Meso Cycle Planning for Workout Progression

Hey guys, my name is Stephen Lo and I am the author of Overcoming Gravity. I've changed up my setup a little bit to have a little pizzazz in the background so you can see the first edition of Overcoming Gravity, the second, the Taiwanese version, the German version, the Korean version, and then Overcoming Tendonitis and the various editions of Overcoming Poor Posture. So if you're interested in those, check them out. But otherwise, let's get into things. So today we'll be covering Overcoming Gravity Online Part 12, which is still in Part 2, and we're going over Constructing Your Workout Team, and specifically Chapter 12, Meso Cycle Planning. So for those of you who don't remember what a meso cycle is, it's basically a 4-8 week, sometime up to 12, period of workouts where you aim to progress through and increase your strength and hypertrophy. for most of us in that amount of time frame and then usually after you have some sort of deload so you can get rid of any excess fatigue and then after that you start on a new one and continue working towards your goals specifically in this chapter we're going over the beginner intermediate and advanced exercises and recommendations then we'll go over near the end of mesocycle the deload and strength testing then workout restructuring if you want to do any of that going into the next Mesa cycle and then also any additional programming and other considerations. Alright so let's get started. So for beginners in general most of them are going to start with the level one to five range on the specific overcoming gravity progression charts and for these mainly you're going to be doing your basics like your push-ups your dips your pull-ups, your rows, your squats, and some of the progression, little progressions above that. Additionally, some other things fall into here like the early progressions of ab wheel, so planks and more or less easier bodyweight exercises. Some considerations here, if you're more overweight or obese or very sedentary, you may have to regress. So some people can't start with dips and pull-ups right away or even push-ups so you can always do some specific things to make them easier like doing wall push-ups and then progressively declining them until you're able to do flat push-ups so some recommendations i like for those are using stairs as a progress method for push-ups you can start with like the fourth stair and then go down to the third stair then the second and the first and then you're on flat ground so Ways to make exercises easier, same with rows, you can start more inclined and then bring them down to where your body is level over time. With push-ups or pull-ups and dips, you can use things like bands or eccentrics or counterweights, such as the Gravitron machine at the gym, where it gives you a little counterweight boost to do the exercise. So lots of alternatives you can do there to build up to... the full exercise and then start on progressing towards your goals if you have any such as like one-arm chins one-arm push-ups and so on generally a lower starting point does not mean you're going to have lower success for example when i restarted training the gymnastics training stuff i could barely do a dip and pull up so it's really not where you start it's where you're able to be consistent and keep doing your workouts and progress over time and you'll generally be fairly successful in getting to your goals if you have good programming and all that stuff as well. So for beginners in particular, higher reps can be very helpful, namely because you can focus on good technique and also minimize intensity overuse, usually going from say like the 5 to 8 rep range or 5 to 10 and then trying to go to the next progression. you're having a high intensity of the exercise since the next progression is a lot harder and so doing higher reps allows the drilling of technique and helps to more condition the connective tissue in at later intensities so that you're not able or so that you won't start to develop any soreness in the connective tissue or discomfort or any pain like that so if you do encounter those things you can always back off reduce the volume intensity take a mini d load And make sure that those things aren't progressing into full blown things like tendinopathy or anything like that. Generally, I tend to like to limit the use of eccentrics in the beginning. So if you're doing one or two eccentric methods with like pull-ups or dips to get there, you don't want to also be doing eccentrics with other exercises such as push-ups or rows or anything else. Namely because eccentrics are usually above that 100% one rep max. And so you don't want to have that high intensity on the joints. connective tissues all at once. So if you're doing it try to limit the eccentrics in the beginning. As I said in previous videos I tend to like them as plateau breakers so if you're going to use them use them as plateau breakers or only on one or two exercises at a time. Generally speaking for beginners full body is ideal but two day splits are okay so some common two day splits are push pull, upper lower, or bent arm straight arm. Generally, within these full body or splits, expect to progress with most exercises every week. So in the beginning, most people will be able to progress pretty much from workout to workout with most of your exercises. But in general, things tend to slow down over time. So as you get more towards, you know, trained beginner and intermediates, and when that happens, what usually tends to occur is maybe only one exercise in a muscle group, such as your pushups or dips or like handstand pushups, only one of the exercises may progress at once. And that is still good progress if one pushing exercise is progressing. So don't worry if you're not able to progress, you know, both at the same time, or even if both stall, as long as you're able to make some progress within that week, like every two to three workouts, that's good as you start to get out of the beginner gains. section. Similarly, obviously, consistency is the key to success. And so you want to be not skipping your workouts, you know, one or two here and there, if life gets busy is okay. Sometimes you can delay them a day. So if you're typically on like a Monday and Wednesday, Friday schedule, if you miss the Wednesday, you can do it on Thursday and then do your Friday workout on Saturday and then jump back into Monday again. So missing some and making up is okay, but some routine structures like the splits may not allow you to make up workouts and missing one is all right. Generally, if you don't have time, what I tell most people is try to get at least in like one to two sets of the exercise. Most of the benefit of the exercise is in the first set and then it's progressively less from there. If you're doing three sets of say push-ups. 50 60 of the benefit is in that first set just because you're at least hitting maintenance level for that exercise sometimes even beginners are able to brush with one set so most of the benefit is going to be in that first set and then there's less benefit every subsequent set but if you have less time and you're you know running short on time try to get in at least one or two sets and you'll probably even still make progress as a beginner additionally focus on weaknesses and you don't have to focus on muscular weaknesses at the beginning as a beginner but the potential weaknesses i'm talking about are potential imbalances not that they cause injury but we know that they can be risk factors so for example if you have postural issues coming in from working a desk job you know hunching over your desk at school all the time then and your shoulders are forward and your neck's craned making sure you strengthen the back of the neck and back of the shoulder blades, getting more pulling work in to help strengthen those muscles and make sure that you have the strength endurance in those muscles so that you're more resilient to any type of postural related risk factors for pain and injury. Similarly, most beginners don't have to have a mesocycle that they're doing for a defined set of time. So as I stated in the beginning, most Mesa cycles are four to eight weeks, maybe up to 12. If you're able to continue to progress and you don't have any connective tissue, tendon or joint soreness or discomfort, you're able to progress eight, 12, 16 weeks and just keep on going and progressing, then for sure, just keep doing that. You don't have to have a defined set of time where you're stopping. Obviously if you're starting to feel a little bit of issues in your joints or connective tissue or You know you have a vacation coming up and want to take a break That is a good time for a deload. A deload won't hurt you and only help but if you are able to continue progressing healthily, safely, you can feel free to do that. Beginner gains usually last up to like four to six months, sometimes up to 12 months for some people. So you can continue to progress with those for a very long time in some cases. Similarly, like I said, if you're feeling sore in the connective tissues, definitely want to deload, allow the body to rest. If it starts coming back early after a deload, then you definitely want to... Usually regress in progression so if you're doing like a harder push-up variation just go back to push-ups and allow your body to acclimate to the volume a Bit more and then after a week or two then jump