muscle and then hit a brick wall for about three years following the same workout routine while looking like a DYEL. I got fed up with my lack of results and became enamored with researching about what I could do to overcome this. By this point, more information had started to pop up online. YouTube had become more popular and I immersed myself in fitness channels, articles, forums, books, and pretty much any other resource I could find. It started to seem that anyone who considered themselves a “bodybuilder” just seemed to pump themselves full of drugs to get bigger or just let their amazing genetics carry them. I wasn’t willing to take any PED’s and I definitely didn’t have amazing genetics so what I needed was to optimize my nutrition and training, specifically. The more I learned, the more I concluded that strength equals size, especially for a natural lifter. This led me down the rabbit hole of training for strength, namely powerlifting.



I quickly realized that the information available for strength training was way more in depth. What better resource to learn about getting strong than people who want to be the best in the world at, well, being strong?! Bonus points if they competed in a drug tested organization and were most likely natural!

I started applying the information I learned on strength training and following some popular programs like Starting Strength, 5/3/1, The Texas Method, The Candito Program, and more and all of a sudden, it was like I was making those initial novice gains all over again! I completely smashed through that seemingly insurmountable wall that I was stuck behind and blew past my expectations within the next 6-8 months. At about 180 lbs bodyweight, my bench press went from 185 for an UGLY max to 260. I went from hitting quarter reps with 185 on the smith machine squat (all they had at good ol’ Planet Fitness!) to 335 for a single to depth on the barbell squat. I went from never even doing a deadlift to hitting 405. Although I started pursuing strength training to build more muscle, I was quickly becoming consumed in it for the sole purpose of watching those numbers go up! Of course, my progress did slow down again but I was better prepared with the tools I needed to keep progressing in the gym.

I do not consider myself to be genetically gifted for building muscle or strength in the least bit. In fact, I may even be a bit below average, to be completely honest. Learning the in’s and outs of effective programming and nutrition and above all, staying CONSISTENT has allowed me to reach my natural potential, however. At 180-185 lbs bodyweight and about 12-13% body fat, I went on to bench press 290 for a single, squat 385, deadlift 465, overhead press 170, weighted dip with 320 (180 bodyweight plus 140 lbs on the dip belt), and weighted chin up with 305 pounds total (185 bodyweight plus 120 on the belt). Nothing insane by any means but I can personally say I’m proud of the progress I made and I STRONGLY believe that intelligent programming is key to reaching your muscular and strength potential as a natural lifter.

Differences in Training Age

One very important thing to mention before moving on is the vast differences in adaptations that lifters will experience among different stages in their lifting journey. As I mentioned above, it’s easy to make progress doing virtually anything in the early “novice” stages of lifting. As long as you’re lifting weights with some degree of intensity and volume, you’re going to grow without having to put much thought to it. Even just doing a few sets of push ups and air squats will evoke a response. This is an amazing thing and individuals should not feel “bad” about being considered a novice in the gym. A newer lifter will gain muscle so much quicker than an advanced lifter, who’s lucky to squeak out even a pound of muscle on their frame a year. However, as long as you keep lifting long enough, there comes a point when more structure needs to come in to play to keep advancing.

I usually recommend that a new lifter just focus on simply establishing a habit of going to the gym regularly and consistently and learning proper form in general. A full body, 3 to 4 day per week program is great for a novice to intermediate lifter, specifically one that allows the lifter to get in several days of practice with the same exact movement pattern. For example, hammering the high bar barbell back squat three times per week to really drill in that motor pattern will be a huge benefit. Form should be a priority for a newer lifter to avoid injury and lift with maximum efficiency. Novice lifters, by definition, will be able to make rapid progress so adding 5 to 10 lbs on the bar for each main compound lift is a very reasonable form of progression and likely the only thing a beginner needs to focus on to drive progress over time. A basic program like Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe is a great way to start that incorporates these strategies. The Aethix Linear Program is also a free program I wrote for quick progress for novices that I highly recommend, of course!

The novice gains end when the lifter struggles to keep adding weight to the bar week to week. This is often considered to be the beginning of the intermediate phase, although these are nebulous terms. An intermediate lifter should begin to start implementing some form of periodization. If you’re a novice lifter, learning about programming will be very beneficial for the future but for now, enjoy the quick progress and simply add weight on each exercise you can weekly. If you’re an intermediate to advanced lifter, optimizing your programming will be vastly beneficial and this guide will put you in a great place to be able to handle that with confidence.

