Writing programs is easy. You just need to do between 1-20 sets of 1-100 reps per muscle group at between 5-120% of your 1RM and rest for 1-300 minutes between sets. It’s science. This is obviously an exaggeration of what is written in most textbooks, but most textbooks provide general guidelines but fail to explain how to individualize those numbers for your client.

This is what textbooks are meant for, though. To give you a general idea of how to write a workout based on what is effective for the majority of the population. So, if you follow the guidelines listed, you’ll likely provide some decent results for your client, but what’s next? Do you just add weight to the bar? Do you perform more sets? More reps? What happens if they don’t get better, or even worse, decrease in performance? Do you just go back and repeat the previous program?

The reality is that most humans will respond similarly to various types of stimuli. If you lift heavy, they’ll get strong. If you do a lot of volume, they’ll get big assuming they’re eating enough (read The Ultimate Guide to Muscle Gain and Hypertrophy).

What differs is their starting point, how much volume/intensity they require to see adaptation, and their ability to recover from training. Implementing the concept of structural balance, INOL, and utilizing a general training framework while adjusting to fatigue can help you design an initial program and provide you the data to successfully write future programs.

What is Structural Balance?

First, let’s define terms. Structural balance merely implies that your total body musculature is balanced. So, the muscles on the anterior side of your body aren’t overpowering the muscles on the posterior side of the body, and you don’t walk around like a gorilla with a massive upper body and undersized lower body.

To determine if a client is structurally balanced, you should do two things. The first thing is a simple postural assessment. Depending on how comfortable you are with the client can determine how in-depth you can get. For example, an athlete you’ve worked with in the past who is extremely confident might not have an issue with taking their shirt off so you can see how their scapula move.

An overweight 40-year-old woman who is already super anxious about training will likely be made that much more uncomfortable if you ask her to remove her shirt. Regardless of whether you have your client keep their shirt on or off, you can generally see major imbalance like overly kyphotic T-spines or internally rotated shoulders.

The second would be by performing a variety of different exercises and comparing their maxes or calculated maxes. It should be noted that you would only do this with a client who has some degree of a training history or a client who has been through a movement emphasis training block with you like Block 0. So, if the client is capable of performing maxes, or rep maxes, you can see where their imbalances exist.

The Intensity Number of Lifts (INOL)

The next definition we need to look at is INOL. INOL is shorthand for the intensity number of lifts. It takes a look at the intensity from a %1RM standpoint and the number of lifts performed at those percentages. The actual calculation used is (Reps/(100-Intensity)). This provides you with a score for a certain lift.

In his paper, How to Design Strength Training Programs Using Prilipen’s Table, Hristo Hristov has recommendations regarding what score won’t cause enough stress for adaptation, what causes enough stress for adaptation, and what causes too much fatigue for effective adaptation. Even if you don’t utilize his specific numbers, utilizing INOL is an effective tool for gauging how much volume and intensity your client adapts to most efficiently.

Autoregulation: Adjusting Your Training to Your Needs

The final definition is autoregulation. Autoregulation allows you to adjust your program based on things like your recovery and CNS readiness. There are a variety of different ways to utilize autoregulation which we’ll get into later in this article.

The terms are defined, so what do we do with them? Well first let’s look at our structural balance. When looking at structural balance I recommend utilizing exercises that are pertinent to your client’s goals. For example, if they’re a weightlifter, or you have an athlete that will regularly be utilizing the Olympic lifts, you can test the snatch, clean, and jerk.

If you don’t plan on utilizing the Olympic lifts then there’s no reason to include them in the structural balance test. If this is the case, I recommend testing the conventional deadlift, back squat, front squat, bench press, overhead press, and barbell row.

Since maxing out, or performing AMRAPs, on multiple exercises is very fatiguing, I would split the exercises up between 2-3 days with 1-4 days in between. After getting all of your maxes, or calculated maxes from your AMRAPs, you can see what the correlation is between lifts and where your client’s imbalances might be.