back up into the next progression again All right, so intermediate recommendations Generally at this point most people are starting to train most of the desired gymnastics progressions that they see when they see bodyweight fitness and want to learn certain skills. So your back levers, your front levers, your planche, at least some variation of the hold such as you know advanced tuck, straddle, maybe one leg out. Usually not the full exercise at intermediate but at the top end of intermediate usually starting to get into the full exercise of that range. Similarly, handstand pushups, one-arm shit-ups, you're starting to work towards that or getting close to them. So in these cases, you need to pay attention to flexibility, specifically if you're wanting to work up to things like straight-arm press handstands, V-sit or mana, and other more advanced moves. For example, having a wider straddle, so you're... adductors and quads and hamstrings are more flexible where you can split your legs apart very wide, that is going to make the straddle progression easier. A lot of people have trouble with the straddle progression mainly because they're not flexible and so if you can only split your legs apart you know about this much versus like you know super super wide like that. Obviously some progressions that are normally harder such as you know one leg out and the other leg tucked like that The one leg out can actually be easier than the straddle in some cases if your straddle is very, very poor. So just be wary of that. If you're trying to work towards a harder progression and you don't have the requisite flexibility, things can get harder over time and impair your technique as well. As you're getting into the straight arm isometrics, just be generally aware of the connective tissue at the joints. Specifically... for like back lever front lever planche the elbows so your bicep tendon your common flexor tendon for golfer's elbow and also at the shoulder as well your rotator cuff a lot and bicep tendon that goes up into the shoulder area and attaches to the labrum a lot of these can start to become sore because straight arm puts more torque at the joints more force at the joints as your straightening at your body over time. And so if you start to feel any of that, make sure you back off for a couple weeks and then progressively build back up and that will help. You don't want to continue to push through that assuming that you'll get stronger and it'll go away as that often leads towards overuse injuries. In this specific intermediate recommendations, quality is greater than quantity. So But in previous videos I talked about general set ranges, you know about 3-6, 4-6 is good for beginners, about 4-8 is good for trained beginners, and about 6-10 is good for intermediates approximately. So generally you'll want to progress about workout to workout or week to week in this, but as you get to more intermediate it's probably going to be every 2-3 workouts your progress. for most exercises. So just keep in mind if you're not progressing every exercise, exercise, every workout, that is fine. Maybe you'll just progress on one exercise if it's earlier in the workout routine versus some of the later ones where there's more fatigue over time with the workout. Generally you do want to stay in those set ranges. More than about 10 sets tends to be more what is called junk volume where as I indicated earlier, Like the first set was maybe 50% of the benefit. Then the next set's maybe like 20 to 30. And then progressively, as you get to that like 8th, 9th, 10th set, you're maybe only getting, you know, a very small benefit out of it. Maybe like... 5% or less, sometimes even like 1%. And the fact that you're going to do that many sets for specific muscle groups, you're also building up a ton of fatigue. So your benefits get less and less and less over time where fatigue goes up. If you have too much fatigue, that's going to mask the fitness and make you progress slower or even halt your progress. So doing too much, you kind of want to drop it. or start low and then build up your sets to find the optimal volume to progress and not start with too much overtime with this you definitely want to start assessing fatigue more while sleep strength or nutrition and stress are very important for beginners as well you definitely see the negative effects of not doing those optimally less with beginners because they're newer to exercise and will just improve with almost anything with intermediate then to advanced and to elite, you're going to have big issues with recovery if you don't start to dial those things in. So you definitely want to dial those things in when you're a beginner, but even more so when you're intermediate, advanced, and so on. Generally, your work capacity and recovery have improved some. So as you train, you do develop increased work capacity, like with the set ranges I was talking about. Sometimes some people can add another workout in this range. So for example, with a split such as your upper lower, some people going like Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday for their splits can add in an extra workout on Wednesday, then space a rest day in there and then do the other two workouts on Friday and Saturday. Similarly with full body. If you are going to add another workout, generally if you're doing something like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you want to add Saturday, but you want to split the volume at first. So the Friday workout would be half of the normal workout and then you'd section the other half on to Saturday, and then you can build up the volume with those over time until they're full. Generally over a couple weeks or a lot more. So you generally don't want, if you're going to add a day, You don't want to add in the whole workout right away. You want to add in a small portion, maybe one set of the exercise, then build to two, then build to three over time. Just allow your body to accommodate because of less rest and more stress on the muscles. Accommodate to the connective tissue and the less rest as well. Some people may find that, you know, just adding another workout is just too much. I found that personally with climbing and... full body workouts generally speaking about three four times a week was best for me adding in the extra workouts too much fatigue was accumulating for me and it actually slowed down progress so if you are going to want to add something make sure you take into account that more is not always better sometimes just less with more rest is better for recovery and improving so finally for intermediates deloading for games is the way to go You definitely want to have some type of planned deload to get rid of the higher fatigue and allow those fitness gains that you've made during the cycle to show themselves. If there's no progress for a couple weeks, you definitely want to deload and then potentially move on and modify your program or potentially go at it again and change up the sets, decrease them, and then increase them over time. or change exercises and we'll get to that in that particular section. Alright so advanced recommendations. So usually in this area of progress you're working your harder exercises such as your iron cross, planche, mana, and other advanced movements. Generally speaking in this specific section both isometric hold and movement training is the most helpful. So when I talked previously in part 10 about concurrent or emphasized concurrent periodization, having a specific emphasis on a particular exercise, this is where that starts to come in. So if you have like 10 total sets, generally in this range, you're still in the 6 to 10 total sets, maybe up to 12 at most, but if you have 10 total sets, I mean you're breaking up between three exercises such about you know, three sets for one, three sets for the other, maybe four sets for the other one. If you have a planche focus, you can dedicate about six to seven of those sets, so two exercises towards the planche and then one exercise towards like a dip or handstand push-up or other pushing movement progression. So this allows you to be able to train the isometric hold as well as a movement variation for strength and hypertrophy. This tends to allow the best progress. Likewise, manipulating volume and intensity is important at this stage. And sets, as I said before, sets may increase a little bit, but not much. Generally, this is where you want to start using some variations of periodization, like the sequential different methods or concurrent. So this can also start in the light, sorry, the... intermediate recommendations as well, but you definitely almost always need some in the advanced as well. So your light heavy where you may work be working the five rep max on the heavy day or the ten rep max on the light day for example or daily undulating periodization DUP where you're working three different rep ranges. So five, ten, fifteen for example or more biased towards strength such as three 7, 10, or things like that. Or if you want to bias it more towards hypertrophy, something like 5 to 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 30, you can do that for this specific section. I do really like DUP in particular, which is a concurrent method for advanced, and that's how I built up to my Iron Cross straddle planche and pretty close to about 10-20 degrees off mana. DUP is really good at modulating the fatigue effectively because on