[@RenaissancePeriodization] How to Train for Muscle Growth: Beginner vs Intermediate vs Advanced

Link: https://youtu.be/zhP5gsBbgYY

Duration: 44 min

Short Summary

RP Strength podcast outlines progressive training strategies across three experience levels: beginners (0-2 years) learn technique fundamentals with 2 sessions weekly in the 5-10 rep range, intermediates (3-6 years) systematically test exercises and rep ranges across mesocycles to find optimal stimulus, and advanced lifters (7+) require custom programming with strategic prioritization due to elevated fatigue accumulation and injury risk.

Key Quotes

1. "The thing about technique is it's not terribly difficult to learn good technique, but it is terribly difficult to unlearn bad technique." (00:00:14)
2. "It is really sad when someone calls themselves advanced but does every exercise wrong." (00:00:07)
3. "Advanced lifters make slow gains and you do not make very rapid gains anymore in most cases." (00:00:24)
4. "Beginners do not need high volumes to grow. They can grow from very small amount of volume, which is really cool because you can structure the plan very differently." (00:00:50)
5. "you don't want to rush through the process. As a matter of fact, you want to milk each stage." (00:00:29)

Detailed Summary

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Episode Introduction and Framework

This RP Strength podcast episode, hosted by Mike and Jared, presents a comprehensive framework for structuring resistance training programs based on training age—categorizing lifters into beginner (0-2 years), intermediate (3-6 years), and advanced (7+ years) stages to optimize progression strategies and volume management at each level.

• The hosts emphasize that training age represents accumulated training experience rather than chronological age, meaning a 40-year-old could be a beginner while a 20-year-old could be advanced depending on their training history.
• Each category requires distinct programming approaches, recovery protocols, and progression methodologies to continue making gains.

Beginner Training Guidelines

Beginners should start with 2 training sessions per week, progressing to 4 sessions after months of consistent progression to balance recovery capacity with growth stimulus.

• The optimal rep range for beginners sits at 5-10 reps per set with an average of approximately 8 reps to balance technique practice with growth stimulus.
• Beginners should perform 2-5 sets per exercise per session, starting at 2 sets and progressing based on recovery capacity rather than a fixed timeline.
• Full-body workouts containing 4-6 compound exercises per session target all major muscle groups effectively without overwhelming recovery systems.
• Coaches and beginners should use 1-2 maximum coaching cues per exercise per set to avoid cognitive overload that inhibits skill acquisition.

The Newbie Effect and Growth Mechanisms

Beginners experience accelerated growth from minimal training volume due to the "newbie effect," where every exercise presents a novel stimulus that triggers muscular adaptation.

• The novelty of resistance training creates growth-promoting mechanisms that diminish as the body adapts to familiar movement patterns over 2+ years of consistent training.
• Because beginners grow efficiently with lower volumes, they should prioritize learning fundamental movement patterns over maximizing training density.
• Early training success depends more on consistent technique execution than on maximizing training variables like volume, intensity, or frequency.

Technique Fundamentals and Form Degradation

Technique degradation from improper form is substantially harder to correct than establishing good technique from the beginning—making investment in proper form essential from day one.

• Heavy weights above 85-90% of one-rep max trigger fight-or-flight responses that cause involuntary technique breakdown even in experienced lifters.
• Ultra-high rep ranges beyond 30+ reps also cause form breakdown due to accumulated fatigue affecting motor unit recruitment and coordination.
• Free weights including barbells and dumbbells develop stabilization patterns and proprioceptive feedback that machines cannot replicate, making them preferable for beginners.

Intermediate Training Guidelines

Intermediates training 3-6 times per week require higher frequency and volume than beginners to continue driving muscle growth as the body adapts to training stimuli.

• Early intermediate lifters face specific constraints including poor RIR (reps in reserve) estimation accuracy, unknown individual exercise response, and unreliable mind-muscle connection that must be systematically addressed.
• True intermediate status requires mastery of core barbell, dumbbell, and bodyweight exercises rather than simply accumulating years of gym attendance.
• Intermediates should not assume they have reached their genetic potential for any muscle group until they have systematically tested various exercises and rep ranges across multiple mesocycles.

Exercise Testing Protocol for Intermediates

The recommended approach for intermediates involves trying all candidate exercises for 1-3 mesocycles (1-4 months) to identify which movements maximize pumps, soreness, tension, and joint comfort while minimizing local fatigue accumulation.

• Each exercise should be tested across the entire repetition spectrum including 5-10, 10-20, and 20-30 rep ranges to discover the optimal loading zone for individual response.
• Intermediates should initially train all muscles evenly to discover their genetic strengths and weaknesses before implementing later-phase prioritization strategies.
• Exercise selection decisions should be based on measurable outcomes including training pumps, post-workout soreness patterns, perceived tension during sets, and joint comfort rather than arbitrary preferences.

Volume Management for Intermediates

Optimal weekly volume for intermediate lifters ranges from 5-15 sets per muscle group, spread over 1-2 exercises per muscle per session to balance growth stimulus with recovery demands.

• Training sessions lasting 1-1.5 hours with rest periods of no more than 2 minutes between sets maintain appropriate training density for hypertrophy work.
• The progression rule for intermediates: if not experiencing significant soreness and recovering quickly, add 1 working set per muscle per week until recovery quality begins declining.
• Set volume should be adjusted based on recovery quality indicators including sleep quality, soreness patterns, and performance across training sessions rather than arbitrary weekly increases.

Advanced Lifter Characteristics and Challenges

Advanced lifters making slow gains require ultra-high effort per set and elevated volumes that strain recovery systems—making advanced training "not a badge of honor but an inconvenience" according to the hosts.