To determine how each lift should be correlated, you can look at the work of people like Charles Poliquin, Christian Thibedeau, and Travis Mash. They’ve all written about the importance of structural balance and what constitutes structural balance.

Exercise Selection and Baselines

A possible example of structural balance would be utilizing the back squat as your reference lift. If your client back squats 100 lbs, then to be structurally balanced they should be able to front squat 85 lbs, conventional deadlift 110 lbs, bench press 75 lbs, barbell row 52.5 lbs, and overhead press 45 lbs (read Know Your Ratios, Destroy Weaknesses).

Now when looking at your structural balance assessment, you need to also take into account the anthropometrics of the client. If you have a client who has extremely long legs and short arms, they are most likely not going to be able to deadlift 110% of their back squat.

If they have a massive chest and super short arms, then they may be able to bench press greater than 75% of their bench press due simply to the shorter range of motion they need to move the bar. So, use the numbers of your structural balance assessment as your baseline, but adjust it as needed due to the anthropometrics of your client.

Utilizing your structural balance test, you can determine which exercises you want to emphasize within your training block. Determining exercise selection can be done a multitude of ways. One simple way is to train each movement category all three days of the week with your primary weakness earliest in the workout and your strengths later in the workout to ensure you’re getting the highest quality reps for your primary weakness.

If we split our movement categories into deadlift/Olympic variation, squat/lunge variation, upper body push, and upper body pull, we can then include an exercise from each of those categories in the workout. Since all exercises are not created equal in regard to the stress they impose, it’s a good idea to utilize exercises of descending stress throughout the workout.

So instead of utilizing the highest stress exercises in each movement category and including conventional deadlift, back squat, bench press, barbell row you can use exercises of descending stress like a conventional deadlift, front squat, overhead press, chin-up.

Determining Individualized Intensities Using INOL

Now that you have your exercises selected, we can take a look at intensities. Utilizing the concept of INOL, and Hristov’s numbers, we can see that you want at least a score of 0.4 in a workout during week 1. Anything below this generally doesn’t cause enough stress to cause positive adaptation.

0.4-1 is considered very doable and optimal if you’re not accumulating fatigue and 1-2 is considered tough, but good for loading phases. I’m a big proponent of utilizing the minimum effective dose to get strength gains and think it’s always better to undershoot and increase training stress rather than overshoot it and potentially set yourself back.

With this in mind, I’d recommend using a score of 0.8 initially for your primary exercise. So whatever loading parameter you utilize, whether it’s straight sets, wave loading, working up to something heavy and performing back-down sets, when you put it into the equation (reps/(100-intensity), it should come out as 0.8.

This number can be increased by up to 10-20% initially for your primary exercise, but you’ll need to decrease some of your other exercise categories by the same percentage. With each week, you can decrease the volume and increase the intensity. After each training block, increase the INOL of week 1.

If the previous training block was effective, then increase the week 1 INOL to 0.88. If that ends up being effective, then increase it to 0.96. Keep increasing it until you no longer see a positive adaptation. If INOL ends up being too great in a single training session, and you routinely can’t recover enough for another hard training session that week, then it’s better to decrease the volume on that day and add another training session within the week.

It’s at this point when you look back at your training logs, and see what week 1 INOL your client had the greatest improvement on. Utilize that amount of training volume the majority of the year, while occasionally going above and below it to overreach and recover at times, and you’ll be setting your client up for their best opportunity for success since the volume is individualized to them.

It’s important to remember that when you train, you’re not training in a vacuum. What happens on day 1 affects day 2. With this in mind, we want to have the ability to auto-regulate our client’s training based on what we are capable of on a given day.

There might be days where your client didn’t get enough sleep, didn’t eat enough calories, their significant other broke up with them, or the previous training session was too stressful, so they can’t hit the numbers they’re supposed to hit on that day. This can become very obvious once the client starts training, and you can make an adjustment then, but ideally, you want to be able to adjust their training before the training starts.

