Multi-week blocks against a training max, undulating Heavy/Medium/Light within every week, with a real deload scheduled in advance every 5th week — and a real peak and taper if you have a competition date.
New to block periodization? Read training max first, then the block structure — the day-to-day tables will make sense once those two ideas are in place. Training max · Block structure
Already have a current max and want to skip straight in? Direct-to-advanced enrollment needs no reset history from novice or intermediate. Direct-to-advanced enrollment
Every load in this phase is a percentage not of your true one-rep max, but of a training max — 90% of a true or estimated one-rep max on squat, bench press, and deadlift. A real max varies day to day with sleep, stress, and nutrition; training against a deliberately lower number keeps every prescribed percentage achievable even on a rough day, with room for the training max itself to climb across cycles instead of starting already pinned to a ceiling. Overhead press has no training max and isn't percentage-tracked in this phase at all — it runs as a plain, by-feel accessory, the same treatment Romanian deadlift already gets.
The training max recomputes automatically at the end of each Intensification block's last loading week — that week's own prescribed Heavy day set doubles as the retest, so there's never a separate testing week eating into training time. See what actually happens at that recompute, including what a missed rep on it does to the number.
Overhead press moving to plain, by-feel accessory status here is the same idea Romanian deadlift already establishes in intermediate, carried one step further — see accessory work for why this kind of room only opens up once the program's own structure gives it, not on a novice's own initiative.
The recompute only ever fires once: on completing week 4's Heavy day of an Intensification block. An Accumulation block never recomputes anything — your training max sits fixed through all 4 of its loading weeks no matter how those sessions go, because that block's own job is building volume, not testing a max. The only day that ever moves the number is Intensification's own week-4 Heavy set.
That set isn't a separate max-out test — it's the same reps-and-RIR-to-percentage math behind the RPE/RIR calculator, run on the weight and reps you actually performed on that one top set, assuming you hit the day's own target of 3 reps at 1 RIR. Whatever comes out of that calculation becomes the new training max directly — there's no second 90% haircut applied on top of it, because the day's prescribed weight was already priced against training max, not a true max, so running it back through the same formula reconstructs training max itself.
That makes it a genuinely two-way number, not a ratchet. Hit exactly the prescribed reps and training max holds flat. Grind out more reps than prescribed — real evidence you had more in the tank than the program assumed — and it climbs. Miss even one rep on that set and it drops, the same session, no warning and no separate "stall" count to accumulate first the way novice and intermediate track failures. Every Intensification cycle's own retest is graded immediately, on its own, not after a pattern of misses.
| What you actually do on that set | New training max | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Exactly 3 reps, as prescribed | 300 lb | Unchanged |
| 5 reps — 2 more than prescribed | 318 lb | +18 lb |
| 2 reps — missed the last rep | 291 lb | -9 lb |
The app doesn't flag or explain a drop any differently than a climb — the new number just replaces the old one on that lift's row, the same way any other phase's working weight updates. Noticing it takes actually looking at the number, not a notification.
One soft retest isn't a crisis. A single missed rep is exactly the kind of day-to-day variance training max is designed to absorb — see the note above about why it's set below a true max in the first place. If it keeps happening, the two most useful first checks are the same two anyone gives an honest stall: whether the form on that top set is actually breaking down under load rather than the weight being genuinely too heavy, and whether the two structural things this phase already does for you — squat and bench training three times a week, and volume and intensity swinging every block instead of sitting fixed — have had a real cycle to work before concluding the number itself is wrong. See common early mistakes for the same reasoning applied to a novice reset, and learning to rate your own effort if the RIR call on that set is what feels unreliable, not the weight itself.
Each block runs 4 loading weeks plus one deload week — 5 weeks total. Accumulation builds work capacity at higher volume and a more moderate intensity; Intensification converts that capacity into strength at lower volume and higher intensity. The two blocks alternate indefinitely — Accumulation, Intensification, Accumulation again — until a real competition date pulls the next block into a Peak instead (see below). Deload lands every 5 weeks (4 loading + 1 deload) — the tight end of the general 4–6 week range, matching the literature’s own more specific guidance for lifters with 3+ years of consistent training.
That word indefinitely is literal, not a placeholder: there is no third block anywhere in this phase, and a Peak only ever substitutes for one cycle before training resumes the same two-block rotation. See what that actually means once you've run it a long time.
Multi-week blocks aren't this program's own invention — see stress, recovery, and adaptation for the real theory behind why an advanced lifter needs weeks, not days, to adapt to a stress large enough to matter, and the real history connecting that theory directly to block periodization.
Squat and bench press train all three weekly sessions in every block. Deadlift trains once a week, Heavy day only, with Romanian deadlift absorbing the other two sessions by feel — the same lower-frequency treatment deadlift gets throughout the whole program. Overhead press stays a plain accessory here too, never part of the percentage system.
Every day below carries two numbers: a percentage of training max, and a target reps in reserve (RIR). They're not independent — see what RPE and RIR mean, and how these percentages are actually built from the RIR column, if either is new to you.
| Day | Reps | Sets | Reps in reserve | % of training max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heavy | 5 | 5 | 2 | 81% |
| Medium | 5 | 4 | 3 | 79% |
| Light | 8 | 3 | 4 | 71% |
| Day | Reps | Sets | Reps in reserve | % of training max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heavy | 3 | 5 | 1 | 88% |
| Medium | 3 | 4 | 1.5 | 87% |
| Light | 6 | 3 | 3 | 77% |
| Block just finished | Reps | Sets | % of training max |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accumulation | 8 | 2 | 71% |
| Intensification | 6 | 2 | 77% |
If you have a competition date on file, the program checks it at every deload boundary. Once that date is within 16 days, the next block becomes a 2-week Realization/Peak instead of another Accumulation or Intensification cycle.
| Day | Reps | Sets | Reps in reserve | % of training max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heavy | 2 | 3 | 1 | 91% |
| Medium | 2 | 2 | 1.5 | 90% |
| Light | 3 | 2 | 2 | 86% |
| Session | Timing | Reps | Sets | % of training max | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Session 1 | Day −5 | 2 | 2 | 91% | Squat and bench only — deadlift skips this session, matching its lower weekly frequency all program long |
| Session 2 | Day −3 | 1 | 1 | 100% | The opener rehearsal — 100% of training max is, by construction, your real current opener weight |
| Rest | Days −2, −1 | — | — | — | Full rest into the meet |
That last line is a deliberate identity, not a coincidence: training max is 90% of true max, and the opener a real meet uses is also conventionally 90% of true max. A prescription at exactly 100% of training max is your real opener weight — the taper's final single rehearses the actual lift you'll take on the platform, not an approximation of it. If this is your first meet, see the competition-day logistics page for what the day itself actually looks like once the taper ends.
An experienced lifter with years of real training has no stall or reset history in this app to graduate from — the ordinary novice-then-intermediate ladder was never built for them, so this is a separate, direct path onto the advanced phase, not a shortcut through the others.
| What you need | Why |
|---|---|
| A current one-rep max for squat, bench press, deadlift | Seeds each lift’s training max directly, at the same 90% used everywhere else in this phase |
| No max for overhead press | The press is never percentage-tracked in this phase, so no max is needed for it |
If you don't have a confident number to declare, log a top set at a comfortable reps in reserve and let the app estimate a true max from it — the same estimation the app already uses to recompute your training max at the end of every Intensification block. