Ten minutes. That's how long it takes to understand training properly.
Most people never bother. They waste years doing random workouts and look exactly the same.
Your body adapts to stress. You apply stress through reps and sets. If that stress is strong enough, frequent enough, and recoverable enough, your muscles grow. Simple biology.
The Three Variables That Run Everything
Volume = how much total work you do.
Intensity = how heavy the weight is relative to your max.
Frequency = how often you hit each muscle per week.
Screw up the balance between these three and you're cooked. Try to max out all three at once? You'll either plateau, burn out, or snap something up.
Your body has limits on what it can recover from.
90% of people fail because they keep adding more of everything without understanding these variables fight each other for recovery resources.
The Two-High, One-Low Rule
At any given time, only two variables can be high. The third has to stay low.
Push all three and you'll get injured. Guaranteed.
Here's what the combinations actually look like:
High volume + high intensity + low frequency: Blasting one muscle group hard once a week. It works, but muscle growth only lasts 48 hours after training. You're leaving gains on the table.
High volume + low intensity + high frequency: Lighter weights, more sessions. Good for bringing up a lagging muscle for a few weeks, but you'll burn out trying to sustain it.
Low volume + high intensity + high frequency: Heavy weights, fewer sets, trained often. Great for strength. Terrible for muscle size.
High everything: Crash training. You'll feel like a god for two weeks. Then your joints will remind you that you're human.
Pick two variables at a time. That's how you build a program that works long-term instead of destroying yourself in six weeks.
Volume: The Growth Driver
The total number of hard sets you do per muscle per week determines progress. Not the exercise name. Not the pump. Not the burn.
Beginners: 10 sets per muscle per week.
Intermediates: 12–18 sets.
Advanced: 16–22 sets, but recovery becomes the bottleneck.
"Hard set" means close to failure. If you're doing three sets but stopping five reps before failure, it doesn't count as volume. It's just movement.
You can split those sets however you want — twice per week, three times per week — as long as your total weekly volume hits that range.
Intensity: Heavy Enough to Matter
Intensity is how heavy you're lifting relative to your max.
70–80% of your max is where hypertrophy happens. Below that? Cardio with weights.
People mess this up two ways: chasing pump workouts with baby weights, or ego lifting with garbage form.
You need to live in the middle zone. Heavy enough to challenge. Controlled enough to actually stimulate the target muscle.
Guidelines:
- 6–12 reps per set is the hypertrophy sweet spot.
- The last 2 reps of every set should be difficult but clean.
- When you can do 2–3 more reps than last week, increase the weight slightly.
That's progressive overload. Simple. Predictable. Brutally effective.
Frequency: Stop Wasting Days
Muscles don't grow for seven days after you hit them. They grow for 1–2 days after a proper stimulus. After that? Just recovered and waiting.
If you're training chest once a week, that's five wasted days where you could've hit it again and triggered another growth cycle.
Ideal range: 2–3 times per week per muscle group.
That's why full-body, upper/lower, and push-pull-legs splits dominate. They naturally hit that frequency without killing recovery.
Set & Rep Templates That Actually Work
These rep schemes have stood the test of time because they work:
5×5 (75–85%) — Classic strength + size. Great balance between load and volume.
3–6 sets of 8–15 reps (60–75%) — Bread-and-butter hypertrophy work. Simple, fast, recoverable.
10×3 (85–90%) — Strength-focused. Useful for compounds like squats, bench, deadlift.
12-8-4-2-20 (60→90→60%) — Heavy ramp with a back-off set. Hits both strength and size efficiently.
Pick one scheme per lift. Stick with it for 8–12 weeks minimum. Log every session.
Don't switch rep ranges weekly. Consistency compounds.
Choosing the Right Split
Forget bro splits.
Your split should match how many days you can actually train and recover from.
Full Body (3 days/week): Best for beginners. You'll hit everything often enough to grow, and recovery is manageable.
Upper/Lower (4 days/week): More balance between workload and rest. You can push heavier with slightly more volume per session.
Push/Pull/Legs (5–6 days/week): Best for intermediates who can handle more frequency. Lets you emphasize lagging areas without sacrificing recovery.
The label doesn't matter. Coverage matters. Every muscle gets trained at least twice per week, and you have enough rest to actually recover.
Building a Week That Works
Let's say you train four days per week. Here's a practical setup:
Day 1: Upper A (pull-push mix)
Day 2: Lower A (hinge-squat focus)
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: Upper B (push-pull mix)
Day 5: Lower B (squat-hinge variation)
Days 6–7: Rest or light cardio
Each muscle gets hit twice. Total weekly volume sits in range. Recovery is manageable.
That's optimal programming. Simple, repeatable, sustainable.
Rules to Train By
1. Master form first. If your form sucks, everything else is useless.
2. Track your lifts. Don't guess. Numbers don't lie.
3. Recover hard. Sleep 7–9 hours, eat enough protein, walk daily.
4. Stick with one program for 12 weeks minimum. Constant changes kill results.
5. If you're not progressing, eat more or deload. Don't add random volume.
Training isn't complicated. It's just boringly consistent.
Once you get the structure right, everything else — cardio, diet, recovery — slots perfectly on top of it.
Your entire fitness arc depends on this chapter.
Understand the three variables. Set realistic weekly volume. Pick a split you can sustain. Stop program-hopping.
That's how you go from spinning your wheels to actually building something.
Action Items
**This Week:**
1. Calculate your training frequency. Write down how many times each major muscle group gets hit per week in your current routine. If any muscle is getting hit less than twice, your split sucks. Fix it.
2. Count your volume. Track total hard sets per muscle group for one week. Hard sets = within 2–3 reps of failure. If you're under 10 sets per muscle, you're leaving gains on the table.
3. Pick one rep scheme from this chapter. Apply it to your main lifts. Stick with it for the next 8 weeks minimum. Write it down. No more random workouts.
**Quick Win (Do This Today):**
Open your notes app. Create a simple training log with three columns: Exercise, Weight, Reps. Log your next workout. If you can't remember what you lifted last time, you're guessing. Numbers don't lie.
Next Chapter Preview:
We'll cover body fat management and recomposition — where we tie training into nutrition and actually start sculpting shape instead of just "getting bigger."