RP Male Physique Template - Full Body

The program is broken into four training phases and this will cover the first two mesocycles: - Mesocycle 1: Basic Hypertrophy - Mesocycle 2: Metabolite Training - Mesocycle 3: Resensitization UNDERSTANDING THE TRAINING PHASES The first mesocycle has enough volume (amount of training) to get you to grow muscle effectively, but it starts out nice and easy so that you can get the most while doing the least you have to. It gets harder as you go, and by the end it will be a real challenge. But when you’ve finished it, you’ll be that much stronger and that much better at doing sets and sets of each exercise. You’ll need to increase the stimulus in order to continue putting on muscle or sparing it from loss during a fat loss diet, and that’s just where mesocycle 2 comes in. In the second mesocycle (Metabolite Training), your reps per set will go up considerably as the weights will be intentionally lighter. In addition, the rest time will shorten to just enough time for you to barely catch your breath. This kind of training raises your level of lactic acid and other muscle metabolic byproducts; it’s these byproducts that might play a big role in stimulating your muscles to grow. How do you know the metabolites are summing up in your muscles during the training? Because of the high reps and short rests, you’ll literally feel a “burn” in your muscles like you might not have felt before. This is exactly what we want, so if you’re feeling it, you’re on the right track! When you’ve completed the metabolite mesocycle, your physique will have changed for the better. But now, because we threw the kitchen sink at your muscles, your body will be very resistant to any further growth in the short term. So how do we get you growing again? You do the third mesocycle: “resensitization.” The process of getting your muscles ready for growth again requires lower volumes (set numbers and rep numbers) of training, so that’s just what this mesocycle will program for you. The training will be heavier than you’re used to (heavy weight keeps your gains much better during periods of lower volume), but it will be fewer sets and way fewer reps. DELOAD: The purpose of this week is to preserve your muscle gains while dropping your fatigue off and allowing you to have another productive training cycle ahead. You’ll notice that the week’s rep goal is usually to do “1/2 reps of week 1,” so that’s exactly what you should do! If the reps of week 1 are odd numbers, just err on the side of lower. Not only are the reps lower, but the weights will be lower too, especially in the second half of the deload week. This is to promote recovery and maintain muscle, and is entirely planned. If you choose to skip the deload week or make it harder, that is unlikely to be a good decision for your medium and long term training.