There are several key things when considering how to structure your programming effectively:

1.) Specificity

Specificity is tailoring your program or your specific goals. In this article, we will be discussing program design based on a goal of building muscle or increasing general strength. However, training programs can be built with many other goals in mind including increasing vertical jump, increasing sprinting speed, bringing up a lagging body part, increasing a specific lift and much more. It’s important to identify exactly what is the desired outcome that you’re training towards.

2.) Exercise Selection and Sequencing

Exercise selection refers to intelligently choosing exercises that will help you reach your specific goal. If you’re a powerlifter, your program will involve horizontal pressing, squatting and a hip hinge movement that will be SPECIFIC enough to grant adaptations towards increasing your squat, bench and deadlift. This could literally mean just incorporating the standard squat, bench and deadlift into your program or variations of them for multiple purposes. If you’re a bodybuilder and you want to focus on bringing your arms up, you’ll want to have exercises planned that hit all major muscle groups most likely but specifically plan to incorporate movements that will help build your biceps and triceps.

Compound exercises or multi-joint exercises are exercises that hit several muscles consecutively such as the bench press or squat. Isolation or single joint exercises aim to isolate one specific muscle, like the leg extension or bicep curl. As a general rule of thumb, it’s important to focus on compound exercises as a staple. In most situations, starting the workout with 1-3 compound movements followed by isolation work is the way to go. This way, the more strenuous compound movements can get hit the hardest. You can think of the main compound movements as the cake and the isolation lifts as the frosting on the cake. Compound lifts will be a base for your progress and isolation work can give you a little extra emphasis to bring everything together. You can absolutely build a ton of muscle with just compound movements but for those stubborn or lagging body parts, sometimes throwing some isolation work at them can prove very helpful.

Additionally, it’s important to remember that fatigue will accrue throughout the session so exercises programmed in later in the workout will be effected. The more a specific body part is trained during one session, the more performance will suffer for those exercises as well. For hypertrophy purposes, fatiguing a muscle in a training session is an important consideration. However, burying one muscle group with excessive volume throughout several similar exercises is likely not a good idea. This will tax the recovery systems quite a bit and will result in more systemic fatigue than necessary. This is one of the issues of the “bro-split” that we discussed earlier. Hitting squats, leg press, leg extensions and lunges in one workout is a completely unnecessary amount of volume for just the quads. Instead, it’d be more intelligent to just hit the squats hard, especially if the trainee is in a strength focused mesocycle. If the trainee feels like he or she needs more volume for their quads to grow, especially during a hypertrophy focused mesocycle, then maybe they may choose to squats and then hit leg extensions OR lunges at the end of their workout for an added stimulus. These exercsies have vastly different motor patterns and hit different heads of the quadriceps to varying degrees which is an important consideration.

There are several other nuances that go into selecting proper exercises for your goals. Certain movements may hit certain muscles or even certain heads of each muscle to greater or lesser degrees. In the context of bodybuilding, it may be beneficial for someone focusing on shoulder development to include exercises that target all heads of the deltoid. For example, overhead pressing is a great compound movement for the deltoids, especially the front delts, but doesn’t target the medial head of the deltoid as much as a lateral raise, for example. Similar to that, the reverse fly hits the rear head of the delt more than either of those two movements. It may be a good idea to incorporate a vertical pressing movement along with a movement that targets the medial and rear head of the delts more as well for maximal shoulder development, for example. It’s important to identify what muscles are either weak or lagging and choose exercises that will specifically target them. Generally, and for the goals of total body development, make sure to incorporate exercises that hit all muscle groups including a compound exercise for major muscle groups and possibly some isolation work for lagging/weaker muscles.

Another consideration is choosing novel exercises for periods at a time. This can be another tool in the toolbox to build more muscle or spark strength development. If you performed strictly the low bar barbell squat for the past three months, it may benefit you both physically and mentally to swap in a day of front squats, bulgarian split squats or SSB squats. These movements are similar enough to a low bar squat that there will be significant carry over but there is still a slightly different motor pattern involved and the musculature is stressed in a slightly different way. This can be enough of a difference to spark a new stimulus for development. When progress slows down or stops altogether or it becomes particularly monotonous or mentally stressful, perhaps it’s time to swap an exercise out for a similar variation.

What about rep tempo and range of motion?