your lighter days where you're doing higher reps, you're taxing the muscles more, whereas on the heavier days, you're taxing your nervous system more. And so you have that space between each of the heavy to heavy workouts, which can be about like a week or so, and the light workouts can be a week or so to allow your muscles for more full recovery. And it is that wave loading of the intensity and volume that allows fatigue in the different systems to dissipate and to be able to progress well. So as I was alluding to, fatigue mitigation techniques are important, more and very important in this specific range for advanced things like ascending sets. So ascending would be... In traditional periodizations, you would work with, say, 135 pounds, then 145 pounds, 155, and then maybe your top set would be 165. You wouldn't necessarily do three sets there. You'd stop there. And the very fact that you're kind of pyramiding up with the same amount of reps, but the lower sets are not a failure, and you can do them very quickly, so you get the full recruitment. That helps to mitigate fatigue. Same thing with hitting a top set and then backing off to get more volume. That can help mitigate fatigue since you're not working with that top set the whole time. Power days where you're not going to failure can help mitigate fatigue. A ton of those different concepts. There's at least 10 to 15 plus different ways to use those concepts to decrease fatigue over time. I cover those in Overcoming Gravity Advanced Programming if you're interested. So also shoring up weak links and strength and hypertrophy are very important at this stage. So for example, the common ways to notice weak links at this stage generally are that a particular muscle group is smaller relative to the others. So for example, for me, generally when I was dipping very heavy weights, 190 pounds for five reps, I noticed that my... Anterior delts were actually a lot smaller compared to my triceps and my chest in training for dips. So for me, adding specific isolation exercises for anterior delts would be a good idea to store a potential weakness there. Similarly, you can use assistance exercises. So different variations of dips, like a more... Shoulder focused type of dip as opposed to more tricep or chest focused dip to hit the specific weak link as there So for pulling weak links and pushing weak links, I listed all the different muscle groups that are generally there. Sometimes your weakness can be with the scapular muscles in the back. So if you train more depression, so like you're hanging from the bar in a pull-up and you're, you know, shrugging your shoulders up and down, that can be helpful and is a potentially common weak link for things like one-arm chin-ups. Similarly... Some other common weaknesses for planche are the serratus anterior, which helps with protraction of the scapula. Doing some specific isolation exercises for that can often help. But usually the main movers, such as your anterior delts, maybe your chest, triceps, those are the common ones. Places have weak links and usually can tell if generally the muscles are smaller than the other muscles. Or if you... can't feel them as well. So like if you're having difficulty establishing a mind muscle connection or getting a burn in them in high rep exercises, that can be also a potential indicator of having a weak link there. So generally moving into advanced range, two day splits tend to be the best. Full body routines can work if managed well. One of the ways that they can work is if you start to wave load the volume. So if you do like 10 total sets per muscle group on heavier days, but then you go to six on lighter days. That would be one way to kind of wave load the volume so that you can have a heavier exercise or a heavier workout routine, but then a lighter one. And then that wave loaded volume allows fatigue to dissipate better between each of the heavy workouts. But usually two day splits are the most superior form of training in this range. That's why most power lifting programs move to some type of upper lower split where you're hitting you know upper two times a week lower two times a week and doing your main lifts and your assistance exercises with them that's why they tend to be the best because you're spacing out your workouts you can get a very good workout but then you have you know three to four rest days between each of those workouts which allows you to fully more fully recover from those specific training days 3-1-2-1 specifically can work good for two-day splits, especially if you have a upper body focus or just want to alternate them. So if you're just alternating them, you may have three upper body workouts and two lower body in a week. Then next week you'd have three lower body and two upper body. But some people, if they have more upper body goals, just want to do upper, lower, upper, then rest, upper, lower, and then... rest and then repeat that. That can be the case. Just don't train enough like that to where your upper body is out of proportion to your lower body and you kind of get the stick leg syndrome. So elite programming. I covered this in a small section in the book, but generally speaking, it's very highly dependent on the athlete and coach. If you're at this point where you're training things like Maltese or Victorian, generally you probably don't need my book. Unless you're want to learn more about periodization and how to consistently progress obviously the various periodization methods do work from advanced to elite like the sequential method block and Your emphasize concurrent and conjoint all of these work from advanced to elite level So if you're having problems progressing as fast as you want to or your plateau more often in particular As you get towards these skills then those Periodization systems can definitely be useful for you. Alright, so deloading and strength testing So generally speaking a week off is the standard it can be less if you haven't Done a shorter or if you have done a shorter cycle such as four weeks But generally a week is a good amount of time to fully dissipate fatigue generally speaking I tend to, I used to take like full weeks off, but I found it better to just have, you know, a couple of workouts here and there, and then modified to be lighter, uh, in volume, frequency, or intensity. So the ways to do this are you generally drop two out of the three components. So for example, um, you would drop volume or frequency. So if you drop volume, you would drop volume. generally you drop down from three to five sets of an exercise down to one or two if you decrease frequency you drop from three workouts to one or two workouts if you drop intensity Generally you do easier progressions. So if you're doing things you generally want to do only two or keep one high so maybe you're keeping intensity high and Doing some reps of the previous progressions you're working on in the cycle But you'd also drop volume down to one to two sets so one to two sets is basically about maintenance maintenance volume and you would drop the frequency down to one or two workouts so basically you're just maintaining and allowing the rest of the volume to be much lower and the frequency would be much lower so that the fatigue dissipates so that would be the way to do it if you're not injured generally i like dropping volume and frequency and keeping intensity a little bit higher just so you kind of maintain that skill and come back stronger with it if you're potentially battling some Overuse injuries coming on, I tend to like dropping the intensity and or frequency or volume. Usually, definitely intensity for that, but then you can kind of play with the volume and frequency. Or sometimes even all three if you're potentially getting overuse in your tendons, for example. So definitely drop to easier exercises, potentially do some rehab isolation work for those specific. exercises and making sure you're dropping the volume and frequency down so that you don't, you're able to heal up and you're not aggravating it more such that when you go into the next cycle, it flares up, the symptoms flare up much more easier. So as I talked about before, overuse generally decrease intensity and volume and or do prehab. Generally in this stage, higher recommend... higher repetitions in the 15 to 30 range tend to be effective for prehab so maximal strength testing so what this means is right before the next cycle or on the first day of the next cycle usually you can test what your new maxes are and that's after all the fatigue gets dissipated so your fitness is like fully revealed and you should have your full strength and be able to potentially set a new Personal record. So if you're talking about like planche holds Your previous max was say 10 seconds if you test it and your new max is 16 seconds Then you would use the asymmetric progression charts to find out what your new hold time is for that specific starting point so usually about 60 to 75 percent maybe 80 percent in there so about 10 to 11 second hold, maybe up to 12 would be your starting point for that next mesocycle for your planche isometric holds. Generally you can modify exercises to appropriate reps and reserves, so that's how many reps you have till failure or the hold times. So generally speaking at the beginning of a cycle you don't need to be going to failure right away. Anything within about three to four reps from failure is fine and as long as you're increasing the