To make the call on whether or not to change the plan, you’ll want to utilize some type of procedure for measuring CNS readiness. There are a variety of options. One option would be to test heart rate variability (HRV). There’s a variety of tools you can purchase to measure HRV, but they’ll end up costing you anywhere from a couple hundred to a few thousand dollars.

Another way is by measuring bar speed at a reference percentage for a reference lift. The equipment for this also would cost you a couple hundred or a few thousand dollars. These are great tools to utilize, so if you have the resources, then I would recommend getting them since they’ll provide you with a ton of training data.

If, however, you don’t have the money for an HRV or accelerometer equipment, then you can utilize cheaper methods like a hand dynamometer. In Thomas Kurtz book, Science of Sports Training, he discusses measuring grip strength to test recovery since grip strength is correlated with CNS readiness.

He states that if an athlete has a decrease of grip strength more than 2 kg, then they are under-recovered. A hand dynamometer can be purchased for as little as $20. The important thing is that you utilize the same hand dynamometer every time you test because if you use different ones, it will decrease the reliability and validity of your test.

Another thing to consider is that if you have a lot of training that taxes your grip then you might get a low score due to peripheral fatigue instead of systemic fatigue. For this reason, it’s a good idea to have a secondary test like a countermovement jump height.

If your client is under-recovered and needs a lighter training session, then you can utilize the ‘rule of 60’ and decrease training volume load to 60% of your original plan (read Supertraining). Instead of decreasing the volume in the form of sets/reps, I’d recommend decreasing it by training intensity (%1RM) since the under-recovered athlete’s max for that day is likely lower and this still provides plenty of practice with the movement.

Continuous Assessment and Adjustment

Utilizing INOL with your auto-regulation protocol will also help you plan for the future. At the end of each training block, take a look at the adjustments you had to make and what the INOL your client ended up doing as a result of those adjustments. This will give you a better picture of what training volume your client can actually adapt to and allow you to more efficiently plan future training blocks.

Initial training programs for any client is always an educated guess, but utilizing these tools in a bottom-up approach, will allow you to use more of a top-down approach in future programming for your client. Seeing how they adapt to a certain program allows you to better understand them and create more individualized plan overtime.

Everyone adapts similarly to similar stimuli but having the ability to individualize a program to each client will increase their chance for continuous optimal results. Set yourself apart from other coaches and utilize your tools to provide the best program for your clients.

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My main purpose as a youth strength and conditioning coach is to make kids stronger, faster, more mobile, and better conditioned, so clearly I want to put them in the best position possible for them to reach those goals.

Holding them back is not in my best interest, but it is in their best interest and sometimes 8-14-year-old kids and don’t necessarily understand that. It’s then my job as the strength coach to explain why they are doing lighter weights initially in a way they can understand and accept. I always tell them that they need to earn the right to lift a heavier weight.

Youth Must Earn the Right to Lift Heavy

By earning the right to lift a heavier weight, they need to show me they can do the movement correctly with a lighter weight for a certain number of reps first. Most youth athletes can probably pick 80lbs off the ground without much effort, but few can initially deadlift it off the ground while maintaining a neutral spine.

There’s the saying “slow is smooth and smooth is fast” implying that in order to move something fast and smoothly you must first be able to do it slowly. The same applies to heavy loads in strength training. If you can’t perform the movement with a light weight, then you haven’t earned the right to attempt it with a heavy weight.

Once a proper movement pattern is developed it is safe to load that pattern, assuming the youth athlete has the maturity to focus on what they are doing during the lift. If the movement pattern isn’t developed then more practice at lighter loads need to be the main focus.

This can be frustrating for the kids and will sometimes will bring pressure from parents who may think the coach doesn’t understand their child’s abilities, but it is essential that the coach doesn’t sacrifice form to lift a heavier weight. Youth athletes have plenty of time to load up the bar; don’t set them up for future failure by loading an improper movement pattern.

