12 reviews for Jacked Intellectual (5-Day Version)

This is specifically for advanced intermediates or advanced lifters, and would specifically suit an 18 week chunk of a growth phase or improvement/offseason.

The program at it’s heart is a 5 day routine:

• The days are split into a Push, Pull, Legs, Upper and finally another Leg day

• You will hit each body part twice a week

• Volume would be considered moderate; it is the high end of my own personal recommendations

• You will utilise a variety of loading ranges and reps for each muscle

• The main concept in play here is the markers of progression concept, where you will primarily use 5 exercises to judge if overall progress is being made

• We will use a phasic approach to training, where each phase potentiates the next

Markers of progression

This routine will utilise my 'markers of progression' concept. Which is that you will judge progress mostly via performance increases on those exercises. I see value in this because it simplifies the process, and it also allows you to focus more on execution and ‘mind muscle connection’ with other exercises. Getting obsessed with performance and 'plus ones' on everything to the exclusion of form and control is an easy trap to fall into. So let's just do away with that altogether. The five markers of progression which are periodised in a phasic approach are your performance markers. So push progression hard there, with everything else focus more on control and execution and go up in weight when you feel you're able to. Does that make sense? Progression is still super important! But you'll push progression more aggressively with the markers of progression, and allow the other work to come up when you are in full control and it all feels good. 

Exercise selection

For the markers of progression, you want to pick 5 exercises which fit the following criteria, because you're going to be sticking with these for 18-19 weeks. So the first criteria is that the lifts emphasise muscles you're interested in growing. The most common example here is an Incline Bench over a standard flat variant. You might also pick a very quad focused knee flexion marker of progression such as the Hack Squat. The second criteria is that you need to be able to perform this lift safely. If you have a chronic lower back ache which you need to baby a little, maybe let's not go with a heavy hip hinge. Perhaps use a Glute Drive or a strictly performed hamstring bias RDL. You get the idea. Make sure the lift is safe, loadable and targets an area you want to build. Pretty simple stuff.

Now when it comes to exercise selection for everything else, it's a little simpler. Just pick exercises you connect well with. Don't get overly focused on hitting things from different angles, or emphasising the stretch just pick a core group of exercises you connect with. You can switch these around every 6 weeks if you really want to but I wouldn't recommend it.

Phase potentiation

This is one of the core principles of the routine. This a VERY old concept, it's nothing complicated so don't get intimidated or put off. All it means is that each phase makes the next phase more productive. In my experience if you move from a period of hard work on higher reps down to lower reps, you typically get a very nice boost and burst of progress. That doesn't always work the other way around, but it certainly works going down to lower reps. So we're going to take advantage of that across these three phases.

Read more details about the program in the guide below.

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All the best, 

Coach Faz