Programming Online Course
Class 3: Varying Volume and Intensity for Strength and Muscle Building Workouts Across Cycles
In the image above, we lay out a typical 17-week MovementLink programming macrocycle, periodizing together 2 hypertrophy, 1 strength, 1 peaking, and 1 peak and taper mesocycles. As a quick review, we’ve already talked about why we periodize our macrocycles in this way:
Our Hypertrophy mesocycles are typically 3 x 1-week minicycles designed to build new muscle, technique, and a broad and general base of fitness, especially an aerobic base.
Strength mesocycles are typically 3 x 1-week minicycles designed to solidify our base by challenging our new muscle, aerobic base, and level of technique under more intensity.
Peaking mesocycles are typically 3 x 1-week minicycles designed to prepare us to maximally challenge our fitness and to prepare for the specific demands of any upcoming events, competitions, or challenges, we may be participating in.
Deload or Transition mesocycles are typically 1 week long and are implemented for fatigue management and de-sensitization to training purposes.
Peak and Taper mesocycle is a event-specific deload week with the goals 1) skill honing and 2) fatigue management and recovery for an upcoming peak of performance.
Within each Hypertrophy, Strength, and Peaking mesocycle, for our primary upper body and lower body workouts, we like to take advantage and build upon short-term adaptations that occur when exposed to repeated, similar stimuli that allow us to take our training to levels unreachable without specific planning.
Let’s take a look at the adaptation curve in the image above. As an example, let’s just say we are back squatting once a week with sets of 5 within a strength mesocycle. For simplicity purposes, let’s say a program using this exercise called for 5 rep technical maxes each week and our numbers were as follows:
Week 1: 5 RTM = 225lbs
Week 2: 5 RTM = 235lbs
Week 3: 5 RTM = 245lbs
Week 4: 5 RTM = 250lbs
Week 5: 5 RTM = 240lbs
A few things to note here:
As we challenge ourselves to a similar stimulus, our abilities within that stimuli improve significantly in the first exposures.
Our abilities will actually decrease from a peak over the long-term if the stimulus stays too similar. In our example, we chose to show improvement through 4 weeks, and then the drop-off starting to occur in week 5 and on where it would eventually level out at some point higher than where week 1 started. Everyone is different and the major factor in determining how long adaptations can significantly improve is previous exposure. So a brand new beginner may be able to repeat the same exercise and rep scheme for months and even years before they hit a plateau, but, without variation, a plateau will always come.
The combination of volume, intensity, and quality of reps in weeks 3 and 4 would have been unachievable in week 1without the previous work put in during weeks 1 and 2.
At MovementLink, we choose 3 minicycles, or 3 weeks, to be the duration of our mesocycles (most of the time). Within each mesocycle, we prefer 3-week linear progressions that allows us to build to a level in the 3rd week that would be unachievable without the physical and neural adaptations from the beginning weeks. We may be able to add more weeks into our mesocycles, but we feel that beyond 3 weeks, 1) training tends to feel boring and 2) shorter mesocycles allows us to balance adaptations with variation allowing us to keep technique levels across all functional exercises high.
In general, our volume distribution within a 3 week mesocycle, looks something like this:
Week 1: ~30% of our total volume for the mesocycle.
Week 2: ~33% of our total volume for the mesocycle.
Week 3: ~36% of our total volume for the mesocycle.
If we want to include what our deloads look like, the 4-week distribution including the deload week would be something like this:
Week 1: ~25% of our total volume for the mesocycle (including the deload week).
Week 2: ~28% of our total volume for the mesocycle (including the deload week).
Week 3: ~31% of our total volume for the mesocycle (including the deload week).
Week 4 (Deload): ~16% of our total volume for the mesocycle (including the deload week).
Note: that the deload week is typically around 50% of the volume of week 3. In our deload weeks, we also tend to keep percentages of 1 RM below 50%.
Within a mesocycle, the intensity, or weight lifted relative to our 1 RM, follows a linear progression too. Like we’ve talked about, we have ranges we are shooting for for the average intensities of a hypertrophy (~65%), strength (~75%), or peaking (~90%+) mesocycle, but within each individual mesocycle, keeping within the average and the range, we will get heavier and heavier. For example, in a hypertrophy mesocycle where we’d like our average intensity to be around 65%, our weekly average intensities may look something like:
Week 1: ~60%
Week 2: ~65%
Week 3: ~70%
Math Reminder - to find an average, you add everything up and then divide that all by the number of items you added up: (0.60 + 0.65 + 0.70) / 3 = 0.65 = 65%
Looking again at the image at the very beginning of the article, within the full macrocycle (the combination of mesocycles, deloads, and events), the amount of volume per mesocycle (the bars in the chart) will decease with each subsequent mesocycle as the average intensities (the red line from the chart) rise with each subsequent mesocycle.
To summarize it simply, within a 3-week mesocycle, for our primary lifts where strength, power, and hypertrophy are our goals:
We will tend to repeat exercises using similar or the same rep schemes to take advantage of short-term adaptations that boost the level and quality of work we are able to accomplish in the 3rd week.
Total volume and intensity will increase from week to week. Because volume = reps x weight, simply by increasing the percentage lifted relative to our 1 RM across the weeks, even if we were to keep sets and reps the same or similar, the added intensity increases the weight which increases the total volume or workload.
We like to think of weeks 1 and 2 as setting up and preparing for our major week 3s. Earlier weeks are an opportunity to feel out estimated 1 RM numbers and make adjustments for the following weeks. It is also a time to get really nit-picky on technique and dial it in for the challenges of week 3.
But, how do we know what amount of work we should be doing in each workout? We have found that starting mesocycles off just above a minimally effective workload and working towards the maximal amount that our body can handle and recover from not only provides incredible results, but is a sustainable approach that is enjoyable, motivating to see progress across weeks, and incorporates fatigue management while challenging ourselves at levels that we are physically, technically, and mentally prepared for. Next, we’ll look at exactly how to determine how many reps and sets and at what percentages of 1 RM make for optimal workouts.