• Scientific literature indicates advanced lifters can accurately estimate RIR within approximately 1 rep of actual performance, though this accuracy developed over years of training experience.
• Advanced lifters cannot train all muscles to maximum recoverable volume simultaneously because total weekly fatigue exceeds systemic maximum capacity of approximately 120-180 total sets per week.
• The hosts emphasize that advanced lifters should build custom programs or significantly modify existing programs rather than following others' programs exactly, as individual fatigue patterns and recovery capacities vary substantially.

Injury Risks and Constraints for Advanced Lifters

Advanced lifters face elevated injury risks including both acute injuries like herniated discs and chronic issues that may permanently eliminate certain exercises from their programming.

• Common advanced injuries include tricep evulsion, shoulder issues, and spinal disc problems that require careful movement selection and load management.
• Accumulated injuries may force advanced lifters to substitute exercises that no longer feel comfortable, making exercise testing an ongoing process rather than a one-time evaluation.
• Shoulder issues frequently prevent overhead pressing movements, requiring alternative pushing exercises that maintain anterior chain development while respecting joint limitations.

Prioritization Strategy for Advanced Training

The recommended prioritization approach for advanced lifters involves placing half to two-thirds of muscle groups on the "front burner" receiving maximum recoverable volume while one-third to half operate on the "back burner" at maintenance volume.

• If chest typically receives 24 sets at end of a mesocycle, a deprioritized chest should receive at most approximately 8 sets to maintain tissue without exceeding recovery capacity.
• Front burner muscles receive concentrated training focus while back burner muscles maintain current development with reduced training frequency and volume.
• Prioritization rotations allow advanced lifters to continue progressing overall while managing accumulated fatigue across multiple muscle groups.

Program Progression for Advanced Lifters

Advanced program progression typically starts at 10-15 working sets per muscle per week, progressing to 25-35+ sets over 4-6 weeks to expose muscles to sufficient training stimulus for growth.

• Smaller muscle groups like side and rear delts may require up to 35 sets per week for optimal development at advanced stages where larger muscles already show significant adaptation.
• Progression rate should target adding 2.5 pounds to the bar per week or 1 rep every other week to maintain consistent linear progression without excessive fatigue accumulation.
• Progression should be measured across mesocycles rather than individual sessions to account for day-to-day performance variation and recovery fluctuation.

Active Rest Phases for Recovery Management

Advanced lifters should incorporate active rest phases 1-2 times per year, consisting of 2-week periods of minimal training to systematically reset accumulated fatigue across all body systems.

• Active rest periods prevent chronic fatigue accumulation that eventually manifests as stalled progress, increased injury risk, or training burnout.
• These rest phases should be planned into annual training calendars rather than implemented reactively when problems emerge.
• Complete cessation of training is not necessary; reducing volume to 30-40% of normal maintenance loads preserves tissue quality while allowing systemic recovery.

RIR Testing and Estimation Verification

Lifters can verify their RIR estimation accuracy by returning to a previously trained exercise through a mesocycle and systematically adding approximately 5 lbs or 1 rep each session until reaching true failure.

• If a lifter needs 40+ additional pounds or 16+ additional reps to reach failure, their initial RIR estimate was significantly off, indicating they were stopping substantially short of true failure.
• This testing method provides objective feedback on estimation accuracy, allowing lifters to calibrate their perceived effort with actual performance capacity.
• Regular RIR verification prevents chronic underestimation of performance capacity that could lead to insufficient training stimulus for continued progress.

Universal Principles Across All Experience Levels

Training levels exist on a sliding scale with no distinct day marking graduation between stages—the boundaries between beginner, intermediate, and advanced represent gradual transitions rather than sharp demarcations.

• Technique mastery provides the foundation for all subsequent training variables; compound movements including squats, deadlifts, bench presses, rows, overhead presses, and pull-ups form the core exercise selection for most lifters regardless of experience level.
• Progressive overload remains the primary driver of adaptation across all training ages, though the specific mechanisms for achieving overload differ substantially between novice and advanced lifters.
• Individual response variation means general guidelines require personal adjustment based on recovery capacity, injury history, time availability, and personal goals.

