Microcycle Programming: Organize Your Training Week

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What’s the best way to organize your training week: Whole-body workouts or upper-lower splits? The training week is one of the smallest functional units of training, often called a “microcycle.” Individual workouts are the absolute smallest units. How you organize those units has a significant impact on your overall training success. If you know how to do it effectively, you’ll be well on the road to success.

Attention to detail in how you program day-to-day can pay huge dividends over a whole training cycle.

Construction of a Microcycle

A key element to constructing effective microcycles is understanding and respecting the individual recovery curves of the various exercises in your plan. You want to do as much work as possible in one week, while providing adequate time for recovery. You also want to represent all areas of the body and/or movement patterns equally and with minimal redundancy.

The most important piece of data to take into account when designing a microcycle is your strength level. Your strength for any given muscle (or lift) determines how often it needs to be trained. This dictates to a large degree what your training week will look like.

If your maximum bench press is 250lb, you could and should include exercises for that lift about three days a week. This will provide adequate time for recovery between sessions. On the other hand, someone who can bench 450lb will require more recovery time, and so might train that lift only twice a week, and one of those sessions would be fairly light.

Whole-Body vs. Upper-Lower Split Programming

Below are two sample training weeks based on strength levels. The first cycle is for a relatively weak lifter, and it employs a “whole-body” approach. The second is better suited for stronger lifters, and features an “upper/lower split” organization. As you look at these two hypothetical examples, focus on the overall patterns and don’t get caught up in the specific exercises.

This whole-body program is best suited for lifters who bench press less than 250lb, squat less than 300lb, or deadlift less than 350lb.

Upper-Lower Split Sample Week

The upper-lower split is best suited for lifters who bench 275+lb, squat 350+lb, and/or deadlift 400+lb.

If you don’t fit squarely into either of these categories, organize your training week according to your level of strength and required recovery time. If you’re weaker than those who qualify for the whole-body plan, you can likely tolerate more volume, so you would do whole-body workouts four days a week instead of three. If you’re stronger than those who qualify for the upper-lower split, space your sessions out a bit more to allow full recovery between sessions.

I hope this helps eliminate some confusion about this common question. If not, I’d love to hear your questions and comments below!

This Week’s Training:

Volume: 96,892lb

Significant Lifts:

Squat: 215 x 8
Bench Press: 195 x 8
4” Block Pull: 395 x 8

Sorry I missed you all last week; I was sick and only managed a single workout. This week, I’m starting a new training cycle with 8 target reps per set. I’ve added a few new exercises and carried some over from the previous cycle. I’ll run these higher reps for a total of five weeks, and then transition to a strength phase, since I haven’t done any low-rep training in a while.

Monday, April 4, 2016

Bodyweight: 198.6lb

Volume: 27,895lb

Goblet Squat