Develop Proper Movement Patterns

So how does a coach develop these proper movement patterns in youth athletes? Practice. The athlete needs to practice the basic moves over and over again. This can be best be accomplished by teaching stability in certain positions of a movement and then proceeding to make it dynamic.

Now a quick disclaimer: I did not invent any of the concepts I’ll be talking about in the next few paragraphs. I like to give credit where credit is due and as most strength coaches will admit, everything we utilize in our programming was borrowed from another strength coach. I once had a mentor tell me that strength coaches are basically meathead thieves.

There haven’t been a whole lot of new concepts since the 1960’s; just new ways to implement those concepts. The programming I’ll be laying out was created after reading some of Joe Kenn’s Block 0 concepts, Michael Yessis’ 1×20 program, countless conversations with other coaches I respect, and from seeing over 1,000 youth athletes move and train.

Youth athletes generally have very poor kinesthetic awareness. They don’t know where their body is in space. You can tell them they need to flatten their back on a deadlift and they will tell you it already is, when in reality, it’s more upside down U-shaped than the Liberty Bell.

Youth must learn what their bodies should feel like in various positions of a lift. Therefore,the first step should be having your youth athletes perform isometric holds at various positions of key lifts before making it dynamic.

Knowing this, you will then need to choose your key lifts. At our facility we always use a squat variation, hip-hinge, deadlift variation, single-leg variation, upper body horizontal push/pull, upper body vertical push/pull, and a trunk exercise. Which ones you use and how often will be determined by how many times a week you see an athlete and what your facility has access to.

Our youth squat anywhere between 1-3 times per week utilizing either a bodyweight squat or goblet squat depending on ability. Three times per week may seem like a lot of squatting, but these athletes need practice and not one of them is lifting enough weight that they can’t recover by the next session.

Since this is a stability portion of training, the athlete will hold the bottom position of a squat for anywhere between 5-30 seconds depending on how many reps they will be doing. We’re fortunate to have 5-15lb training bars at our facility but if your facility doesn’t have those items, you can use plates, dumbbells, and kettlebells. Youth and adult alike, any hip-hinging movement seems to be the hardest exercise for most people, to grasp.

Moving on to the deadlift, we again have 5-15lb training bars and 10 lbs bumpers which makes learning the movement much easier. If these tools aren’t available, you can again use dumbbells or kettlebells. Since the bottom position of the deadlift is with the weight resting on the floor, the athlete has to grab the bar and set up but doesn’t lift it until they hear a coach’s up call.

This ensures the coach can at least make sure the athletes start in the correct position before lifting it since many youths will pick up the bar with a rounded back and start the movement from the top. Including pauses right off the floor and right before setting it down can also reinforce the correct movement pattern.

With the single leg movement, we will start with a split squat where the athlete needs to pause at the bottom position with their knee right above the ground. For weaker athletes who can’t maintain this position or larger youth athletes, you can use a bar or TRX band for support. Again, the athlete will hold this position for 5-30 seconds each leg depending on the number of reps.

For our upper body push movements, we use a barbell overhead press, barbell bench press, and barbell elevated push up. Both the bench press and barbell elevated push-ups require pauses at the bottom positions but the overhead press we perform dynamically and instead focus on lowering it slowly since few athletes have trouble just holding the bar in this position.

I should mention that all of our exercises are finished with the concentric portion of the lift, there is just a greater emphasis on creating stability in the bottom portion of the lift. For the upper body pull movements, we primarily utilized the inverted row and the chin-hang. The athletes who can’t hold a chin-hang can just place a foot on the ground to help assist them.

The first trunk exercise implemented is usually a front plank. There will often be a prescribed time for the first couple sets, but the last one we will often allow those athletes to hold as long as possible since this makes the session more enjoyable by adding in a little competition. We will occasionally use the same concept for our chin-hangs as well.

The stability portion is normally done for two weeks and is then followed by an eccentric focus block. Once the athletes have shown they can maintain stability in the bottom position, they need to prove they can control their bodies throughout the transitions of the movements.