Full Transcript

Show transcript

There is no distinct day that you
graduate from beginner to intermediate
or intermediate to advanced. The longer
you train, the more your training should
look more intermediate and then the more
your training should look more advanced.
It is really sad when someone calls
themselves advanced but does every
exercise wrong. And advanced lifters
make slow gains and you do not make very
rapid gains anymore in most cases. If
you can maintain beginner results with
beginner volumes, for the love of God,
don't go do intermediate shit. And you
don't want to rush through the process.
As a matter of fact, you want to milk
each stage.
Hey folks, Dr. Mike here for RP
Strength. Should you be training
differently if you're beginner,
intermediate, or advanced and you want
the most muscle growth longterm?
The answer is yes. Long-term is the big
working word there. Because if you just
want as much muscle as possible in the
near term and just train a ton, that
could get you hurt. It could sabotage
your gains for later. If you want the
best long-term gains, listen up, cuz we
have the guide. First, some quick
definitions. We count a beginner as
someone who's trained between zero and
about 2 years of consistent training. An
intermediate is someone who's trained
something like 3 to six years of
consistent training. That means like you
don't miss more than two to three weeks
at a time in your program. And advanced
is someone who's been training for 7
years or more. These are very funible,
very average definitions just to get you
a good vibe.
Now, how do we determine how beginners
versus intermediates versus advanced
folks should train differently?
The way we determine this,
what's most appropriate and
inappropriate for all these three levels
is to use a combination of constraints
and affordances.
Things that get in the way of some of
these groups of people but not others.
And affordances are things some groups
can get away with and benefit from while
other groups cannot.
Whatever passes the filters of stuff you
can do versus stuff you can't do ends up
being a fairly good recommendation and a
likely good way to train if you're a
beginner, intermediate or advanced.
And the thing is beginners versus
intermediates versus advanced lifters
have actually quite large differences in
many cases between their constraints and
their affordances. So, there are some
big important differences in how they
should best train for the most long-term
muscle growth.
First up, beginners. Let's talk about
constraints.
Beginners have minimal technique
knowledge. You're like, "Do a squat."
And they're like, "What's that?" You're
like, "Oh, gee whiz." And if they do a
squat, it's usually all kinds of wrong
because they don't know how to do it
well.
Beginners have a high need for technique
reinforcement during sets because
learning technique builds the foundation
for the rest of the training career. It
is really sad when someone calls
themselves advanced but does every
exercise wrong. Same for intermediate.
Beginner is when you learn how to do
exercises properly and you will have
that knowledge inculcated into you for
the rest of your life. After that
everything is smooth sailing
technique-wise.
Beginners need practice at a few simple
moves because the constraint there is
they can become overwhelmed. If you
teach a beginner five exercises in one
day could be overkill. Maybe three is
better. If you teach them four exercises
for a single muscle group, they just
start confusing a ton of stuff.
Beginners also have kind of not so great
core strength and coordination under
heavy loads. Scott, you know that whole
noodly wobbly beginner thing where you
give them anything heavy and they start
wobbling. That's not something you want
when you get a lot stronger. So, that
constraint is going to have to inform
how much weight we use.
In addition, super heavy weights
lead beginners to go into fight orflight
mode and have technique breakdown. So,
you can show how a beginner how to do a
stiff leg deadlift, but if you do it for
sets of four or three reps or something
like that, each rep is so heavy that the
next rep the person's just trying to
survive. They round their back, they
bend their knees, and it's not really a
stiff-legged deadlift anymore. More
advanced folks will be able to keep a
steady technique under really
challenging loads. Beginners, not as
dependably.
But there's another problem. Say, okay,
low reps aren't so great, but for very
high reps, sets of 10 and more,
beginners get so fatigued and the pain
of the burn gets so intense, their
technique also breaks down at higher
reps. So, breaks down at low reps and at
high reps. And lastly, beginners are
very, very bad at estimating reps in
reserve, how close to failure they are.
So, a program with reps in reserve
guidance just doesn't really work super
well for beginners because they're like,
do two reps in reserve and they're like,
okay. And then they stop at either six
reps in reserve or they go, you know,
all the way to failure and be like, oh,
I thought I had two more. Beginners,
that's the bad news. The good news is
they have really cool affordances.
First, beginners do not need high
volumes to grow. They can grow from very
small amount of volume, which is really
cool because you can structure the plan
very differently.
Beginners can train multiple muscles
with great effect for each muscle just
with distributed compounds. If you're
advanced and you're going to want to
work your chest and your triceps,
probably have to do some chest work like
wide grip bench. You probably have to do
some tricep work like skull crushers.
But for a beginner, because they don't
need a ton of volume and every exercise
is super novel and super growth
promoting for them, they can do what's
called distributed compounds, which
means compounds that distribute the load
and thus the effort to multiple muscles
as opposed to focused compounds, which
are just technically compound like a
wide grip bench, but really just focus
on one thing like the pecs for example.
So with a beginner, you can give them
some close grip benches. And for them,
that's a really good tricep stimulus and
a good chest stimulus. And because they
don't need high volumes to grow, just a
few sets of close grip bench could be
all the chest and tricep work a beginner
needs in a given program.
Beginners also don't need a lot of
variation in exercises and in rep ranges
because of the newbie effect. They just
don't need a lot of variation in
anything. you can just only do squats
for six months as a beginner and your
legs grow phenomenally, which is if you
just did only six months of squats as an
advanced lifter, you might squat your
back and knees into different planetary
orbits and have not as much leg growth
to show forward at the end of the day
because you need more variation to stay
in one piece and to get your best gains.
And another piece of good news, the last
one for beginners, they need only basic
progression with no highly detailed
estimates of reps and reserve required.
just doing a little bit more every now
and again is good enough progression
logic for beginners. So we take all of
these constraints and all these
affordances and we mash them together
and outcome the training tips for
beginners which are as follows.
Beginners can do as few as two sessions
per week because they can learn
technique and grow muscle from just two
sessions a week. And a lot of times
that's really good because it doesn't
overwhelm them and cause burnout. You
