Programming Your Workout Week for Maximum Results

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Or Tiffany, who's running late as usual, and her friends are tracking her trip to make sure she's actually on her way. Or Sam, who never goes anywhere without her roommate knowing exactly where she is. Some journeys are meant to be shared. Share your ride in real time with ShareMyTrip on Uber. One more way Uber is putting safety at every turn. Learn more on the Uber app. If they're going months at a time without being able to increase load or repetitions, then yeah, welcome to Advanced Territory. Soon it'll be years. Super fun. Welcome to the broadcast, the evidence-based health and fitness podcast that's going to delve into the trends and the fads on social and mainstream media being marketed at you. Let's separate the facts from the fiction. Make sure that you subscribe, follow, share on social media, and let's get into it. Hello, and welcome back to the broadcast 2026. So in today's episode, we're going to cover how to program your workout week is effectively as you can based on all the evidence that we have available to us. Don't worry, it's not just based on evidence, I'm going to talk about how to make it work for you based on your training age and how many times a week you can get to the gym. But to start, I think we should just quickly touch on why it is so important to resistance training, not just for aesthetics, but for health, longevity, and quality of life. So resistance training, what does it mean, and why is it so important for our physical and mental health? Resistance training means lifting external weight and/or body weight against gravity to challenge muscles, increasing both strength and lean mass, meaning specifically muscle tissue. In 2026, there is a mountain of evidence proving that resistance training and building muscle mass is key to our health and longevity of life. Increasing muscle mass is pivotal to our metabolic health, protection against all chronic disease, preservation of physical independence as we age, and it is one of these strongest predictors of how well and for how long we will age. In short, muscle mass has a direct impact on all cause mortality. Maintaining or increasing muscle mass is not just a goal for bodybuilders and athletes, it should be one half of the ultimate health goal for the entire population. The other half are lower fat mass. Your body composition, fat mass of the muscle mass, significantly influences your metabolic cardiovascular and hormonal health. If the entire population were to increase their muscle mass and decrease their fat mass, we would see a steep, sharp fall, not just in metabolic syndrome, like pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke, but in all cause mortality. Whether we're talking about psychopenia, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, total cancer, pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, stroke, chronic pain and even depression, muscle mass and muscle strength are directly associated with a lower risk of almost every illness and disease that you can think of. Now let's just move on to how? How does one start resistance training? And a lot of you listening really don't need to endure this. So feel free to speed it up, but I'm sure a lot of you listening want to resistance train, but haven't really got started with it yet, and that's very, very common with my clients. So my first point here is if you've never lifted weights before, it's a very good idea to book in a session or a block of sessions with a P2. And this means that you're going to learn how to lift with good form without injuring yourself and you're going to be able to go alone quickly, safely and confidently. I would never recommend that someone who's never touched a weight before walks into a German, starts to deadlift. You will get hurt. You need to learn how to lift weights, it is a skill, and it takes practice. And if you can do that with a PT for the first few weeks, that would be absolutely fantastic. Now how often you should resistance train is entirely dependent on your training age, meaning how new you are to it, and how often you can realistically and consistently train. So to tiny bit of insight, so I'm going to get into this in a bit, but just a tiny bit of insight here, newbie gains, what we call them in the weight lifting world, they require very little stimulus and time to take shape. And sure, if you're new to lifting, you will never have it this easy again. So I mean soak it up, it is crazy how quickly the adaptations occur. However, the longer you've been training, the more that you have to do to continue to kind of maximize muscle hypertrophy. This is referred to as progressive overload, meaning in order to progress, you need to progressively increase your training volume. This can be done by increased weight, by increased repetitions of the exercise, by increased number of sets per exercise, or by increased sessions per week. All of these things are quite to increase volume. And regardless of your training age, new or old weekly recovery days offlifting are just as crucial to muscle growth, as the training stimulus is. I like my clients to think about gaining muscle mass as like a three-pronged approach. One is the stimulus, the training, the next is the rest and recovery, and that is an umbrella prong for both days offlifting, but also sleep and even psychological stress. And the third prong is protein. And this is because when we lift weights, we create micro tears in muscle tissue. And it is in their recovery, that new tissue is then formed and muscle growth in shoes. And rest and protein are pivotal to this recovery, air go, they are pivotal to this group. So what sessions and what frequency of sessions per week is optimal based on the kind of evidence? So to optimize muscle hypertrophy, you should be stimulating every muscle group two to three times per week. This is what the research shows. Reading your volume