For all the exercises listed above, they will now perform them all dynamically but are required to control the lowering portion for 3-5 seconds depending on the number of prescribed reps. Additional loading can be added if the athletes have shown they can still perform the movement correctly. This eccentric focus generally lasts for another two weeks. Finally, during the next two weeks, the movements are performed dynamically. The athletes still need to demonstrate control, but there is no prescribed tempo.

This normally forms our athlete’s base in regard to strength movements. We do generally add in additional exercises such as step-ups, lateral split squats, deadbug progressions, and various types of crawls depending on the length of the program.

Progressing Your Youth Athletes

Once your athletes understand the foundational movements; it’s a great time to expose them to a multitude of movements that they might perform in future programs to make them more physically literate. This is where Yessis’ 1×20 program comes in.

His program calls for athletes to perform 1 set of 20 reps of 27 different exercises. This may seem like a lot of volume to recover from, but you need to remember that these aren’t 700lb squatters. These youth aren’t going to create such a huge homeostatic disruption that they can’t recover from it.

Yessis’ program calls for the following movement categories:

• Heel (calf) raise
• Leg (knee) extension
• Leg (knee) flexion
• Squat (one half-full) or leg press
• Good morning
• Hip flexion
• Hip adduction
• Hip abduction
• Hip extension
• Back raises
• Back raises with a twist
• 45 degree sit up
• Reverse trunk twist
• Reverse sit up
• Bench press
• Bent over row two variants
• Overhead press two variants
• Full and partial range front arm raise
• Full and partial range lateral arm raise
• Lat pulldown
• Bicep curl
• Tricep pushdown
• Supination-pronation
• Wrist curls
• Reverse curls
• Finger and grip exercises
• Breathing exercises¹

Yessis believes this combination to be very effective, and I know other coaches who swear by it, but just like any other program, a good coach takes what he or she thinks is good and implements them into his or her own program. That being said, I’ve tweaked the categories into the following:

• Dorsiflexion
• Plantar flexion
• Ankle inversion
• Ankle eversion
• Lunge variation
• Squat variation
• Hip-hinge variation
• Hip flexion
• Hip abduction
• Hip adduction
• Hip extension
• Plank variation
• Weighted carries
• Horizontal push variation
• Horizontal pull variation
• Vertical push variation
• Vertical pull variation
• Shoulder flexion
• Shoulder abduction
• Shoulder horizontal abduction
• Elbow flexion
• Elbow extension
• Wrist flexion
• Wrist extension
• Breathing exercises

Depending on time per session and number of sessions per week, you can do all of these categories in a single session or you can spread it out throughout the week.

A single session may look something like this:

• Band anterior tibialis
• Calf raise
• Banded ankle wipers (each way)
• Walking lunge
• Goblet squat
• Kettlebell swing
• Standing mini band march
• Straight leg mini band lateral march
• Cable adduction
• Glute bridge
• Stir the pot
• Farmers walk
• Bench press
• Dumbbell row
• Dumbbell overhead press
• Lat pulldown
• Plate front raise
• Dumbbell lateral raise
• Band pull-apart
• Barbell curl
• Band tricep pushdown
• Barbell wrist curl
• Barbell wrist extension
• Diaphragmatic breathing

During the first week or two, I normally do 2 sets of 10 reps instead of 1×20 since it gives an opportunity to do some more coaching between sets for these athletes as most of the exercises will be new. With most of my athletes training either 2 days or 3 days per week at this point, I’ll normally use two different workouts and rotate between them for anywhere from 2-6 weeks depending on the total length of the program.

To illustrate on a three-day rotation it would look like this:

• Monday: Workout A
• Wednesday: Workout B
• Friday: Workout A
• Monday: Workout B
• Wednesday: Workout A
• Friday: Workout B

This allows for more variation to keep the kids from getting bored but doesn’t overload them with too many new movements to learn at one time. Although I think the Yessis 1×20 is effective and kids enjoy doing the larger number of exercises (which is why I implement it), I do think that multi-set programs are more efficient, especially as the athlete gets stronger.