give beginners a 5day week program, half
of them won't show up on week number
three. give them a two day a week
program, more of them show up in the
first few weeks of beginner training. I
mean, total noobs, it's a good idea to
use super light loads that are very far
from being challenging, never mind
failure, just to work on establishing
proper technique for sets of about five
reps each set. Couple sets of each
exercise, five reps, nice and easy.
Because beginners are completely new to
training, just from very light work of
technical work, they will get sore and
they will grow. You could be eight reps
in reserve for all of these sets and
grow like crazy as a beginner because
beginners grow like crazy and there's no
rush. Huge deal. But after the first
week or two of establishing basic
technique, you can start to have the
latter sets. Let's say you do three sets
per exercise. The last set of each
exercise can be not just a practice set
of five, like eight or 10 reps in
reserve. It can now be like a two reps
in reserve. Now, as a coach, you know
that. And if you're a beginner listening
to that, that just means the bar starts
to feel really heavy and tough towards
the end or the dumbbells or whatever of
those reps of whatever number uh of
those sets of whatever number of reps
that you're doing. So, now we go from a
program in the first few weeks of
everything's light to the last sets of
each exercise are kind of heavy. And
then in week three, four, five, it all
gets replaced with every set is pretty
heavy and pretty challenging. But good
technique never ever leaves. It's always
rank one.
The best rep range for beginners in my
view is the 5 to 10 rep range, like sets
of eight on average. That gives you
enough practice and enough growth
stimulus to get really good at technique
and grow, but not so many reps that
autopilot and pain avoidance kick in and
your technique degrades. And not so
ultra heavy sets of three or four that
your technique will degrade and you
might get hurt.
You still warm up, but one or two sets
of warm-ups before each exercise in week
six plus of the program. And then every
other set after that is going to be a
tough working set.
If you're coaching beginners or if
you're a beginner yourself and you have
to tell yourself cues, remind yourself
knees out on the squat, etc. Just one to
two cues per exercise and even per set
is a good idea. You start lobbing eight
cues per set. And a beginner, they don't
know what to correct and it's too
confusing. Remember, the bandwidth they
have is really tiny anyway because it's
all new for them and they're under pain
and duress of lifting really hard. So
just one or two corrections like knees
out knees out knees out you're good that
is good enough and over time slowly you
can give more corrections not per set
but over time you know one week you do a
lot of correcting for the back another
week you do a lot of correcting for the
heels and so on and so on and so on.
Technique improvement, technique
stabilization of good technique is a
huge deal, which is why queuing is
massively required.
If the individual is pretty easily
completing multiple sets of five to 10
reps with what looks like not so much
effort and the bar is not slowing down
and they're like, "Dude, I can do more."
Then you can add 5 to 10 pounds to the
lift. And you can do this every week,
potentially every other week, as soon as
the beginner athlete, as soon as the
beginner lifter seems not to be overly
challenged by the sets, increasing the
load is a good idea. After the first few
months of probably lifting no more than
about twice a week, if this individual
or if that's you are really loving the
process, really loving the results, and
have extra bandwidth, you can move up to
three and then eventually four sessions
per week for the next several years of
your beginner training career. More than
four as a beginner is probably like
overkill. You can get amazing gains from
four and save all your psychotic
motivation for later when you're an
intermediate when you'll really need it.
But don't rush.
Again, not a good idea to get beginners
to come in and do four sessions every
week right off hand. Better idea to get
them to come in and do two sessions a
week. And then if they really love it a
few months later, if they're still
around, you can bump them to three and
then eventually four sessions a week.
Every session that beginners do pretty
much on average should be whole body
upper and lower all the major muscle
groups and mostly distributed compound.
That means you might have like four to
six exercises but all of them train
muscle multiple muscle groups such that
you get the whole body trained every
single time. And this is a big one.
Ideally, you're going to use free
weights, barbells, dumbbells, and body
weight exercises mostly or really only
to imprint the neural patterns of basic
movements like presses, rows, curls,
hinges, etc. under your own
stabilization. The way to become a
long-term the best lifter you can be is
to do things yourself. If you have a
trainer groping you the entire time and
helping you arc through the movement,
you're getting ripped off. The trainer
likes it because they get to touch you
and that's nice. Maybe they have nobody
else in their life that they can touch.
Real talk. You want to become competent
at the basic movements. When you do
that, you're going to be ready to do
every single other fancy machine in the
gym, which you will get to do as an
intermediate. I promise. So, in summary,
two to four sessions of whole body
lifting per week with mostly distributed
compound exercises. two to five sets per
exercise on average. Start at two and if
you can handle more volume and you're
not super sore or weak, slowly work up
to five. About four to six exercises per
session is typically good. Many more
than that's not ideal. Sets of five to
10 reps is really good, challenging, but
not crazy. And you can pick some
exercises and run the same identical
exercises for months on end because you
need to learn them really well. And
variation, it's just not a big factor
for beginners.
I can recommend something to conserve
variation. You could probably repeat the
exercises you do early in the week,
later in the week, just change the rep
range slightly by changing the load. So
maybe five or 10 or 20 lb difference,
maybe 30 lbs difference in some
exercises and load so that in the first
day of the week, you do about sets of
five to seven reps, tough, heavier, and
then you lighten the load a little bit
so that later in the week, you're doing
sets of about 8 to 10 reps. Same
exercises, same execution. And that
means you get practice twice at the same
movements after 3 or 4 months of the
same movements and you really know those
movements super well. Then you can
change them to slightly different
movements, still distributed compounds,
like from a close grip bench to an
incline close grip or something like
that. And then you can continue to
reproduce that process. Do not worry
about how hard you're training. Just add
weight to the bar if the bar stops
slowing down altogether and sets of 5 to
10 as you master that 5 to 10 rep range.
Technique, technique, technique. If you
trained a little bit, not hard enough,
but your technique is amazing and solid,
I would much prefer that entering the
intermediate phase than having trained
too hard, but literally learned the
wrong technique. The thing about
technique is it's not terribly difficult
to learn good technique, but it is