reps over the course of your workouts or increasing the hold times then you're eventually going to start to hit closer and closer to failure until you hit the failure so i'm starting with easier exercises or easier reps and reserve is not a big deal as long as you're building up the progress over time So alternatively, you can pick up from where you left off, especially if you feel much stronger. So, you know, if your previous planche holds were 10 seconds long, then just build up, start going for 11 seconds, then 12 seconds, 13 seconds and so on. So you hit a plateau and, you know, kind of either rebuild up from there or continue to try to aim to progress that over time. All right. Workout restructuring. This is not that hard. So there's various ways to do it. Generally speaking, there's a few scenarios. So if you have achieved your goals, then basically you're going to modify routine. So if you achieved your back lever or your front lever, generally speaking, I like to keep it near the beginning of the workout. One set, maybe one to two times a week, just doing the hold so you can maintain it. Then you can sub out the back lever front lever exercises that you were doing for another goal So you got back lever and now want to work on front lever? Have the back lever in there at maintenance level just so you can maintain it and then stick in sets of front lever holds or front lever rows to start to work towards the front lever. If you have not achieved your goals and have plateaued for a while then there's a lot of things you need to consider. So if you've started doing too much it can often be the case that you'll start to progress again if you backed off the volume. So you know if you're at 10, 11, 12 sets of pushing exercises Start with six and then build back up again. Usually you'll hit a range where you'll actually start to progress again. And actually taking off sets of an exercise can be a good way to do that. Were you doing too little? That is possible. Some people like to keep things at six sets. So six sets will help you progress for a long time generally from beginner to trained beginner to intermediate. But... Sometimes in intermediate and advanced range you might need a little bit more volume. So if you're having issues progressing and you seem to be on the lower end of the set range, start to add a little bit more. Similarly if you're having issues with potential fatigue, deloads may be needed. Generally speaking, also check for fatigue, not just fatigue in the workout, but also fatigue and recovery factors such as your sleep, your nutrition, stress levels with school, family, friends, whatever is in your life that is stressing you. All these things can negatively affect recovery and increase fatigue. You can also change up the programming or periodization structure. So like I mentioned, one of the common methods after the simple intra and inter-exercise progressions is to go to a light heavy where you're doing a 5 rep max and 10 rep max or generally different rep ranges there that allows you to start progressing again with the a simple undulating or simple sequential and undulating periodization structure um generally speaking you can also change full body into a split or a split in the full body or vice versa that can be a way to change things up to ensure progress again And then you can also change up stale exercises. So if you've been stuck on planche isometrics for a while, you can try to move to a planche push-up progression, which can help to break that plateau as well. So if you're doing all of these, or if you're considering all of these, generally small modifications are best. So generally speaking, you only want to modify one thing at a time. So if you think that you're doing the right amount of volume, and your fatigue is okay, then maybe change it up from the programming structure from the simple inter and intra exercise progressions to something like light heavy. Don't try to change up your set range from like six to 10 here and then change up your sleep, your diet and your stress levels. And then also try to go from, uh, you know, a regular progression to five and the five rep max, 10 rep max, and then also change from full body to a split. Change one thing up at a time. Usually that's enough to get you your progress started again, especially if you're doing programming changes or split changes or changing out stale exercises. So you don't need to be changing multiple things at once, maybe two things at once. You know, if you sense that you have a little too much in your routine and you also do want to try a different split you can do two things at once um generally i like small is a lot better just because if you're doing too many changes it's too hard to identify what has gone wrong if you change up too much generally speaking if your small changes one to two changes and it doesn't work you can identify it's obviously the small changes did not work i can try you know i i don't the light heavy such as five rep max tenor max didn't stimulate progress again Okay, maybe it's still too much with the full body routine. Maybe I need to switch to a split now. So small changes are best. You can find out what is going wrong, or in most cases, it'll jumpstart your progress again. So if there's one thing to do, it's always, I like very small changes in a program and see what happens over the course of, you know, three to four weeks. Usually your progress will jumpstart, but if it doesn't, then you can make another small change. All right, finally, last slide. This is getting pretty long. Additional considerations. For your goals and exercises, don't spread yourself too thin. And I've talked about this before, but only one to two goals per pushing, upper body pulling, legs, and core. It's trying to spread out the too many exercises. You have that frequency issue where if you're only doing it once a week, you're only getting 50 times of practice with it. So you're not going to be able to progressively overload it more than 50 times. Generally speaking, if you get an exercise to be doing... two to three times a week, you're getting 100 to 150 times of practice of the exercise, more opportunities for progressive overlay. And if you're working your specific goal, like front lever, you're definitely going to get to it faster because you're working it more often and developing the specific neurological adaptations for the exercise. Same with the basics and progress. You can it. Basically, you want to focus on the various periodization schemes kind of in order to progress. You don't want to jump to more advanced ones like linear or block or concurrent in the beginning, namely because they underestimate the progress you can make in the beginning just doing, you know, linear progression or linear repetition progression. So generally, you start with the linear progression or linear repetition progression. then move to potential other simple intra and exercise progressions. Then you can go to some simple sequential undulating like light heavy or concurrent like DUP. If those start to fail you, which they shouldn't until intermediate advanced range, you can potentially consider linear or block sequential or emphasize concurrent. And then finally if you're more high advanced elite, you can try conjugate as your method of progress choice. Generally speaking, as you get more advanced, pay more attention to fatigue as much as fitness. Remember in the beginning, your progress with as a beginner is going to be very high and your fatigue is generally going to be proportionately lower. But as you progress and your gains, you know, logarithmically Peter out over time your progress is going to be smaller and your fatigue is going to be much higher just because exercises are getting harder and harder and so you need to be aware of the Fatigue as well as the fitness, especially once they are really close to each other The fatigue can fully mask the fitness at some point so you may only progress at the end of a deload or you know every couple weeks instead of every week or every workout like the beginning stages for beginners and intermediates. And finally, when in doubt, ask for help. Coaches obviously are a good way to ask for help. Those who have achieved the movements that you're looking towards are also a good way to get help. Obviously, there's some blind spots in coaches and athletes who have gotten the movement. Something that has worked for them might not always work for you, but if you're having trouble... identifying the particular weaknesses in your program or you know if you're doing too much or even if you're picking fairly inefficient exercises relative to your goals getting some help can always be more effective so that was chapter 12 mesa cycle planning basically the overview structure of this the mesa cycle which is the 48 weeks maybe up to 12 or longer for beginners and generally speaking The progress is made within this cycle of time. So once you've constructed your routine, this is kind of the chapter and chapter 10 where you aim for the progression methods on how you're going to progress through the workouts and kind of think of them in terms of a macro perspective. You want to progress, you know, workout to workout as a beginner. But as you get stronger and more advanced, the progress is going to be slower and more spread out. So thinking... In terms of those and making small changes to your routines if you plateau or get stuck is the way to go.

