The fist thing you do is picking a proper exercise that fits the slot of the template. You do this the first time you run the program, and also at the beginning of a new training block if necessary.

You’ll notice that some of the exercises have an intensity prescription (heavy, medium, light). For a “heavy” exercise you want to be able to reach failure within the 5-10 or 5-15 rep-range, for a “medium intensity” one you want to be in the 10-20 rep-range, and for a “light” exercise in the 20-30 one. If the intensity is not specified, then use any rep-range you want that’s within 10-30.

Let’s use the first exercise of the Upper day as an example for the rest of the guide. This slot reads “Heavy horizontal press”, so to set up the program you go to the exercise list in the main post, look at the list of exercises for the chest, and select a compound exercise that allows you to go to failure with around 5-10 or 5-15 reps (we’ll use 5-10 for this example). Let’s say the exercise that fits the criteria for you is the archer push-up (labeled as horizontal press level 5 on the list from the main post).

Your training block begins with a testing week: you’re just going to do a single set to failure (AMRAP) for each exercise you chose, and the amount of reps you get is going to be the metric to determine the working rep-range. It’s important that you reach failure while using good technique and tempo. In the cases of the Full Body, Pull-Push, Upper-Lower and Pull-Push-Legs programs where you repeat the sessions in the same week, you test during the first sessions, and begin the regular training in the following ones that same week. And in the case of the UL-PPL program which doesn’t have repeating sessions, you test the whole first week and begin the regular training the next one.

So you test the archer push-ups and let’s say you get 8 reps. Now that you have your results, you determine the initial amount of reps of the working sets by subtracting 3 reps to that amount, if it’s the first exercise in the session to target the main muscle group, or 6 reps if it’s the second one. So for example in the Upper day of the UL program, you would subtract 3 reps to the vertical pull test result, since it’s the first exercise in the session that targets the back, and 6 reps to the horizontal pull test result, since it’s the second one for that muscle.

Going back to the example, since you got 8 reps in your test, then on your regular workout you’re going to do 5 reps per set.

What does all this accomplish? Two things: 1) the testing week, which comes after a deload, is a nice way to gauge your progress and break some PRs, and 2) It calculates a real RPE 7 / RIR 3 (basically means it gives you a number of reps for the first set that’s both hard enough but not too hard).

As you may have noticed, there’s a range for the number of sets for each exercise. The specific numbers you use are going to be auto-regulated, meaning you’re going to try one for a while, see how it goes and adjust accordingly. If you already know the number of sets that works best for you, go ahead and do just that, even if it is outside of the prescribed range. If you don’t know, start by selecting the lower end of each range, so for example, the Heavy Vertical Pull says “3-5”, so you will start by doing 3 sets and stick with it for several weeks or months. I want to point out that the recommended ranges are already biased towards using high volumes, meaning it’s highly unlikely that the lower ends are going to be severely lacking for most people, in fact I would bet that most people are going to be making the most gains with those values; and on the other hand, that also means that the higher ends are quite hard, and not many people are going to be able to handle them for long. In sum, don’t underestimate the lower ends, and don’t worry about missing out from not doing more. You assess whether you could benefit from doing more sets during STEP 6.

This form of progression is a take from the model called double progression, tailored towards bodyweight training. Similarly to the beginner model, you have a certain number of reps per set that you have to do in a given session, and you try to get that number of reps on every set. You stick to that number of reps, even if you feel you can do more. If you succeed on the first three sets(or all the sets if you’re doing less than 3), you increase that number by 1 the next session. That’s the first difference with the beginner model of progression, the second one is that you’re not expected to hit your target on most sessions. After the first handful of weeks, or even from the start, it could take several weeks to hit the target rep goal across the first 3 sets, but here, each of those intermediate instances could be considered a success if you were able to do at least one more rep in any of the first 3 sets compared to last time.

So let’s go back to our example. On monday, during the first Upper session of the week, you performed the test to determine the initial amount of reps, which resulted in 5 reps per set. Now comes Thursday and it’s time to hit the Upper workout again, and now you’re going to do the archer push-ups normally, for 3 sets as prescribed for the lower end. Let’s say you succeed, which would be normal for the first week (but not necessary), and you get 5-5-5, what you do now is increase that number by 1 next time, so next Monday when you have to do reverse lunges again, you’re going to try to do 6-6-6, which you may fail to hit, or not. The results over several weeks can go like this:

• Week 1, Upper 1: test day, a single set, got 8 reps.

• Week 1, Upper 2: 5-5-5

• Week 2, Upper 1: 6-6-4

• Week 2, Upper 2: 6-6-6

• Week 3, Upper 1: 7-6-5

• Week 3, Upper 2: 7-6-6

• Week 4, Upper 1: 7-7-6

• Week 4, Upper 2: 7-7-7

It would be nice if we could just get stronger linearly forever like in the example above, but the more realistic scenario is that eventually you’re going to stall due to fatigue accumulation and because the rate of physical adaptations doesn’t follow a 1:1 ratio with the concept of “being able to do one more rep”, sometimes (i’d even say, most times) it takes more than 1 week of adaptations to develop the capacity to do 1 more rep once you reached your limit.