So, following our 1×20 program we will transition back to a multi-set program proceeding to the next progressions of exercises we utilized during the initial Block 0. It is at this point that the athletes have shown they can move correctly on a multitude of movements, get locked in and focus on the lift, and have earned the right to lift “heavy.”

We’ll still keep the reps in the 8-12 rep range and will not sacrifice good technique for a super heavy load, but now they can move some weight that they can earn “bragging rights” for.

Put It to Practice

I’ve seen this type of programming to be effective with the youth that I work with but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the strength and conditioning field it is that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Your facility, equipment, number of athletes, coaching history, weight room culture, and clientele will determine what will work best for you. If you’re looking for a program, and this type of program fits with your culture and coaching style, then implement it, collect data throughout, evaluate, and decide whether it would be an effective tool in your future programs.

You might also like:

• 7 Reasons Youth Athletes Need To Strength Train
• A Lesson Plan For The Youth Athlete
• Strength Training Is Good For Kids – Here’s How To Do It

Reference:

1. Yessis, Michael. The Revolutionary 1 X 20 RM Strength Training Program. California, USA: Sports Training, 2014.

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Every athlete, with the possible exception of athletes near the top of their weight class, can benefit from adding more muscle mass. The benefits are obvious for physique athletes, but strength and team sport athletes can also improve performance by increasing the amount of muscle mass they have packed onto their frame.

Having more muscle will provide the opportunity to make said muscle more neurologically efficient and improve the potential for force production. So whether hypertrophy training makes up a large chunk of the annual macrocycle, like in a bodybuilder’s case, or is mainly placed in the general preparatory period, like most performance based athletes, hypertrophy should be a main focus at some point for all athletes.

Understanding Hypertrophy

There are literally hundreds of different loading protocols to increase hypertrophy in your athletes. Just go to google and type in hypertrophy training and it’ll come up with over five million hits in under a second. Even someone who loves reading about training as much as this coach doesn’t have time to sift through all the articles found on the internet regarding a single training goal. That’s why it’s important to understand the basic principles of hypertrophy training and utilizing this knowledge to form a template for your hypertrophy protocols.

So what causes hypertrophy? Two of the main factors to consider are mechanical tension and metabolite accumulation. Mechanical tension in the simplest terms is going to be the amount of tension placed on the muscle. So the greater the load, the more tension that is going to be placed on that muscle in that given position. Metabolite accumulation refers to the accumulation of by-products from energy production, such as lactate.

To maximize mechanical tension, the athlete must lift heavy. To maximize metabolite accumulation, the athlete must lift for an extended duration. These two things can’t be maximally done at the same time. Tell anyone who’s spent even a little time in the gym to lift 95% of their one rep max for 12 reps and they’ll, at the very least, shake their head at you. So instead, the athlete must lift as heavy a weight as possible for the prescribed time period. This generally involves lifting a moderate to heavy load (65-80% of the one rep max) for a duration of 20-70 seconds.^2,3 Additional guidelines include doing 4-8 sets of 8-12 total exercises.² There are definitely exceptions to these rules, but these are good baseline numbers for creating a hypertrophy protocol.

So is it that simple? Just lift a weight at 65-80% of your athlete’s one rep max for 20-70 seconds for 4-8 sets a few times a week? The answer is yes and no. Yes, this could be done and lower level athletes will see good results from it in the short term. Good results in the short term should not be the goal for the coach or the athlete, though. The coach has to remember that each training session is not done in a vacuum. Each session will affect the sessions after it and each microcycle will have a cumulative effect throughout the training block. With this in mind, it is made obvious that fatigue management must be considered when creating a hypertrophy block.