terribly difficult to unlearn bad
technique. So, making sure you train
nice and hard, nice and heavy, but
really emphasizing good technique is
number one. All right, that's for
beginners. Let's move on to
intermediates. First, we'll talk about
the constraints of the intermediate
lifter. Intermediates can't really
estimate reps and reserves super well
yet. They don't really practice it much
with their beginners stages, so why
would they? They also don't really know
which exercise they respond better to or
worse to. It cracks me up every time
when someone who's been training for two
years says, "Yeah, man. I seem to
respond better to squats than to leg
press. Like, and you know that how like
well vibes, man. Like, dope. Vibes are
great.
The mind muscle connection is not a
reliable proxy for early intermediates
because they basically are beginners at
the end of their beginner journey. So,
it's not a variable that we can use. We
also know another constraint.
Intermediates need more effort, more
volume, and more frequency than
beginners do to make their best gains.
Your body's pretty well adapted now. It
needs more to grow. Intermediates do
have some affordances, though. They have
some upsides. They can demonstrate good
technique all on their own. And I would
go so far as to say if you can't
demonstrate good technique all on your
own, you're kind of a beginner still, no
matter what you say.
They have often, ideally, mastered the
core barbell, dumbbell, and basic
bodyweight exercise. If you claim to be
an intermediate and I ask you to do
push-ups, you'd better show me how to do
push-ups relatively well. If they suck,
I'm skeptical.
Beginners also get tired really easily
and take a long time to recover because
everything's such a big shock to them.
But intermediates have the work capacity
to now train three, four, five, or even
six times per week, allowing them to
have the higher frequency and volume
that they so desperately need to grow
their best. And here's the really cool
thing about intermediates. They survive
the beginner phase, which means they're
lifers now. They're in. And that means
they have the motivation to train hard
and often and for long durations at a
time per session to make their best
gains.
Combining those constraints and
affordances, what do we get? Here are
the intermediate training tips. First, I
highly recommend that you train with all
exercises in the gym for one to three
meal cycles at a time at least to see
where and how your responses proceed as
you train through literally every
exercise. I don't mean in one program. I
mean, in one program, pick a bunch of
exercises, train them for one to three
months or so, or one to three messy
cycles, maybe up to four months, and
then switch exercises, pick tons of
other ones. Guys, intermediate training
is amazing. It's kind of like Halloween.
You get a bunch of different kind of
candy. Intermediate training is you want
to use every exercise and every machine
at least for one messycle to see if it
works well for you. Loads of fun. What
are you looking at? You're looking at
pumps per any given number of sets. Does
this machine or this exercise or this
repetition range give me good pumps?
How much soreness does it give me? How
much can I feel the tension of the
target muscle in this exercise? How much
do I feel the burn in higher reps from
this exercise in the target muscle?
How much local fatigue do I get after I
do skull crushers? Are my triceps
feeling like super tired or do they feel
pretty pretty okay? And how much joint
comfort and discomfort am I feeling?
Does do dips shred my elbows or are they
really amazing for my elbows?
See where these are maximized and
minimized? And it's not just exercises.
You want to train through the entire
repetition spectrum. So you are going to
have opportunities not necessarily in
the same session though you could not
necessarily even in the same mess cycle
though you could same week
over the course of your intermediate
times
give most exercises a shot with most rep
ranges which means you're going to do
some training cycles where some
exercises you're going to train often in
the 5 to 10 rep range. Sometimes you're
going to train in the 10 to 20 rep
range. sometimes in the 20 to 30 rep
range for the same exercise oftent times
in different mess cycles or different
times of the week or you train a couple
sets in the 5 to 10 and then a couple
sets in the 10 to 20 something like
that. You want to see where pumps and
soreness and joint stuff, all that stuff
is maximized and minimized in the
intersection of exercise and rep range,
which is a big deal. What you're going
to learn from this to prepare you to be
advanced is where your body best
responds to a given exercise and rep
range because that is going to put an X
exactly on where you want to spend most
of your advanced time. But as a
beginner, you're going to just just run
through the meadow of exercises and uh I
don't know, Scott, you probably have to
have a dress and a flower basket or
something.
>> Yes. Um, and like you know the cool
thing about that running through the
field shit is that it's dope vibes. The
bad thing is like bees are real, bro. I
don't give a that you're a little German
girl or some shit. Don't up.
>> Volumewise, I recommend training with
between five and 15 sets per muscle per
week. Right? So that could be biceps for
five sets total in the week or it could
be biceps for 15 sets total in the week.
And I want you to spread these over one
to two exercises per muscle per session.
So you might do like one bicep curl
exercise and two quad exercises or
something like that, but definitely at
three or four or five exercises for a
muscle in a given session. You want to
train from anywhere between three to six
sessions per week. Probably starting
intermediate phase closer to three or
four and then eventually if you'd like
getting up close to five and six. And
you're going to want to spend for
optimal gains about one to one and a
half hours in each session working
diligently with no more than about two
minutes rest between sets, often a
minute or less. It's going to smash that
volume in that you need.
I highly recommend most intermediates to
train all of their muscles evenly.
Remember, this is for the most long-term
growth to be the most jacked when you're
advanced.
You can prioritize as an intermediate,
but like if you have okay biceps and not
so great pecs, you prioritize then
you're later going to have pretty good
biceps but very meh pecs. If you train
everything evenly, you can find out what
the genetic strengths and weaknesses you
have are and also bring everything up to
at least a decent standard.
You also as an intermediate want to do a
very important thing. Push each working
set hard and get a feel for how tough
three reps, two reps, one rep, zero reps
in reserve, and actual failure feel.
Do this by guessing guesstimating your
three repetition m Oh, good god. Three
repetition max. Your three reps in
reserve estimate. So, you put your you
think it's your 15 rep max on the bar.
You're like, I think I think 12 is going
to get me there. And you just go and you
kind of stop at 12. Or you say, ah, 12
was kind of easy. I'm going to stop at
13 or 14. Just your best guess. And then
every single time that you come back
through that whole mess cycle, you're
probably going to add a rep or about 5
lbs to that exercise. And you're going
to do however many match your reps or
match the uh total amount of weight and
just do one more rep every time. That
increased challenge through the mess