Unless otherwise planned for a specific reason, most exercises should be done with an explosive concentric (lifting) portion of the movement and a controlled eccentric (lowering). Studies show that reps performed with maximal velocity recruit more type II muscle fibers which is exactly what we want in the vast majority of our exercises. The eccentric portion of the lift should be controlled so the lifter isn’t dropping the weight and not lowering it TOO slowly as well. Dropping the weight simply will make the eccentric portion useless as a stimulus and evidence shows that for hypertrophy, the eccentric is a powerful tool to induce muscle growth. On the other hand, if the eccentric is performed too slowly for all of the trainee’s lifts, this will limit the amount of weight and reps they will be able to work with which is likely a more imortant variable that should be prioritized. That being said, programming in “tempo” work is a useful stategy at times and may provide a useful novel stimulus with less fatigue accrual due to less weight on the bar. It’s probably in your best interest to avoid programming in excessive tempo work, however.

In terms of range of motion, for most exercises, going through a full range of motion will recruit more muscle fibers most of the time. This may involve reducing the weight on the bar but the benefit of an increased range of motion should be a priority most of the time. A larger range of motion with less weight allowing for a greater stimulus than a shorter range of motion with more weight will also mean a less fatiguing exercise, which is another benefit. Partial range of motion exercises may have a place in one’s program, but if you don’t know exactly WHY you’re adding them in, you likely shouldn’t be adding them at all.

3.) Periodization (Planning volume and intensity progression)

Periodization is a method of structuring your program into “blocks” or cycles to better achieve your goals. A training block, or mesocycle, is a specific amount of time allotted focusing on a short term goal that will help set you up to reach your overall goal of the whole macrocycle.  A macrocycle consists of several mesocycles and can also be thought of as the training program as a whole. Each mesocycle is made up of several microcycles, which is generally thought of as a training week, and usually lasts anywhere from 3-8 microcycles.

A common set up is to have a volume focused mesocycle followed by an intensity focused mesocycle, then a peaking mesocycle and then testing new 1 rep maxes. This is assuming your goal would be to achieve a new 1 rep max in certain lifts. The volume focused mesocycle will focus more on higher reps and more sets over time while the intensity focused mesocycle will focus more on lower reps and increased weight on the bar. For bodybuilding, a common approach may be to drop the peaking mesocycle and simply go back and forth between a volume focused mesocycle and intensity focused mesocycle, which serve to drive progress through two different mechanisms of muscle growth. Other mesocycle focuses could be anywhere from power to glycogen depletion to isometric strength.

The goal of a mesocycle should be achieved by progress over the several microcycles that make it up. The first microcycle should start easier to leave room for adapting to the movements and for future progress. Each subsequent microcycle should focus on slowly increasing either volume, intensity, and/or reps from failure, also discussed as RPE or RIR.

RPE is a subjective scale of 5-10, 5 being speed work where the bar has no noticeable slow down from the first to last rep, RPE 6 means 4 reps from failure, RPE 7 means 3 reps from failure, and so on until RPE 10 which was an all out grinder. RIR is can basically be thought of as the opposite of RPE. 0 RIR means absolute grinder, no more reps in the tank, 1 RIR means 1 rep in the tank, and so on. These can also be written in half incremental scale which essentially indicates uncertainty. An RPE of 6.5 means that MAYBE 4 more reps could have been achieved. RPE 7.5 means MAYBE 3 more reps. Although it’s not written as commonly with RIR, it can be thought of as the same way.

The last week of a mesocycle should usually be assumed to be near peak effort for that specific goal and the rest of the mesocycle should essentially build up to that peak week. For a strength focused block, the trainee should be focused on adding weight to the bar from microcycle to microcycle while reps either stay the same or slowly drop and RPE either stays the same or slowly climbs. The goal is progression with intensity as a priority above all else. By the last week of the mesocycle, the trainee should aim to be quite fatigued due to the strenuous efforts. This will evoke a massive stimulus response in the body but since fatigue is also tied in, recovery will be of utmost importance in the following week. For this reason, a deload microcycle should likely be programmed in following most mesocycles, which is basically a recovery-focused microcycle with decreased volume, intensity and RPE.

An example of an effective progression strategy during a strength focused mesocycle:

Week 4:

Week 5

In this example, we are looking at a hypothetical week 4 and 5 of a 6 week intensity focused mesocycle. Sets for most of the main movements go up microcycle to microcycle as well as weight on the bar and RPE. Reps may either go down or stay the same to account for working with heavier weights and increasing RPE. In the exercises that do not increase on sets, weight on the bar increases to still provide some sort of progressive overload.