What you do in this scenario is a form of controlled regression: when you fail to do even 1 more rep on any set compared to last time for two sessions in a row (to exclude the possibility of just having a bad session), the next session you reduce the number of reps per set by 3 and you start progressing again from there. Let’s apply it to the example we used before for the archer push-ups:

• Week 1, Upper 1: test day, a single set, got 8 reps.

• Week 1, Upper 2: 5-5-5

• Week 2, Upper 1: 6-6-4

• Week 2, Upper 2: 6-6-4 <— Missed.

• Week 3, Upper 1: 6-6-6 <— Succeed, it wasn’t 2 missed sessions in a row, so you continue normally.

• Week 3, Upper 2: 7-6-5

• Week 4, Upper 1: 7-6-6

• Week 4, Upper 2: 7-6-6. <— Missed.

• Week 5, Upper 1: 7-6-6. <— Missed again. Two in a row.

• Week 5, Upper 2: 4-4-4 <— Controlled regression, 7 - 3 = 4.

• Week 6, Upper 1: 5-5-5 <— Start progressing again, the first ones will be easy.

• Week 6, Upper 2: 6-6-6

• Week 7, Upper 1: 7-6-6

• Week 7, Upper 2: 7-7-7

To note, you will continue to make gains even during the regression. It will act as a mini deload, reduce the fatigue, make room to more adaptations and maybe even produce something called delayed supercompensation, where you get the gains you stimulated in the past but were unable to “cash in” because your system had to use most of the resources to deal with the fatigue and damage.

The slot in the program for which you selected the archer push-ups was labeled as “Heavy horizontal press” meaning you needed an exercise that allowed you to reach failure with 5-10 reps. Let’s say after some more weeks you progressed from the 7 you got last time to 10-10-10.

When you reach the limit amount of reps that was prescribed for the exercise, then it’s time to replace it for a harder variation. So what you do is you go back to the Step 1 of this guide and begin the whole process again, select a new exercise, test it to determine the initial number of reps per set, progress by increasing the number of reps every session, until you get to the top end again and repeat the process with another new exercise.

In our example, since you were archer push-ups, which is the horizontal press level 5, then now that you maxed it out, you replace it for the horizontal press level 6, knee one-arm push-ups.

I suggest a combination of prescribed and reactive deload as follows: the regressions of STEP 4.1 will act as a mini deload, and locally (for each individual muscle) it will probably deal with the fatigue quite well, but some times we accumulate too much fatigue in our whole body, and at that point it’s just not enough. If at some point you feel really run-down, with soreness all over or some discomfort accumulated here and there, or if you lose motivation or just feel burned, take a deload week. There are two forms of deload I suggest: you can either stop all training for a week, or you can do half of the reps you got last time for each set, which will be quite easy, and it needs to be. Whichever one you like the most.

That would be the reactive part, the prescribed one would be, if you didn’t feel like deloading after 8, 10 weeks at most, take a mandatory deload.

To reiterate, deload weeks are supposed to consist of either no training at all or super easy work, or they will not work. You’re also not supposed to do any new activity instead, like going for a run (if you were not doing so before) like “hey since I’m not training, let’s go for a run!” don’t do that, start your new activity after the deload if you want.

After the deload, resume your training with the same exercises you were doing, but from STEP 2.

After each deload, it’s time to look back and see how you did so far. Especially, you want to reflect on two things: the number of sets per muscle group, and how long it takes to move from one rep goal to the next.

For the number of sets, you want to assess how fatigued you were from the work you were doing. Essentially, if you weren’t really all that fatigued from your workouts, and especially if you performed a prescribed deload instead of a reactive one, that’s a sign that you could probably benefit from doing more sets. On the other hand, if each workout felt like a LOT of work, and if you had to do a reactive deload too soon (let’s say, 3-4 weeks in or less) then that’s a sign that you could use less volume. In both scenarios, the increases or reductions may very well go beyond the recommended ranges, that’s ok. And also in both cases, move the volume number by just 1, at most 2.

Regarding how long it takes to move from one rep goal to the next, if you see that it both takes too long to move from one target to the next, like if it consistently takes 4-5 weeks to move from 8-8-8 to 9-9-9, and that at the same time your first set is way too easy from the start, then you may benefit from implementing a decreasing upper limit instead of a straight one. What this means is that your goal shifts from doing the same number of reps across the first 3 sets, to doing a decreasing number. For example, instead of a goal of 8-8-8, your goal may be 8-7-6:

• Session 1: 8-6-4

• Session 2: 8-7-5

• Session 3: 8-7-6 <----- Reached the goal, increase the goal to 9-8-7

For the light exercises where you do 20-30 reps per set, you can even have a target with jumps of more than 1 at a time, so a goal can be 25-23-21, for example, with the next one to hit being 26-24-22.