But otherwise, let's get into things. So today we'll be covering Overcoming Gravity Online Part 12, which is still in Part 2, and we're going over Constructing Your Workout Team, and specifically Chapter 12, Meso Cycle Planning. So for those of you who don't remember what a meso cycle is, it's basically a 4-8 week, sometime up to 12, period of workouts where you aim to progress through and increase your strength and hypertrophy.

for most of us in that amount of time frame and then usually after you have some sort of deload so you can get rid of any excess fatigue and then after that you start on a new one and continue working towards your goals specifically in this chapter we're going over the beginner intermediate and advanced exercises and recommendations then we'll go over near the end of mesocycle the deload and strength testing then workout restructuring if you want to do any of that going into the next Mesa cycle and then also any additional programming and other considerations. Alright so let's get started. So for beginners in general most of them are going to start with the level one to five range on the specific overcoming gravity progression charts and for these mainly you're going to be doing your basics like your push-ups your dips your pull-ups, your rows, your squats, and some of the progression, little progressions above that.

Additionally, some other things fall into here like the early progressions of ab wheel, so planks and more or less easier bodyweight exercises. Some considerations here, if you're more overweight or obese or very sedentary, you may have to regress. So some people can't start with dips and pull-ups right away or even push-ups so you can always do some specific things to make them easier like doing wall push-ups and then progressively declining them until you're able to do flat push-ups so some recommendations i like for those are using stairs as a progress method for push-ups you can start with like the fourth stair and then go down to the third stair then the second and the first and then you're on flat ground so Ways to make exercises easier, same with rows, you can start more inclined and then bring them down to where your body is level over time.

With push-ups or pull-ups and dips, you can use things like bands or eccentrics or counterweights, such as the Gravitron machine at the gym, where it gives you a little counterweight boost to do the exercise. So lots of alternatives you can do there to build up to... the full exercise and then start on progressing towards your goals if you have any such as like one-arm chins one-arm push-ups and so on generally a lower starting point does not mean you're going to have lower success for example when i restarted training the gymnastics training stuff i could barely do a dip and pull up so it's really not where you start it's where you're able to be consistent and keep doing your workouts and progress over time and you'll generally be fairly successful in getting to your goals if you have good programming and all that stuff as well.

So for beginners in particular, higher reps can be very helpful, namely because you can focus on good technique and also minimize intensity overuse, usually going from say like the 5 to 8 rep range or 5 to 10 and then trying to go to the next progression. you're having a high intensity of the exercise since the next progression is a lot harder and so doing higher reps allows the drilling of technique and helps to more condition the connective tissue in at later intensities so that you're not able or so that you won't start to develop any soreness in the connective tissue or discomfort or any pain like that so if you do encounter those things you can always back off reduce the volume intensity take a mini d load And make sure that those things aren't progressing into full blown things like tendinopathy or anything like that. Generally, I tend to like to limit the use of eccentrics in the beginning. So if you're doing one or two eccentric methods with like pull-ups or dips to get there, you don't want to also be doing eccentrics with other exercises such as push-ups or rows or anything else.

Namely because eccentrics are usually above that 100% one rep max. And so you don't want to have that high intensity on the joints. connective tissues all at once. So if you're doing it try to limit the eccentrics in the beginning. As I said in previous videos I tend to like them as plateau breakers so if you're going to use them use them as plateau breakers or only on one or two exercises at a time.

Generally speaking for beginners full body is ideal but two day splits are okay so some common two day splits are push pull, upper lower, or bent arm straight arm. Generally, within these full body or splits, expect to progress with most exercises every week. So in the beginning, most people will be able to progress pretty much from workout to workout with most of your exercises.

But in general, things tend to slow down over time. So as you get more towards, you know, trained beginner and intermediates, and when that happens, what usually tends to occur is maybe only one exercise in a muscle group, such as your pushups or dips or like handstand pushups, only one of the exercises may progress at once. And that is still good progress if one pushing exercise is progressing. So don't worry if you're not able to progress, you know, both at the same time, or even if both stall, as long as you're able to make some progress within that week, like every two to three workouts, that's good as you start to get out of the beginner gains.

section. Similarly, obviously, consistency is the key to success. And so you want to be not skipping your workouts, you know, one or two here and there, if life gets busy is okay.

Sometimes you can delay them a day. So if you're typically on like a Monday and Wednesday, Friday schedule, if you miss the Wednesday, you can do it on Thursday and then do your Friday workout on Saturday and then jump back into Monday again. So missing some and making up is okay, but some routine structures like the splits may not allow you to make up workouts and missing one is all right.

Generally, if you don't have time, what I tell most people is try to get at least in like one to two sets of the exercise. Most of the benefit of the exercise is in the first set and then it's progressively less from there. If you're doing three sets of say push-ups. 50 60 of the benefit is in that first set just because you're at least hitting maintenance level for that exercise sometimes even beginners are able to brush with one set so most of the benefit is going to be in that first set and then there's less benefit every subsequent set but if you have less time and you're you know running short on time try to get in at least one or two sets and you'll probably even still make progress as a beginner additionally focus on weaknesses and you don't have to focus on muscular weaknesses at the beginning as a beginner but the potential weaknesses i'm talking about are potential imbalances not that they cause injury but we know that they can be risk factors so for example if you have postural issues coming in from working a desk job you know hunching over your desk at school all the time then and your shoulders are forward and your neck's craned making sure you strengthen the back of the neck and back of the shoulder blades, getting more pulling work in to help strengthen those muscles and make sure that you have the strength endurance in those muscles so that you're more resilient to any type of postural related risk factors for pain and injury. Similarly, most beginners don't have to have a mesocycle that they're doing for a defined set of time.

So as I stated in the beginning, most Mesa cycles are four to eight weeks, maybe up to 12. If you're able to continue to progress and you don't have any connective tissue, tendon or joint soreness or discomfort, you're able to progress eight, 12, 16 weeks and just keep on going and progressing, then for sure, just keep doing that. You don't have to have a defined set of time where you're stopping. Obviously if you're starting to feel a little bit of issues in your joints or connective tissue or You know you have a vacation coming up and want to take a break That is a good time for a deload. A deload won't hurt you and only help but if you are able to continue progressing healthily, safely, you can feel free to do that. Beginner gains usually last up to like four to six months, sometimes up to 12 months for some people.

So you can continue to progress with those for a very long time in some cases. Similarly, like I said, if you're feeling sore in the connective tissues, definitely want to deload, allow the body to rest. If it starts coming back early after a deload, then you definitely want to... Usually regress in progression so if you're doing like a harder push-up variation just go back to push-ups and allow your body to acclimate to the volume a Bit more and then after a week or two then jump back up into the next progression again All right, so intermediate recommendations Generally at this point most people are starting to train most of the desired gymnastics progressions that they see when they see bodyweight fitness and want to learn certain skills.