3A.) Total Volume

Total volume is a key component to consider when periodizing your program. Volume consists of total sets, total reps and weight on the bar and is a measurement of how much work is getting done in a session. Increasing sets is usually the most efficient way to increase total volume. Total sets is also an effective way to roughly measure the workload a trainee is being subjected to, assuming sets are being trained reasonably close to failure (around RPE 6+).

There is a degree of variability of volume each individual will need for muscular or strength development. A novice might need as little as 5 sets a week to stimulate growth. A more experienced lifter may need as many as 30, depending on several individual variables. This is something that most lifters should get a good feel for after paying attention to their training for a while.

For a trained individual, there will be a certain amount of sets that will be just enough to maintain his or her current development but likely won’t spark new growth (assuming intensity stays the same). There will be an amount below that where, if sustained for a prolonged period of time, will cause loss in strength adaptations or loss in muscular development. On the other hand, there is an amount above maintenance that will help spark new adaptations. It’s important to always work from that lower volume maintenance phase up into the higher volume adaptation phase repeatedly for the majority of your training to balance stimulus and recovery. It’s important not to spend an excessive amount of time pushing excessive volume/effort because of the issue with fatigue accumulation.



The more sets you do and the closer you push to failure, the more fatigue will accrue and the more your recovery systems will get stressed. Push your recovery needs beyond what your body can handle and you may actually experience a loss in strength and eventually muscle size. This phenomenon is known as overreaching, or when it gets extremely excessive, overtraining. Short term periods of overreaching are likely a good thing. We briefly touched on this above, but strategic overreaching should be the goal of any mesocycles with the goal of developing muscle or strength. There is a large stimulus from training at at high RPE but the fatigue accrual will also be much higher, so it’s important to not exceed this threshold until the end of a mesocycle, preferably planned before a deload or recovery focused microcycle. On the contrary, it’s also important to make sure you push volume occasionally or progress will simply cease to occur because there will never be enough of a stimulus.

Volume is one tool that should be used for muscular and strength development when building a program. During a volume focused mesocycle, the focus should be on driving volume up each microcycle. Here’s an example of an effective progression strategy during a volume focused mesocycle:

Week 4:

Week 5

In this example, we see several forms of progression in total volume. The most obvious is increasing the number of sets from microcycle to microcycle while also raising reps and weight on the bar. With all three variables increasing, total volume obviously goes up. However, for Day 1 Pendlay rows from week 4 to week 5, total sets stay the same but reps go up while weight actually decreases. The total volume in week four can be calculated as sets times reps times weight, which gives us 4,440 total volume for the 3 sets of 8 with 185. In week five, 3 sets of 10 with 175 gives us 5,250 total volume which is substantially more volume even with the decrease in weight. This is a good example of multiple ways to increase volume.

3B.) Rep Ranges

Another Important thing to consider is rep range targets for different exercises during different mesocycles. For the main compound lifts, reps should usually range from 3 to 10 for each set. There are definitely times when singles and doubles may be programmed in as well as sets above 10 possibly but they shouldn’t make up the majority of work due to inefficiency. For example, singles and doubles may be great to program in as top sets during a strength block since they’re very specific to building strength. However, because they’re much more fatiguing and much more difficult to accrue overall volume with, it’s very inefficient to try to program them in for the majority of your training. On the other hand, very high rep sets are also better reserved for isolation work, if at all. Performing sets of 12 or more on the barbell squat for instance will likely just tax the cardiovascular system more which could be the limiting factor of the set, will be very fatiguing as well, and generally just won’t provide a stimulus that’s worth the sustained effort. Reps of 3 to 10 will always allow the lifter to reach significant volume landmarks that will provide a stimulus without being overly fatiguing.

For isolation or single joint exercises, reps of 6 to 20 plus may all serve a purpose. Usually very low rep sets below about 5-6 may be a bit dangerous for single joint exercises and usually don’t serve the desired purpose for these movements. They can also be very cumbersome due to the nature of the exercise. For example, very low rep sets of cable flies are almost impossible because the trainee has to use so much of their body weight just to counteract the pull from the cables and can be very unstable. Single arm triceps extensions are an example of an exercise that could be particularly stressful with very heavy loads on the joint, for instance. Additionally, the main purpose of isolation exercises is to accrue more volume for the specific muscle being trained. Low reps will require more overall sets to equal the same amount of volume as higher rep sets which is just inefficient. Higher rep sets are generally okay up until about 25 reps or so as long as the lifter is going somewhat close to failure on the exercise. Going over 25 reps and going anywhere near failure will mean the lifter will have to reduce the weight so much that it likely won’t even provide a useful stimulus to muscle growth when compared to slightly heavier weights.