across two to three sessions per week will reduce your fatigue in the session itself, meaning that you can work harder in your sessions. And if you're training two to three times a week, you can also optimize recovery as well. There is no evidence to support that more frequent sessions, if say five to six per week, is any better than two to three per week, as long as total volume is equated in those sessions. And I also just want to caveat that point with, that's from a hypertrophy perspective. So it's from a muscle building perspective. If we're going to talk about like a metabolic perspective, it goes without saying that daily movement of any kind is optimal. So if you are of an older training age and you like to get into the gym, you know, five to six days a week, absolutely fine, I mean, beginners shouldn't be doing that. But if you're of an older training age and that's how you like to train, fine. What is the best split? I get asked for all the time. There is no best split. It entirely depends on your training age and how many days a week you can realize that realistically and consistently train. So in order for my clients to hit optimal volume per week, typically I'll have my beginner clients training two to three times per week, newbies don't need to worry too much about lifting to failure, two to three reps and reserve is enough. I'll have my intermediate clients training three to four times per week, leaving like one to two reps and reserve, my advanced clients train four to five times per week and they typically leave one rep and reserve occasionally training to total failure to optimize strength in hypertrophy and progressive overload. Doesn't matter what days of the week that your rest days fall on as a coach though, I personally really like rest days to be scheduled at least one midweek and then on a Sunday or Monday to really optimize like weekly recovery from training from week to week. However, this is a personal way that I like to coach and it isn't particularly important which rest days you have. New clients always ask me how long I think their sessions should be and to be honest, that will change depending on your training age as well. So when I was new to lifting, it would take me an hour plus to complete a leg day, a couple of years in, I could do that same session in 45 minutes and now I can do it in 30 if I need to. You get better. You adapt in every way, the longer you've been doing it. And I also just want to add here, please don't think that if you can only get to the gym for like 20 minutes, it's not worth it, it's absolutely worth it, volume is volume, get it in and remember that doing 20 minutes of exercise is far better than doing nothing. that 20 minutes will contribute to your overall results. So please, you know, don't think that if you can't do it quote unquote perfectly, then you shouldn't do it all. And that perfectionist mindset is something that I have been coaching with my clients for so long now. This idea, if you can't do it perfectly, then don't do it at all. This kind of fuck it mentality. This is the reason so many people struggle to get in shape. And this is the reason so many people struggle to stay in shape. It's absolutely your handicap. Do everything you can do and don't sweat the rest. That's how you get in great shape. That's how you stay in great shape. And that's how you also maintain your mental health while trying to do it. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends like seeing who can throw some pig skin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra because it's not just a superior like beer. It's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Visit mickalovaultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026. Anhyzer Wish in Bay of Mickalova Ultra Beer St. Louis, Missouri. With share my trip from Uber, you can send your live trip location to the ones who matter most, like Dan and Hannah who always wait up to make sure their daughter gets back to her college dorm room. Or Tiffany who's running late as usual, and her friends are tracking her trip to make sure she's actually on her way. She's right there, she's three minutes away. Or Sam who never goes anywhere without her roommate knowing exactly where she is. Share your ride in real time with share my trip on Uber. Propel Fitness Water. With Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes. So okay, let's just start now with a little bit of coaching programming for beginners, intermediate and advanced. So beginners should aim to train two to three times per week to optimize both muscle stimulus in their sessions and their recovery thereafter. So for a beginner training two to three times per week, I will program full body sessions because this means the client can train every muscle group two to three times per week, which is minimal and have great recovery sessions between when it comes to what exercises would I program in these full body sessions. You know, you really want to hit everybody parts. So there should really be two exercises for lower body, two for kind of back core and then two for upper body. And this is why I want to touch on compound movements. If you're only getting in the gym two to three times per week, which is on the minimal end, as active. Yes, absolutely effective. Like, you know, I don't mean that in a negative way, but it's on the minimal end. And we've got to think about volume here. You want to be really nailing your big compound lifts like your squats, your deadlift, your chest press because then you're nailing multiple muscle groups in one session. So you know, you're talking squat, you know, you're hitting your quads and your glutes, your chest press, your hitting your chest, your shoulders, your triceps, dead lifts, basically your entire posterior chain. If you are training on the lower end of things per week, having these big compound movements in means you're going to get really good bang for your buck. How many sets per exercise? So for beginners, you