So your back levers, your front levers, your planche, at least some variation of the hold such as you know advanced tuck, straddle, maybe one leg out. Usually not the full exercise at intermediate but at the top end of intermediate usually starting to get into the full exercise of that range. Similarly, handstand pushups, one-arm shit-ups, you're starting to work towards that or getting close to them.

So in these cases, you need to pay attention to flexibility, specifically if you're wanting to work up to things like straight-arm press handstands, V-sit or mana, and other more advanced moves. For example, having a wider straddle, so you're... adductors and quads and hamstrings are more flexible where you can split your legs apart very wide, that is going to make the straddle progression easier. A lot of people have trouble with the straddle progression mainly because they're not flexible and so if you can only split your legs apart you know about this much versus like you know super super wide like that.

Obviously some progressions that are normally harder such as you know one leg out and the other leg tucked like that The one leg out can actually be easier than the straddle in some cases if your straddle is very, very poor. So just be wary of that. If you're trying to work towards a harder progression and you don't have the requisite flexibility, things can get harder over time and impair your technique as well.

As you're getting into the straight arm isometrics, just be generally aware of the connective tissue at the joints. Specifically... for like back lever front lever planche the elbows so your bicep tendon your common flexor tendon for golfer's elbow and also at the shoulder as well your rotator cuff a lot and bicep tendon that goes up into the shoulder area and attaches to the labrum a lot of these can start to become sore because straight arm puts more torque at the joints more force at the joints as your straightening at your body over time.

And so if you start to feel any of that, make sure you back off for a couple weeks and then progressively build back up and that will help. You don't want to continue to push through that assuming that you'll get stronger and it'll go away as that often leads towards overuse injuries. In this specific intermediate recommendations, quality is greater than quantity.

So But in previous videos I talked about general set ranges, you know about 3-6, 4-6 is good for beginners, about 4-8 is good for trained beginners, and about 6-10 is good for intermediates approximately. So generally you'll want to progress about workout to workout or week to week in this, but as you get to more intermediate it's probably going to be every 2-3 workouts your progress. for most exercises. So just keep in mind if you're not progressing every exercise, exercise, every workout, that is fine. Maybe you'll just progress on one exercise if it's earlier in the workout routine versus some of the later ones where there's more fatigue over time with the workout.

Generally you do want to stay in those set ranges. More than about 10 sets tends to be more what is called junk volume where as I indicated earlier, Like the first set was maybe 50% of the benefit. Then the next set's maybe like 20 to 30. And then progressively, as you get to that like 8th, 9th, 10th set, you're maybe only getting, you know, a very small benefit out of it.

Maybe like... 5% or less, sometimes even like 1%. And the fact that you're going to do that many sets for specific muscle groups, you're also building up a ton of fatigue. So your benefits get less and less and less over time where fatigue goes up.

If you have too much fatigue, that's going to mask the fitness and make you progress slower or even halt your progress. So doing too much, you kind of want to drop it. or start low and then build up your sets to find the optimal volume to progress and not start with too much overtime with this you definitely want to start assessing fatigue more while sleep strength or nutrition and stress are very important for beginners as well you definitely see the negative effects of not doing those optimally less with beginners because they're newer to exercise and will just improve with almost anything with intermediate then to advanced and to elite, you're going to have big issues with recovery if you don't start to dial those things in. So you definitely want to dial those things in when you're a beginner, but even more so when you're intermediate, advanced, and so on. Generally, your work capacity and recovery have improved some.

So as you train, you do develop increased work capacity, like with the set ranges I was talking about. Sometimes some people can add another workout in this range. So for example, with a split such as your upper lower, some people going like Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday for their splits can add in an extra workout on Wednesday, then space a rest day in there and then do the other two workouts on Friday and Saturday. Similarly with full body.

If you are going to add another workout, generally if you're doing something like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you want to add Saturday, but you want to split the volume at first. So the Friday workout would be half of the normal workout and then you'd section the other half on to Saturday, and then you can build up the volume with those over time until they're full. Generally over a couple weeks or a lot more.

So you generally don't want, if you're going to add a day, You don't want to add in the whole workout right away. You want to add in a small portion, maybe one set of the exercise, then build to two, then build to three over time. Just allow your body to accommodate because of less rest and more stress on the muscles.

Accommodate to the connective tissue and the less rest as well. Some people may find that, you know, just adding another workout is just too much. I found that personally with climbing and...

full body workouts generally speaking about three four times a week was best for me adding in the extra workouts too much fatigue was accumulating for me and it actually slowed down progress so if you are going to want to add something make sure you take into account that more is not always better sometimes just less with more rest is better for recovery and improving so finally for intermediates deloading for games is the way to go You definitely want to have some type of planned deload to get rid of the higher fatigue and allow those fitness gains that you've made during the cycle to show themselves. If there's no progress for a couple weeks, you definitely want to deload and then potentially move on and modify your program or potentially go at it again and change up the sets, decrease them, and then increase them over time. or change exercises and we'll get to that in that particular section. Alright so advanced recommendations. So usually in this area of progress you're working your harder exercises such as your iron cross, planche, mana, and other advanced movements.

Generally speaking in this specific section both isometric hold and movement training is the most helpful. So when I talked previously in part 10 about concurrent or emphasized concurrent periodization, having a specific emphasis on a particular exercise, this is where that starts to come in. So if you have like 10 total sets, generally in this range, you're still in the 6 to 10 total sets, maybe up to 12 at most, but if you have 10 total sets, I mean you're breaking up between three exercises such about you know, three sets for one, three sets for the other, maybe four sets for the other one. If you have a planche focus, you can dedicate about six to seven of those sets, so two exercises towards the planche and then one exercise towards like a dip or handstand push-up or other pushing movement progression. So this allows you to be able to train the isometric hold as well as a movement variation for strength and hypertrophy.

This tends to allow the best progress. Likewise, manipulating volume and intensity is important at this stage. And sets, as I said before, sets may increase a little bit, but not much.

Generally, this is where you want to start using some variations of periodization, like the sequential different methods or concurrent. So this can also start in the light, sorry, the... intermediate recommendations as well, but you definitely almost always need some in the advanced as well. So your light heavy where you may work be working the five rep max on the heavy day or the ten rep max on the light day for example or daily undulating periodization DUP where you're working three different rep ranges.

So five, ten, fifteen for example or more biased towards strength such as three 7, 10, or things like that. Or if you want to bias it more towards hypertrophy, something like 5 to 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 30, you can do that for this specific section. I do really like DUP in particular, which is a concurrent method for advanced, and that's how I built up to my Iron Cross straddle planche and pretty close to about 10-20 degrees off mana.

DUP is really good at modulating the fatigue effectively because on your lighter days where you're doing higher reps, you're taxing the muscles more, whereas on the heavier days, you're taxing your nervous system more. And so you have that space between each of the heavy to heavy workouts, which can be about like a week or so, and the light workouts can be a week or so to allow your muscles for more full recovery. And it is that wave loading of the intensity and volume that allows fatigue in the different systems to dissipate and to be able to progress well. So as I was alluding to, fatigue mitigation techniques are important, more and very important in this specific range for advanced things like ascending sets.