Lifters should vary their rep ranges through the course of a mesocycle to effectively train with various loads. Different rep ranges and intensities will provide novel stimuli that are valuable tools for hypertrophy.



3C.) Frequency

Frequency is the amount of times per week a body part or muscle group is being trained. For the overwhelming majority of lifters, this will likely be 2-3 times per week. Muscular recovery seems to take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours in normal circumstances. Less volume, less load and training further from failure will likely mean reduced recovery time and vice versa. Experienced lifters below about 35 will likely recover quicker and may be able to push the frequency higher. Lifters above 35 may notice impaired recovery, although individual differences will definitely come into play here.

Regardless, when a muscle is fully recovered, there’s no reason not to train it again. Building muscle is an endless cycle of stimulating, fatiguing and recovering and you’re just wasting potential to grow if you’re only training muscle groups once per week. For this reason, for maximal muscle and strength development, muscle groups should almost never be limited to being trained once per week. However, we also know that training a muscle closer to failure seems to result in more muscle growth over time but this also extends recovery demands. For the purposes of hypertrophy, 2-3 times per week for larger muscle groups seems ideal. For some smaller muscles or particularly stubborn muscles, up to 4 may potentially have benefits at times.

On the other extreme end of the spectrum, there are programs like the Bulgarian Method AKA Squat Everyday that revolve around extremely high frequency. These programs can work wonders for strength development but that’s because daily volume is kept low and recovery will occur much faster than hammering 8+ sets almost to failure. Additionally, strength is more of a neuromuscular adaptation. Practicing a movement more often will result in efficiency with that movement – Hence why the Bulgarian Method can be effective to increase the squat but may not be optimal to build muscle, necessarily.

Taking a look at frequency in the context of a periodized program, it may be beneficial to adjust this variable based on the focus of the mesocycle. For mesocycles focusing on hypertrophy or volume, two to three times a week is likely ideal for most muscle groups. For a strength focused mesocycle, a lifter may choose to experiment with raising frequency a bit for lifts that the trainee is trying to improve. Anywhere from two to seven days a week could serve a purpose, although the higher the frequency the more the lifter should lower daily total volume and RPE to allow for recovery. On average, two to four days a week is usually still ideal, however.

Sometimes, a lifter will require so much volume for a specific muscle group or lift to progress that they will basically be required to raise their frequency. For example, if a lifter knows they’ll need 20 set of bench press to make progress, then doing 10 sets of bench twice a week may not be feasible. It may take too much time, place too much stress on the joints or simply be too much to recover from. Breaking these two sessions up into three is a great option to consider in that case.

Programming in the Context of a Designated Split Routine

Many lifters like to split their training up into specific routines such as upper and lower body days, push, pull and leg days, and specific body part days. If all the above factors are considered, if the trainee decides that he or she would like to program their training this way for convenience or enjoyment, this is totally fine. However, the exercises, progression strategy and frequency for each exercise should be decided on first. If the lifter needs to train the bench press 3x per week to get in the required volume through a mesocycle and allow for ample recovery, then a push/pull/legs 6x per week split will obviously not work since it would only allow for two bench press focused sessions. For this reason, I often think that not limiting yourself to a specific “routine” and simply letting the other factors dictate the setup for each microcycle is best.

Wrap Up

I wasted several valuable years training without any progress because I wasn’t aware of proper training programming. The wasted time is a shame, but it made me value the importance of it all and I’m very eager to share the knowledge with anyone else who’s in a similar situation to how I was back then. I also want to stress that effective training and nutrition must go hand-in-hand, so be sure to understand the importance of total calorie intake and macros and consider tracking your food for a while to get the best benefits.

Proper program periodization is an extremely nuanced and individualized topic that could be discussed in much greater depth than this article can cover. However, this should prepare you for the essentials. If you’re interested in learning more about programming, nutrition, supplementation, recovery, and so much more, check out my Vegan Fitness 101 series here!