How to Build a Result Based Training Program for Fat Loss and Building Muscle
Do you wonder if what you’re doing in the gym is actually producing results??
Within the first few years of my own training, I was always wondering this. I felt like I was throwing darts blindly: having no idea what I was doing and hoping something would stick.
Hindsight is 20/20 and knowing what I know now, I realize my training was filled with terrible advice, misguided recommendations, and debunked myths.
High reps to tone, low reps to bulk
HIIT Workouts are the holy grail of burning fat while building muscle.
Change up the exercises every session for muscle confusion
Do cardio for weight loss, and lift weights for muscle
Focus on one body part per session
Train like professional athletes to look like them
Lifting to failure is best
Train like the Hollywood stars to look like them
This goes on and on, but I think you get the picture. Or maybe you don’t because you haven’t come across evidence-based training principles yet along your journey.
Don’t worry my friends, you are in the right place at this right moment.
To quote Jay-Z, “You could’ve been anywhere in the world. But you’re here with me, I appreciate that.” #thegreatestrapperalive
In today’s article, I’m going to break down EXACTLY how I create a training program for my online clients (and yourself) that’s going to create better aesthetics, more strength, and ultimately reach your goals faster than you thought possible.
Regardless if you’re male, female, old, young, mom, dad, or anything in between, these are the principles any intelligently designed program will abide by.
After coaching everyone from youth to professional athletes, and helping young professionals becoming leaner and strong while building self-confidence, I know the principles I’m going to cover will help you.
Let’s dive right into it
Step 1: Training Splits
A training split is a way we organize your workouts and the number of workouts you’ll do each week. Traditionally, the first training split people followed is the “bro split” aka the bodybuilder split. (I know I did.) Within this training split, you’ll be training 1-2 body parts per session once per week.
The Bodybuilder training split would look something like this:
Day 1: Chest and Triceps
Day 2: Back and Biceps
Day 3: Quads and Glutes
Day 4: Hamstrings and Calves
Day 5: Shoulders
Day 6: Arms
Day 7: Rest or Cardio
I’m just going to say this right now, a bodybuilder split is a terrible option for 99% of people. Luckly, science has proven that training each muscle group at least twice a week is more beneficial than just once. Hell, you can even bump that up to 3-4 times a week, depending on your training experience, and recoverability.
After coaching hundreds of people, I’ve found a few training splits that work best for myself and my clients over the years depending on their experience levels.
Full Body x2 (Brand New to Strength Training):
Day 1: Full Body #1
Day 2: Optional Cardio or rest day
Day 3: Full Body #2
Day 4: Rest
Day 5: Full Body #1
Day 6: Cardio
Day 7: Rest
Coaching Note: The client will alternate between doing Workouts 1 and 2 until they are fully comfortable with their movement and confident with their ability to execute each lift.
Full Body x3 (Beginner)
Day 1: Full Body #1
Day 2: Rest
Day 3: Full Body #2
Day 4: Rest
Day 5: Full Body #3
Day 6: Cardio
Day 7: Rest
Upper/Lower x4 (Intermediate)
Day 1: Upper Body
Day 2: Lower Body
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: Upper Body
Day 5: Lower Body
Day 6: Cardio
Day 7: Rest
Upper/Lower/Push/Pull/Lower (Intermediate-Advanced)
Day 1: Upper Body
Day 2: Lower Body
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: Push (Chest, shoulders, tricep focused)
Day 5: Pull (Back and Bicep Focused)
Day 6: Lower Body
Day 7: Rest
Push, Pull, Legs x 6 (Advanced)
Day 1: Push
Day 2: Pull
Day 3: Legs
Day 4: Push
Day 5: Pull
Day 6: legs
Day 7: Rest
You’ll notice that each major body part is being worked 2+ times per week. This will ensure you’re properly challenging your muscles. However, just make sure you choose a split that you’ll enjoy and be most likely to stay consistent with depending on your experience level and lifestyle.