cycle will eventually lead you to go to
zero R or failure. And then you'll know
how good your estimate was of three AR.
If you started an exercise you thought
was three RIR but then at the end you
actually have to put like 40 more pounds
onto the exercise or do 16 more reps to
get to failure. It wasn't three R.
Probably it was more like eight to begin
with and now you know that you can go a
little harder next. Mezo, if you start
at what you think was three R, but you
hit failure by session number two and
even fewer reps. You definitely just did
like pretty much failure in that first
one. That is not three reps in reserve.
Scott, have you ever spotted anyone
that's like, "I'm going for two reps in
reserve." And their last rep is like a
grinding utter disaster and you rack it
and they're like, "It's pretty good."
And you don't know what to say to them.
>> Like, "Yeah, man. Uh, that was awesome.
That was uh not two reps in reserve."
See, I can't stop myself from saying it.
It's a big deal to learn how to go hard.
But here's the trick.
You're going to need to go hard when
you're advanced,
but you cannot break your technique. So
you take your solid technique education
that you got as a beginner and you apply
it rigorously to the hardest training.
If you claim to train hard and you can
go all the way to failure with great
technique, I salute you. If you claim to
train hard but your technique breaks
down towards the end of your sets, you
feel me? I love you like I love every
other human being on this planet.
But you could clean up your technique is
what I'm trying to say. Because good
technique is what allows us to target
the musculature we want and reduce
injury risk. Sounds like a good deal.
As you train as an intermediate, you are
going to want to bring your mind at
peace and start to notice which muscles
are limiting factors on which exercises
and which exercises seem to give you the
biggest stimuli proxies like pump and
soreness and tension in the muscle and
which ones give you the least of those
proxies and give you the most fatigue.
And you're not just going to want to
learn this about an exercise. You're
going to want to learn it about rep
ranges, too. So, you could say something
like this, just an example. Sets of 5 to
10 on leg press, uh, really heavy. My
knees feel weird. Sets of 20 to 30 on
leg press, my lungs give out. I'm just
breathing super heavy. I can't even feel
my quads anymore. And the bottoms of my
feet hurt. But sets of 10 to 20 on leg
press, blow my quads under the moon, and
my joints feel great and my cardio is
not limiting. Hey, shit. Now, you know
something really important, and it's the
following.
Is it possible that sets of five to 10
on leg press could a future you could do
productively? Yes. So, never completely
write anything off. Is it possible that
you'll get enough cardio to be able to
do sets of 20 to 30 reps in leg press in
the future? Absolutely. But is your best
guess in the future of how to construct
your routines once you're advanced sets
of 10 to 20 in leg press based on that
data? It absolutely is. And now you know
something super important about
yourself. you know a more likely
direction of success from a less likely
direction of success. That means your
map of how to get the most jacked is
starting to fill in with shapes, which
is exactly what the intermediate stage
is all about. The beginner stage is
about like how to walk properly and read
the map at all. The intermediate stage
is the map really really starts to kind
of fill itself out so you know where
your peaks and valleys are. And the
advanced stage is going to be about
making sure to traverse the peaks and
valleys in the most effective way
possible.
Lastly, for intermediates, if you're not
getting super sore or super pumped and
you're healing super fast, add a working
set to that muscle next week for that
exercise and repeat the process. So, if
I have uh cable curls on Monday and
barbell curls on Wednesday and I come in
every Wednesday and I'm like, I can't
even tell I trained by some cable curls.
Matter of fact, right after the cable
curls, man, I just just like do 50 more
cable curls. It wouldn't bother me. add
a set of cable curls next time to next
week and continue that formula of
addition as long as you're not super
sore, super tired, or not getting pretty
goddamn good pumps.
All right, you did it. You survived and
now you're advanced. What are the
constraints? And then what are the
affordances on the constraints front?
Advanced people are generally strong
enough to now have higher risks from
high volume superheavy training. risks
of injury. Not just acute injury of, "Oh
snap, I snapped my shit up." But chronic
injury of like, "Ah man, my elbow's just
not working today. It's been three weeks
where it's been getting worse." You're
now so big and so strong relative to
where you started that injury risk is a
much more real factor for you. And
that's going to play into how you design
your programs.
Advanced folks also often run into the
fact that if they trained all of their
muscles up to their maximum recoverable
volumes, which can be a lot of work,
they're that total amount of fatigue
exceeds their systemic maximum
recoverable volume. Like it's like if
someone said, "Hey,
you got to work five jobs." You can be,
"Oh, hold. I could maybe do two of these
jobs well if the other three I could
just come in and smoke weed at work and
back burner the shit. But I can't do
five jobs all at once. I'm just going to
get overwhelmed. It's the same thing for
training. When you're advanced, it means
you can't full send for your whole body
all the time because your whole system
is like, "Bro, I can't do 120 total sets
per week. That's going to kill me." Or
180 or whatever it is. That's a big
constraint. So, we require some clever
programming.
Advanced folks in the real world also
often have nagging injuries, maybe a
history of some acute injuries, and thus
they have some offlimits exercises or
rep range combos with exercise. So, the
era of very heavy rack deadlifts might
be over if you've herniated a disc or
two. Ultraheavy jam presses when you've
had a tricep evulsion may no longer be
on the table. And ultraheavy laterals
cuz you have some shoulder issues, not
really anything, but it just starts to
hurt if you go heavy. That's something
advanced lifters deal with all the time.
And you got to be smart about it. You
can't pretend that it's not a thing. And
advanced lifters make slow gains. They
do not make very rapid gains anymore in
most cases. But the hilarious irony is
to make any gains at all. They need
ultra high efforts per set and ultra
high volumes, number of sets to make the
best gains for sure, and sometimes any
gains whatsoever. So this problem where
you just don't make really good gains,
but in order to make gains, you got to
go after it like crazy. Imagine a job
that used to pay you $12 an hour, but
now it pays you six. And it used to be
able to just breeze through it and they
pay you money, but now you got to go
super hard and they can only pay six
bucks. That sucks when I put it like
that. But you're advanced. You're
already jacked. And now you're
perfecting your physique.
Advanced people don't just have
constraints, though. They have
affordances as well. Here are a few of
them. Advanced folks have mastered
technique. If you haven't mastered
technique, there's a good chance you're
not advanced. They have mastered
training hard and estimating the reps in
reserve. We have good scientific
literature to show that folks that are
close to advanced, often advanced, are
hitting their reps in reserve within
about one rep in reserve of the actual
result. That's really good. So when
people say people are bad at tracking ri
that's true as shit for beginners but
absolutely not true for advanced people
and that's a big deal. Advanced folks
also because and especially if they
really broaden their horizons with
exercises and rep ranges and even
different kinds of weekly routines know
a lot about which exercise and rep range
combos have the highest stimulus to
fatigue ratios for them.
They know which splits and exercise and
muscle group combos and orders work best
for them. Is it best for them to train
triceps first then chest or the other
way around? Only the advanced lifter
will know that about themsel and they
have distinctly more developed and less
developed muscle groups because they
have different genetics for their
muscles expression-wise. And so not all
muscles are like you know the best
muscles on their body. And there are
clear areas which they can do asymmetric
improvement to bring up weak points or
to exploit strong points.
Take those together, mash them.
Constraints affordances. And now we are
looking at the advanced training tips.
First tip, and this is a huge tip. If
you're advanced, I highly recommend in
most cases that you do not do other
people's programs or splits.
modify from theirs or build your own
from scratch in the RP hypertrophy app,
of course. Period. You know your body
the best. When Jared and I train folks,
pro bodybuilders and stuff like that,
it's always an interactive process where
we go, "Hey, we're going to train you
like this. What do you think?" And they
go, "I can't do that, but I can do
this." And then we fudge it for them.
We're never like, "Do this or that's
it." Advanced folks know their body
super well. Scott, you ever seen people
that are technically advanced like just
do like some kind of offline workout,
like some website, printing it up. Yeah,
man. I'm going to do the superhero
workout. And you're like,
>> not usually.
>> Yeah, there's a good reason for that. I
actually known some people that are
pretty advanced who every now and again
lapse back into absurdity and they're
like not making gains on their own shit.
Like, I'm just going to try this one
workout I saw online. And I'm like, I I
believe the term for that is giving up.
And I also still have a lot of folks ask
me like, "Hey man, you ever do like 10
by 10 like in Bulgarian blah blah blah?"
And I'm like, "Sir, I do my own
situation. Maybe kids, I'm an expert."
Shut up, Mike. Okay, Mike.
As an advanced person,
you want to choose exercises,
rep ranges, and training splits that
give you the best guess at your best
stimulus to fatigue ratios. You always
want to keep an open mind so you're not
just like, "Nah, that doesn't work for
me. I only do this." But don't do too
much shit that you know is almost
certainly not going to work. If you're
doing underhand pull-ups for years and
all they do is shred your elbows and up
your shoulder joints and you barely feel
your lats and someone's like, "Underhand
pull downs today?" It's probably best
that you go, "You know what? I'm going
to try a set or two in the warm-ups, but
if it doesn't work out, typically it
doesn't. I'm going to go to parallel
pull-ups." And voila, nine times out of
10, you'll be correct. Remember, knowing
what works and doesn't work for you is
the wisdom that you gather from all of
your years of experience. Use that shit.
Another thing is pay close attention to
the mind muscle connection. That is the
detection of tension and or burn in the
target muscle during a hard set. Try to
get as much mind muscle connection by
doing the best technique that you can
with as little loading externally as
possible.
What does that mean? That means if you
can do the leg press in some way that
you can do 700 lb for a set of 10 and
your quads hurt an X amount. If you can
bring your feet maybe closer together,
maybe a bit lower down, maybe point your
toes out, maybe wear weightlifting shoes
and maybe sink in deeper. And now
instead of 700, you can use 500 lb for a
set of 10 and it hits your quads just as
much through mind muscle connection
perception of tension and burn in the
muscle. You're probably just going to
save the living shit out of your joints
and really meaningfully reduce your
probability of injury, both acute and
chronic, if you stick with that better
method that lets you use less weight.
You'll see lots of advanced bodybuilders
say shit like this all the time. Try to
maximize the amount of tension you get
from a certain given weight, not try to
do as much weight as you can over the
weeks. Of course, increase the weight,
but when you're picking how much weight
to do at the beginning of a mess cycle,
use your best technique to try to make
sure that you're not at least using
excessive amount of weights with bad
technique.
As an advanced person, if you want your
best best gains, you're going to train
four to six or more times per week. Does
that mean seven? No. It means you almost
always want to have a rest day in there.
But the plus in the six plus means you
may want to consider double days. come
in for back in the AM, shoulders and
biceps in the PM twice a week, stuff
like that. And your training is going to
take one to two hours per session.
Remember, you're advanced and you're
trying to make your best gains. You're
going to have to work for that shit.
There's no way around it. Your body's
not interested in growing much anymore.
You really got to push the pace.
At the same time, remember, if you just
push the pace on everything, you would
overreach and then overtrain because
your systemic maximum recoverable volume
just gets completely exceeded by the
some individual maximum recoverable
volumes of your individual muscle group.
So, what you're going to want to do is
take something like half or at least a
third of your muscle groups and put them
at either maintenance volume or minimum
effective volume, which is basically
like about a third of the typical volume
that you would do. So if you typically
at the end of a mess cycle do about 24
sets for chest. If you're not
prioritizing chest, you're going to want
to do at most about eight sets of chest.
And that's definitely good enough. So a
third to a half of your body you're
going to put on back burner. And then
half to 2/3 you're going to put on the
front burner and really crush it as much
as possible. In the RP hypertrophy app,
we actually have a selector for which
one to do for which muscle group and
then the app takes care of the rest. The
reason for this is you can't hit
everything hard. If you try to hit
everything maximum hard all the way to
MRV, you're just going to cook yourself
and you're not going to be able to
you're going to be systemically limited,
which means ultra tired and prone to
injury and you're not even going to be
able to train your muscles hard. So, you
have to make a choice every messy or
every few. Which muscles am I putting on
front burner, which on back burner? And
the choice isn't super hard to make
because you know your body really well
at this point. You know which muscle
groups you want to bring up and which
ones you don't want to bring up at this
very moment.
Four muscles you are prioritizing. That
means training for minimum effective
volume all the way up to maximum
recoverable.
You want to aim for true maximum
recoverable volume at the end of every
meal cycle in that last week before a de