So ascending would be... In traditional periodizations, you would work with, say, 135 pounds, then 145 pounds, 155, and then maybe your top set would be 165. You wouldn't necessarily do three sets there. You'd stop there.

And the very fact that you're kind of pyramiding up with the same amount of reps, but the lower sets are not a failure, and you can do them very quickly, so you get the full recruitment. That helps to mitigate fatigue. Same thing with hitting a top set and then backing off to get more volume. That can help mitigate fatigue since you're not working with that top set the whole time. Power days where you're not going to failure can help mitigate fatigue.

A ton of those different concepts. There's at least 10 to 15 plus different ways to use those concepts to decrease fatigue over time. I cover those in Overcoming Gravity Advanced Programming if you're interested.

So also shoring up weak links and strength and hypertrophy are very important at this stage. So for example, the common ways to notice weak links at this stage generally are that a particular muscle group is smaller relative to the others. So for example, for me, generally when I was dipping very heavy weights, 190 pounds for five reps, I noticed that my... Anterior delts were actually a lot smaller compared to my triceps and my chest in training for dips. So for me, adding specific isolation exercises for anterior delts would be a good idea to store a potential weakness there.

Similarly, you can use assistance exercises. So different variations of dips, like a more... Shoulder focused type of dip as opposed to more tricep or chest focused dip to hit the specific weak link as there So for pulling weak links and pushing weak links, I listed all the different muscle groups that are generally there. Sometimes your weakness can be with the scapular muscles in the back.

So if you train more depression, so like you're hanging from the bar in a pull-up and you're, you know, shrugging your shoulders up and down, that can be helpful and is a potentially common weak link for things like one-arm chin-ups. Similarly... Some other common weaknesses for planche are the serratus anterior, which helps with protraction of the scapula.

Doing some specific isolation exercises for that can often help. But usually the main movers, such as your anterior delts, maybe your chest, triceps, those are the common ones. Places have weak links and usually can tell if generally the muscles are smaller than the other muscles.

Or if you... can't feel them as well. So like if you're having difficulty establishing a mind muscle connection or getting a burn in them in high rep exercises, that can be also a potential indicator of having a weak link there. So generally moving into advanced range, two day splits tend to be the best.

Full body routines can work if managed well. One of the ways that they can work is if you start to wave load the volume. So if you do like 10 total sets per muscle group on heavier days, but then you go to six on lighter days.

That would be one way to kind of wave load the volume so that you can have a heavier exercise or a heavier workout routine, but then a lighter one. And then that wave loaded volume allows fatigue to dissipate better between each of the heavy workouts. But usually two day splits are the most superior form of training in this range. That's why most power lifting programs move to some type of upper lower split where you're hitting you know upper two times a week lower two times a week and doing your main lifts and your assistance exercises with them that's why they tend to be the best because you're spacing out your workouts you can get a very good workout but then you have you know three to four rest days between each of those workouts which allows you to fully more fully recover from those specific training days 3-1-2-1 specifically can work good for two-day splits, especially if you have a upper body focus or just want to alternate them.

So if you're just alternating them, you may have three upper body workouts and two lower body in a week. Then next week you'd have three lower body and two upper body. But some people, if they have more upper body goals, just want to do upper, lower, upper, then rest, upper, lower, and then... rest and then repeat that.

That can be the case. Just don't train enough like that to where your upper body is out of proportion to your lower body and you kind of get the stick leg syndrome. So elite programming.

I covered this in a small section in the book, but generally speaking, it's very highly dependent on the athlete and coach. If you're at this point where you're training things like Maltese or Victorian, generally you probably don't need my book. Unless you're want to learn more about periodization and how to consistently progress obviously the various periodization methods do work from advanced to elite like the sequential method block and Your emphasize concurrent and conjoint all of these work from advanced to elite level So if you're having problems progressing as fast as you want to or your plateau more often in particular As you get towards these skills then those Periodization systems can definitely be useful for you. Alright, so deloading and strength testing So generally speaking a week off is the standard it can be less if you haven't Done a shorter or if you have done a shorter cycle such as four weeks But generally a week is a good amount of time to fully dissipate fatigue generally speaking I tend to, I used to take like full weeks off, but I found it better to just have, you know, a couple of workouts here and there, and then modified to be lighter, uh, in volume, frequency, or intensity. So the ways to do this are you generally drop two out of the three components.

So for example, um, you would drop volume or frequency. So if you drop volume, you would drop volume. generally you drop down from three to five sets of an exercise down to one or two if you decrease frequency you drop from three workouts to one or two workouts if you drop intensity Generally you do easier progressions. So if you're doing things you generally want to do only two or keep one high so maybe you're keeping intensity high and Doing some reps of the previous progressions you're working on in the cycle But you'd also drop volume down to one to two sets so one to two sets is basically about maintenance maintenance volume and you would drop the frequency down to one or two workouts so basically you're just maintaining and allowing the rest of the volume to be much lower and the frequency would be much lower so that the fatigue dissipates so that would be the way to do it if you're not injured generally i like dropping volume and frequency and keeping intensity a little bit higher just so you kind of maintain that skill and come back stronger with it if you're potentially battling some Overuse injuries coming on, I tend to like dropping the intensity and or frequency or volume.

Usually, definitely intensity for that, but then you can kind of play with the volume and frequency. Or sometimes even all three if you're potentially getting overuse in your tendons, for example. So definitely drop to easier exercises, potentially do some rehab isolation work for those specific.

exercises and making sure you're dropping the volume and frequency down so that you don't, you're able to heal up and you're not aggravating it more such that when you go into the next cycle, it flares up, the symptoms flare up much more easier. So as I talked about before, overuse generally decrease intensity and volume and or do prehab. Generally in this stage, higher recommend... higher repetitions in the 15 to 30 range tend to be effective for prehab so maximal strength testing so what this means is right before the next cycle or on the first day of the next cycle usually you can test what your new maxes are and that's after all the fatigue gets dissipated so your fitness is like fully revealed and you should have your full strength and be able to potentially set a new Personal record. So if you're talking about like planche holds Your previous max was say 10 seconds if you test it and your new max is 16 seconds Then you would use the asymmetric progression charts to find out what your new hold time is for that specific starting point so usually about 60 to 75 percent maybe 80 percent in there so about 10 to 11 second hold, maybe up to 12 would be your starting point for that next mesocycle for your planche isometric holds.

Generally you can modify exercises to appropriate reps and reserves, so that's how many reps you have till failure or the hold times. So generally speaking at the beginning of a cycle you don't need to be going to failure right away. Anything within about three to four reps from failure is fine and as long as you're increasing the reps over the course of your workouts or increasing the hold times then you're eventually going to start to hit closer and closer to failure until you hit the failure so i'm starting with easier exercises or easier reps and reserve is not a big deal as long as you're building up the progress over time So alternatively, you can pick up from where you left off, especially if you feel much stronger.