If you have a busy life with a full-time job and a family/social life, then choosing a 6 day a week training split probably would be less than optimal. Instead, choose a 3-4/week training split as this may be more optimal so it doesn’t add additional stress each week.
If you don’t have a busy life, or just really enjoy working out, then choosing a split that allows for more training days each week might make the most sense.
More days in the gym doesn’t always mean better results; better consistency means better results. Don’t confuse the two as this will save your body in the long run.
My recommendation is to be honest with yourself about what you can realistically adhere to. Consistency is the foundation of any successful program.
—-> Check out this article for a more in-depth look
Step 2: Exercise Selection and Variations
Another major key to building a result-based training program is finding exercises that fit your experience level. There are 6 foundational movement patterns that must be included each week to ensure you’re building strength and muscle in all areas of the body.
Don’t get me wrong, as a male or female, you’ll definitely have different parts of your body you’d like to emphasize more than others which is totally understandable and cool with me.
Just make sure to include each of these variations to prevent harmful imbalances is crucial to any intelligently designed program.
Squat
Hinge
Single leg
Push
Pull
Core
Now the specific exercises you choose to accomplish your movement pattern will depend on your experience, comfort level, and capability.
For example, an intermediate-advanced trainee could perform movements like:
Back Squat (Squat)
Sumo Squat (Hinge)
Split Squats (Single Leg)
Barbell bench press (Push)
Weighted pull cups (Pull)
Ab Wheel Rollouts (Core)
This is just an example, yet there are plenty of other variations to choose from. These options are just examples to understand the concept.
Once you have your 6 foundational movement patterns, you can start adding accessory and/or isolation movements to selected body parts you’ll like to further emphasize or strengthen, i.e. more direct glute, arm, shoulder, chest, etc.
Step 3: Rep Ranges and Volume
You might be wondering what exactly is volume? It’s pretty simple really as volume is the number of sets you’re performing for each muscle group. This is an important, yet overlooked aspect. The more lifting experience you have under your belt, the more volume you’re going to need to maintain and/or create progress.
The less experience you have, the less volume you’re going to need to maintain and/or progress.
Here are the guidelines that I tend to follow and found to work for each experience level.
Beginner: 6-12 sets per muscle group per week
Intermediate: 8-15 sets per muscle group per week
Advanced: 8-20 sets per muscle group per week
Depending on your lifting experience, the muscle groups you want to emphasize will be on the higher end of these ranges and the muscle groups for maintaining will be on the lower end.
What about rep ranges??
Great question as this completely depends on your goal.
If you’re more focused on strength rather than hypertrophy (i.e. muscle gain), program ⅔ of your sets within the 2-6 rep range and remaining ⅓ in the 6-15 rep range.
If you are more focused on hypertrophy, then program ⅓ of your sets within the 2-6 rep range and ⅔ of your sets within the 6-15 rep range.
A quick tip: Just because you’re focusing on strength work doesn’t mean you won’t gain muscle and just because you focused on muscle doesn’t mean you won’t gain strength. Strength and hypertrophy work together, but the different rep ranges emphasize one over the other in their respective purposes.
—-> Click here for a more in-depth look
Step 4: Progressive Overload
When it comes to building an evidence-based training program, there are many key components to consider. However, adhering to progressive overload is probably the most important.
Progressive overload is simply doing more over time and it continues to be the main driver for building muscle and strength while making continuous progress within the gym.
Progressive overload can be achieved in multiple ways. First and foremost, it starts with achieving better form. Once proper form is established, the two simplest ways to keep progressing is to either add weight or week to the main compound lifts in the session from week to week.
For beginners, using a linear progression makes the most sense.
Example Beginner Progression
Week 1: 135x5
Week 2: 140x5
Week 3: 145x5
Week 4: 150x5
Week 5: 155x5
Week 6: 160x5
Notice that the weights increase each week while the reps remain the same to create a progressive overload. Form and technique are the foundation of progressive overload, so make sure your first and last rep looks almost identical.