lo. Which means in many cases you want
to design your plan such that you start
at about 10 to 15 working sets per
muscle per week and over the course of
the next four to 6 weeks get up to 25 to
35 or more working sets per muscle per
week. This is especially true especially
true if these are smaller weaker muscle
groups. So yeah 35 sets of hamstrings
sounds like an insane idea and it is.
Don't do that. But 35 sets of side delts
or rear delts per week may be functional
and will usually get you better gains
than fewer of those sets.
If that's too systemically fatiguing,
put more of your other muscles on
maintenance or on slower gains, minimum
effective volume, so that you can free
up more recovery ability to train the
muscles you need to ultra hard.
Remember, yeah, you can start from 10 to
15 and get to 25 to 35, but this is all
going to be individualized and
autoregulated. Individualized means you
know your body well. So, you're going to
start with five sets for hamstrings and
you're going to start with 30 sets for
side delt as an example. Other people
may choose very different numbers and
autoregulated which means you adjust
your volumes up or down week by week by
week based on how you're recovering or
you just rate the appropriate ratings in
the RPI app and it just chooses that for
you.
Advanced folks can accumulate an
unbelievable amount of fatigue because
they know how to push themselves hard
and they have to train it and they're
already pretty goddamn beat up from all
the shit they used to do before. In this
case, active rest phases should be
incorporated one to two times a year.
Those are two week periods of you
basically hardly training at all and
just like vibing on life, just eating
enough protein, getting a decent amount
of sleep, going on vacation or something
like that. Those twoe breaks every six
months to 12 months can reset your
body's fatigue so much that it gives you
months and months and months of amazing
training after. If you don't do any kind
of reset, you're going to have a bad
time. Your fatigue is going to get so
high during a given mezzo, you're more
likely to get hurt or just as bad as
getting hurt in many cases, spin your
wheels for no gains at all. Progress
will be slower and you have to accept
that.
I would say aim to add as an advanced
person two and a half pounds to the bar
per week or a rep every other week.
If you're a beginner, you can sometimes
go up two reps and 10 lbs to make it
tough because you're so quickly learning
in your neural abilities. And the
intermediate typically sticks to about
one rep per week of increase and or
usually or 5 lbs increase. These are
just standard numbers. There's some
variation there. But that's the
recommendation. One thing that's painful
to watch advanced people do is try to go
up by 10 lbs or 5 lbs and reps at the
same time and hit failure way earlier
than meo. Have to do, you know, a half d
lo or something like that. A few
recovery sessions and they're just like,
why is this happening to me? Because
you're advanced and you adapt slower.
you drop fatigue slower and you
accumulate more of it and you haven't
accepted that yet. 2 and a2 pounds every
week or one rep every other week and
you're going to be coasting to amazing
gains because consistent high volume
training is what grows muscle, not your
ability to just ram into a wall, bounce
off and be confused about it.
In the big picture, to sum all of this
up, beginners train with whole body
splits and basic movements in the 5 to
10 rep range a few times a week to get
the easy gains and especially learn
fundamental techniques.
Intermediates should probably train
something like whole body or very basic
splits like upper lower or pushpull and
all movements and all rep ranges to
really get the diversity and learning
going in about 3 to six weekly sessions.
They're going to make amazing gains and
learn both how to push hard with great
technique and explore which exercise and
rep range combos seem to provide the
best stimulus to fatigue ratios for
them.
And lastly, advanced lifters train with
specialized programs, get their best
gains like that designed to focus on
specific muscle groups,
and they focus on exercise and rep range
intersection combos that they know work
best for them in most cases based on
years and years of insight from their
intermediate days.
The experimentation absolutely should
continue, but is more constrained to
shit that's likely to work and it
doesn't often include shit I know damn
near for sure does not work well for me.
Intermediates, you try it all. Advanced,
you know, a little bit, maybe a lot of
it about what you need to be doing.
Volumes in specialized muscle groups,
prioritized groups that you're trying to
really bring up need to go high. So,
we're talking about 20, 25, 30, 35 or
more work sets per muscle per week if
you can recover. And you better damn
well know what that means by the time
you're advanced. And that also means
four, five, six or more, including two a
day sessions. And these sessions are an
hour to two hours long each. That's
what's key for your best gains as an
advanced person. And the gains will
come, but more slowly than they used to.
So, don't be surprised about that. It's
just a reality.
None of this is dogma. It's a sliding
scale. There is no distinct day that you
graduate from beginner to intermediate
or intermediate to advanced. But the
longer you train, the more your training
should look more intermediate and then
the more your training should look more
advanced.
That's the big takeaway.
And the last thing I'll say is this, and
this is really important. Being at a
given level, be it intermediate or
advanced, is not a badge of honor. Hey
man, what uh what's your general level
of lifting in a training career? Like
I don't want to talk about it much, but
some uh some have called me
intermediate, others advanced.
Can I get your autograph, mister? Get
out of my face, kid. I got to go lift
four to six plus times a week for one or
two hours at a time. It's not a badge of
honor. It's actually an inconvenience.
If you can maintain beginner results
with beginner volumes, for the love of
God, don't go do intermediate shit.
That's all in the future. Get as much as
you can for as little as you can. You
want to milk as much out of beginner and
intermediate training as you can before
you need to get advanced with the shit.
Somebody that's really good about
talking about this is a gentleman uh
named Steve Hall. You can find him on
Instagram and he has a great YouTube
channel. And Steve used to be pretty
interested in this beginner, immediate,
advanced economy. And then he made a lot
of really great posts and made a lot of
great videos and talked about a fact
that like once you get to being
advanced, people say it's great, but no
one gives a shit and you just have to
make these really, really crazy programs
and dep prioritize a bunch of other
stuff to get any growth at all. It's not
a badge of honor and you don't want to
rush through the process. As a matter of
fact, you want to milk each stage
for all lifters. No matter the training
age, the RP hypertrophy app is waiting
for you in your chosen app store right
now. It's lonely. Go say hi, click on
stuff, pay us money so that I can get
another Lamborghini and crash it into a
nightclub. That's the only way to arrive
to a nightclub. I guess I could use my
derigible. I'll think about that in my
off time. Just kidding. I'm going to
have my butlers think about it for me.
See you guys next time.