So, you know, if your previous planche holds were 10 seconds long, then just build up, start going for 11 seconds, then 12 seconds, 13 seconds and so on. So you hit a plateau and, you know, kind of either rebuild up from there or continue to try to aim to progress that over time. All right. Workout restructuring.

This is not that hard. So there's various ways to do it. Generally speaking, there's a few scenarios.

So if you have achieved your goals, then basically you're going to modify routine. So if you achieved your back lever or your front lever, generally speaking, I like to keep it near the beginning of the workout. One set, maybe one to two times a week, just doing the hold so you can maintain it. Then you can sub out the back lever front lever exercises that you were doing for another goal So you got back lever and now want to work on front lever? Have the back lever in there at maintenance level just so you can maintain it and then stick in sets of front lever holds or front lever rows to start to work towards the front lever.

If you have not achieved your goals and have plateaued for a while then there's a lot of things you need to consider. So if you've started doing too much it can often be the case that you'll start to progress again if you backed off the volume. So you know if you're at 10, 11, 12 sets of pushing exercises Start with six and then build back up again. Usually you'll hit a range where you'll actually start to progress again.

And actually taking off sets of an exercise can be a good way to do that. Were you doing too little? That is possible. Some people like to keep things at six sets.

So six sets will help you progress for a long time generally from beginner to trained beginner to intermediate. But... Sometimes in intermediate and advanced range you might need a little bit more volume. So if you're having issues progressing and you seem to be on the lower end of the set range, start to add a little bit more.

Similarly if you're having issues with potential fatigue, deloads may be needed. Generally speaking, also check for fatigue, not just fatigue in the workout, but also fatigue and recovery factors such as your sleep, your nutrition, stress levels with school, family, friends, whatever is in your life that is stressing you. All these things can negatively affect recovery and increase fatigue. You can also change up the programming or periodization structure. So like I mentioned, one of the common methods after the simple intra and inter-exercise progressions is to go to a light heavy where you're doing a 5 rep max and 10 rep max or generally different rep ranges there that allows you to start progressing again with the a simple undulating or simple sequential and undulating periodization structure um generally speaking you can also change full body into a split or a split in the full body or vice versa that can be a way to change things up to ensure progress again And then you can also change up stale exercises.

So if you've been stuck on planche isometrics for a while, you can try to move to a planche push-up progression, which can help to break that plateau as well. So if you're doing all of these, or if you're considering all of these, generally small modifications are best. So generally speaking, you only want to modify one thing at a time.

So if you think that you're doing the right amount of volume, and your fatigue is okay, then maybe change it up from the programming structure from the simple inter and intra exercise progressions to something like light heavy. Don't try to change up your set range from like six to 10 here and then change up your sleep, your diet and your stress levels. And then also try to go from, uh, you know, a regular progression to five and the five rep max, 10 rep max, and then also change from full body to a split. Change one thing up at a time.

Usually that's enough to get you your progress started again, especially if you're doing programming changes or split changes or changing out stale exercises. So you don't need to be changing multiple things at once, maybe two things at once. You know, if you sense that you have a little too much in your routine and you also do want to try a different split you can do two things at once um generally i like small is a lot better just because if you're doing too many changes it's too hard to identify what has gone wrong if you change up too much generally speaking if your small changes one to two changes and it doesn't work you can identify it's obviously the small changes did not work i can try you know i i don't the light heavy such as five rep max tenor max didn't stimulate progress again Okay, maybe it's still too much with the full body routine.

Maybe I need to switch to a split now. So small changes are best. You can find out what is going wrong, or in most cases, it'll jumpstart your progress again. So if there's one thing to do, it's always, I like very small changes in a program and see what happens over the course of, you know, three to four weeks. Usually your progress will jumpstart, but if it doesn't, then you can make another small change.

All right, finally, last slide. This is getting pretty long. Additional considerations. For your goals and exercises, don't spread yourself too thin.

And I've talked about this before, but only one to two goals per pushing, upper body pulling, legs, and core. It's trying to spread out the too many exercises. You have that frequency issue where if you're only doing it once a week, you're only getting 50 times of practice with it.

So you're not going to be able to progressively overload it more than 50 times. Generally speaking, if you get an exercise to be doing... two to three times a week, you're getting 100 to 150 times of practice of the exercise, more opportunities for progressive overlay.

And if you're working your specific goal, like front lever, you're definitely going to get to it faster because you're working it more often and developing the specific neurological adaptations for the exercise. Same with the basics and progress. You can it.

Basically, you want to focus on the various periodization schemes kind of in order to progress. You don't want to jump to more advanced ones like linear or block or concurrent in the beginning, namely because they underestimate the progress you can make in the beginning just doing, you know, linear progression or linear repetition progression. So generally, you start with the linear progression or linear repetition progression. then move to potential other simple intra and exercise progressions. Then you can go to some simple sequential undulating like light heavy or concurrent like DUP.

If those start to fail you, which they shouldn't until intermediate advanced range, you can potentially consider linear or block sequential or emphasize concurrent. And then finally if you're more high advanced elite, you can try conjugate as your method of progress choice. Generally speaking, as you get more advanced, pay more attention to fatigue as much as fitness. Remember in the beginning, your progress with as a beginner is going to be very high and your fatigue is generally going to be proportionately lower. But as you progress and your gains, you know, logarithmically Peter out over time your progress is going to be smaller and your fatigue is going to be much higher just because exercises are getting harder and harder and so you need to be aware of the Fatigue as well as the fitness, especially once they are really close to each other The fatigue can fully mask the fitness at some point so you may only progress at the end of a deload or you know every couple weeks instead of every week or every workout like the beginning stages for beginners and intermediates.

And finally, when in doubt, ask for help. Coaches obviously are a good way to ask for help. Those who have achieved the movements that you're looking towards are also a good way to get help.

Obviously, there's some blind spots in coaches and athletes who have gotten the movement. Something that has worked for them might not always work for you, but if you're having trouble... identifying the particular weaknesses in your program or you know if you're doing too much or even if you're picking fairly inefficient exercises relative to your goals getting some help can always be more effective so that was chapter 12 mesa cycle planning basically the overview structure of this the mesa cycle which is the 48 weeks maybe up to 12 or longer for beginners and generally speaking The progress is made within this cycle of time. So once you've constructed your routine, this is kind of the chapter and chapter 10 where you aim for the progression methods on how you're going to progress through the workouts and kind of think of them in terms of a macro perspective. You want to progress, you know, workout to workout as a beginner.

But as you get stronger and more advanced, the progress is going to be slower and more spread out. So thinking... In terms of those and making small changes to your routines if you plateau or get stuck is the way to go.

Transcript for:Meso Cycle Planning for Workout Progression

Transcript for:
Meso Cycle Planning for Workout Progression