For the Intermediate to advanced program, progression schemes need to be more little more sophisticated to avoid hitting a plateau.
Sample Intermediate Progression
Week 1: 135x7
Week 2: 140x6
Week 3: 145x5
Week 4: 150x4
Week 5: 140x7
Week 6: 145x6
Week 7: 150x5
Week 8: 140x4 (Deload week)
Notice that the weights get heavier each week, yet the reps decrease each week. After 4 weeks of these heavier weights and lower reps, you’ll start at the top of the rep range with a slightly heavier weight and repeat to create a progressive overload.
Although form and weight are where you should start, this isn’t the only way to progress. This is just an example as you can manipulate other variables such as time under tension, adding ranges of motion, speed work, and more.
For isolation and accessory work, I typically aim to use a different form of progression called double progression. This method includes progression through reps AND weights being used. It would look like this for Tricep pushdowns.
Week 1: 35x10
Week 2: 40x11
Week 3: 45x12
Week 4: 40x10
Week 5: 45x11
Week 6: 50x12
You can get pretty creative and use a lot of different types of progressions to keep things fun and enjoyable. I wrote an entire article on proven ways to know if you’re making progress that you can check out here.
At the end of the day, you want your training to be fun and exciting so it’s something you actually look forward to doing, which is a hugely underappreciated aspect of training.
Step 5: Intensity
Let’s do a quick recap. So far, we have touched upon:
The type of split to set up
What exercises to do
How much volume to do based on your experience level
How to Progress week by week
Now, it’s time to illustrate the importance of intensity and why it matters. Intensity is simply how hard (or not hard) you’re training.
I’m not saying you should always be focused on lifting the heaviest weight possible, but a smart approach can make a world of difference for your results.
The simplest way to do this is to use Reps in Reverse (RIR) and Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE). Typically, beginners don’t need to worry about RIR or RPE as they are still new to training and focusing on acquiring the skill before adding intensity.
However, once you have the skill down, it’s time to start adding intensity with RIR throughout the week. Without a decent understanding of this, you can make or break your training progress success.
Luckily, RIR is a simple concept to understand. It’s a number scheme that you use in your head to judge how difficult the sets you’re doing are relative to failure.
0 RIR would be reaching complete failure on a lift
1 RIR would be one rep shy of failure
2 RIR would be two reps shy of failure
3 RIR would be three reps of failure
4 RIR would be four reps of failure
When building an intermediate to advanced program, you’ll want to start around an RIR of 2-4 depending on your progression scheme being used in that lift so that you can leave room for progression in the upcoming weeks. If you are hitting 1 RIR in the first week, it’s going to be very difficult to make progress and maximize your potential strength gains and muscle development.
A successful program always plans ahead of time. This is where periodization comes into play.
Step 6: Periodization
In a nutshell, periodization is how you logically organize and manipulate each of the above training program variables to achieve a certain physiological effect i.e. losing body fat, putting on muscle, or getting stronger on a certain lift.
Periodization is likely the answer to all the remaining questions floating around in your head
How long should my program be?
When do I switch up the exercises?
When do I switch up the rep ranges?
When do I add more volume?
How do I prevent hitting a wall and stalling progressive overload?
To be 100% honest, there isn’t a definitive answer to any of these questions. This is what makes programming an “art” rather than just science with proven answers to everything.
To create the best training plan, you’ll need to not only factor in everything discussed above, but also take into account your goals, training experience, fitness level, and lifestyle.
However, here is what I’ve found to work when periodizing my programming for clients and myself.
Program Length
All my online client’s programs are 12 weeks long with 3 mini-blocks splits into four-week training phases. Meaning, I’m really creating 3 programs that are built on top of one another to create an entire 12-week program.