really want to be hitting six to 10 sets, per muscle group per week. Split across these two to three sessions means it would look like three to four sets of squats in sessions one and two. And that would give you six to eight sets for quad and glute growth per week. Or two to three sets of squats in sessions one, two and three, which would give you six to nine sets for quad and glute growth per week. And obviously now you're in that six to 10 sets per week range. So that's just an example. Now let's move on to intermediates. There is no predetermined timeline by which a lift of stops being a newbie and transitions into intermediate territory. But when the client is going multiple sessions, multiple weeks at a time without being able to increase either the load lifted or the repetitions, this is a sign that they've saturated that newbie response. And if the client is training consistently, this kind of, I see this happen really at the sits month mark, right? So for intermediate clients, I normally will program three to four sessions a week and they can either do full body if they're hitting that kind of three marker, which is enough. Or we can transition them into push pull or upper lower splits. This means the client can train every muscle group three to four times in the week and have recovery days between sessions to optimize muscle hypertrophy. So what exercises when I program again for full body, I would really focus on compound movements to lower two back or two upper. And even if they're coming into a push pull or an upper lower split, I'd still really, really prioritise compound movements always 'cause by KSA, you do a squat or a deadlift or a chest press. You're hitting two, three, four muscle groups with one exercise. You know, there's your volume and saving a lot of time. And also there's so many other reasons why I think the big compound lifts are really, really pivotal to a good program. Not only are you hitting all these muscle groups with one exercise, but also in terms of like your central nervous system, you know, and your strength developments, you know, your power output, your core strength, your balance. I mean, there's just so many reasons why, in my opinion, as a coach, those big free weight compound lifts should really be at the forefront of your programming. And then like more accessory work, you know, I'm obviously imperative if you're a bodybuilder whether you're professional or not professional, you know, if you want to build muscle, especially specific muscle like biceps, then it is pretty important that you have more isolated bicep work in your sessions, of course. But by and large, I would say for me, all of my client sessions start with the big compound lifts and then we trickle into accessory work later on. So for intermediate, you want to see 10 to 16 sets, per muscle group, per week, split across these three to four sessions. So for example, if I'm programming squats for quad and glute growth, the client would see four sets of squats in sessions one, two, and three. And that brings them to 12 sets per week for quad and glute growth, which means they're in that 10 to 16 range, which is great. Or if I'm doing push pull up a lower, let's say three sets of squats and three sets of lunges in a push or a lower session, meaning six sets in total, and then they would do that twice a week. Again, bringing them up to 12 sets per week for quad and glute growth. And finally, moving into advance, there is no predetermined timeline by which liftest stops being intermediate and transitions into advance. But there are a few indicators. So training age, normally for client has been training for three or four years, and they will have saturated the newbie response, hopefully nailed good form. And if they're consistent with their training, they should have been able to kind of linearly progressive overload in this time. And for these reasons, if you've been consistently lifting for three or four years as a coach, I would probably consider you an advanced client. It would always be helpful to see the client lift, to be honest, but just going on timeline metrics here, yeah, that three to four year mark of consistent lifting. And also your rate of progress is a huge indicator. So much like newbies will be transitioning into the intermediate category if they're going multiple sessions and weeks without being able to increase weight or reps. The same can be said for clients going from intermediate to advanced, you know, if they're going months at a time without being able to increase load or repetitions, then, yeah, welcome to advanced territory. Soon it'll be years, super fun. So for advanced clients, I program them four to five sessions per week and they typically will do push pull up a lot of splits. 'Cause I don't want someone who's doing full body training four to five times a week 'cause they won't get the recovery and that they need, which is why we now come into push pull up a lot. Push sessions, obviously he push movements. So sports, hit thrusts, chest press, shoulder press, pull sessions, see pull movements, get lifts, rows, bicep cars, et cetera. And for advanced clients, you really want them hitting 12 to 20 sets, par muscle group, par week. So split across these four to five sessions. Again, for corner and glute growth, this would look like four sets of squats and four sets of lunges. So eight sets total in a session. Twice a week, there's just so it's been sets a week. So that's it guys. I hope you found this interesting and I hope it's maybe giving you a bit of insight as to how I program as a coach in terms of your training age, your training frequency and in terms of the exercises themselves. I really hope that you took something from it and maybe it's giving you some food for thought with your own programming. And please join me next week when I will have my first guest of 2026 on the broadcast. So have a great week guys, see you next time. 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