It’s clear that the athlete must be stressed beyond previous abilities in order to cause adaptation which can at times make fatigue management difficult, but it can be done. There are multiple ways that fatigue management can be incorporated including: periodically reducing volume, reducing intensity, reducing volume and intensity, and incorporating lower stress exercises. How these are incorporated can depend on several variables such as the period of time in the training cycle, the strength level of the athlete, and what other qualities the athlete needs to develop in the same period of time.

The Role of the Undulating Model

One method that is effective for improving performance while managing fatigue is using an undulating model. Most people are familiar with the term ‘undulating’ in regard to periodization, but it is often misused for fatigue management. Coaches will often use a high volume/low intensity day, low volume/high intensity day, and possibly a low volume/low intensity day. Another way these days are generally listed are as a hypertrophy day, strength day, and speed day. This model has been shown to be effective for many athletes who train consistently because it does create a stressful environment, which forces the athlete to adapt. However, it doesn’t account for fatigue management very well. The lower intensity of the hypertrophy days don’t offset the higher intensity of the strength days because the volume is increased too significantly.

A more effective way to implement an undulating model is to have a singular training emphasis, or at least 70% of your volume directed at a single emphasis, and undulating intensity while keeping volume relatively constant. With this model, your athletes are able to concentrate on a single quality to improve while managing fatigue. The qualities you are trying to develop need be properly organized in separate blocks so they can build off of each other, but that is a discussion for another article. This article is about hypertrophy, so now we’ll take a look at how to manage fatigue in a hypertrophy block.

Fatigue Management

As mentioned above, undulating intensity is your best bet for managing fatigue. This can be done multiple ways, but one of the easiest ways is to divide your training days into high and low intensity days. Once you’ve done that, simply take 70-90% of the load used on the high intensity day, and that will be the load you use on the low intensity day.⁴

For example, if you do 3 sets of 12 reps of back squats at 65-67% on the high intensity day, then you would do 3 sets of 12 reps of back squats at 52-53% on the low intensity day which is 80% of the high intensity day. This does two things. The low intensity day allows your athlete to feel fresher for their next high intensity day the following week. On top of that, it allows for additional practice of the lift, which will improve the neural qualities needed to recruit the correct motor units for the lift. If a third day of a certain lift is needed than 60% of the high intensity day should be used because it still allows for additional practice without causing additional central nervous system fatigue.¹

Another way to do this is by having high intensity and low intensity days, but instead of using 80% of the same exercise, your athlete uses a less stressful exercise on the low intensity day. So if your athlete’s high intensity upper body day consisted of bench press and barbell rows at 67% of the one rep max for those exercises, then on their low intensity days they would perform a 60 degree incline press and a wide grip pulldown at around 67% of those two exercises on that day.

Since the weight being used is less on the low intensity day (if you can do more on a 60 degree incline press than you can do on a bench press, then you are an anomaly) it will cause less neural fatigue. Since the loads are the same percent of the one rep max, however, a reduction in volume of 10-50% is also recommended.⁴

This method is better utilized for athletes who don’t need the additional practice of certain lifts and instead need a broader range of muscular development that the variation in this model provides.

Customize to the Athlete

The type of undulating model you use, as well as what end of the set/rep/% rep max spectrum you implement, will depend on your athletes. The best program is individualized and based on your athlete’s needs, abilities, and resources. The recommendations listed in this article are merely guidelines to help build a general template for your athlete’s hypertrophy phase. Hopefully with this template, along with your own coaching experience and knowledge of your athletes, you are able to put together the ideal hypertrophy protocol.

References:

1. Siff, Mel. “Periodisation as a Form of Organisation” Supertraining, 316. Denver, 2003.

2. Kurz, Thomas. “Strength” in Science of Sports Training, 152. Island Pond: Stadion Publishing Company, 2001.

3. Poliquin, Charles. “The Science of Tempo” in The Poliquin Principles, 23. Napa: Dayton Writers Group, 1997.

4. Israetel, Mike. Smith, Chad Wesley. Hoffman, James. “Fatigue Management” in Scientific Principles of Strength Training, 148-149.

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