Each week, we’ll progressively challenge your workouts by manipulating either the sets, reps, or intensity of the exercises so you’ll be doing a bit more work than you did last week. You’ll be ready for that work because each training phase builds upon the previous one.
This will allow your workouts to be fun, stimulating, avoid plateaus, and help manage fatigue mainly.
How to Periodize Exercises:
Truth be told, most well-designed programs won’t have exercises being switched out each week. Remember, you need to create progressive overload so keeping exercises around long enough to progress is important for your results.
Typically, I like to keep the squat, bench press, and deadlift variation consistent throughout the entire 12-week program and switch out the accessory and isolation exercises with every 4-week block. This allows the program to hammer away at progressive overload in your main exercise while adding variation and enjoyment to the rest of the workout so you’re getting the best of both worlds.
Periodizing Volume and Intensity
This will largely depend on your training experience and follow the progression schemes I already laid out earlier. A beginner following the linear progression model won’t require much in terms of periodization since they make linear progress easier than someone who has more experience.
However, an intermediate-advanced lifter will benefit from periodization within both volume and sets to make continual progress easier through their program. As their skill of lifting gets more advanced and the more strength you have, the harder it becomes to continually add weight to the bar each week without a decrease in reps.
I typically break those three mini-blocks into more phases: Accumulation (volume focus), intensification, and realization phases.
For example, here is a sample intermediate program using those 3 training phases
Accumulation Phase
Week 1: 3x6
Week 2: 3x7
Week 3: 4x7
Week 4: 4x8
Intensification Phase
Week 1: 4x5
Week 2: 4x5
Week 3: 5x4
Week 4: 3x4 (Deload)
Peak/Realization Phase
Week 1: 5x3
Week 2: 6x3
Week 3: 5/4/3/2/1+
Week 4: 5/4/3/2/1+
How to Further Prevent Plateaus in Progressive Overload
Deloads are a form of periodization as well. Deloads are used to better manage fatigue throughout the program to keep progressive overload continuing in ways the progressive schemes simply cannot.
As you continuously add more and more load to each session, the body’s fatigue becomes higher and higher. This fatigue must be managed otherwise progress will end up going backward given enough time.
To sufficiently manage fatigue, deloads need to put in every 4-12 weeks by dropping volume around 30-50%. This will help promote recovery and get back to training 100% performance and avoid overtraining.
Over-training is where the body is pushed too hard and progress goes backward because fatigue was never properly managed and overall health becomes an issue.
Generally speaking, the more advanced a trainee is, the more often they’ll need deloads (4-6 weeks). The less advanced a trainee is, the less often they’ll need deloads (6-12 weeks).
I like to think of this as taking one step back to always being able to take two or more steps forward in the future.
Closing Thoughts
Unfortunately, it's not as simple as just getting into the gym and lifting some weights. While that is a good place to start, it will only take you so far.
So, I’m fully aware that there’s a ton of great information here. Hopefully, it will help you better understand how to build a result-based training program for either building muscle or fat loss.
Another important aspect to touch up is nutrition as that will be the true driver for body compositional changes. You can check out my Definitive Guide for Fat Loss or Building Muscle for more.
Three other crucial factors to whether your training program succeeds or not?
Accountability
Taking the guesswork out of building your own training program
Structure and a clear plan to follow.
My online coaching service provides you with the necessary tools, accountability, and education to succeed. Together, we’ll create a tailored plan suited specifically to your skillset, and training experience.
I’d be happy to take all these different principles and handcraft an individualized plan that fits your schedule, lifestyle, goals, and experience level to help you maximize your results for the next 12 weeks.
Because lets be honest, working with a qualified coach will always be the fastest track to your success and a better understanding of your future results.
If you would like to receive a sample 4 week training program to create strength, lean muscle, and fat loss using the exact methods outlined in this blog, then click the link below.
These workouts will walk you through how to progress your workouts within those 4 weeks, provide notes when things need to be explained, and provide you with videos for each exercise so you know exactly what to do inside each workout.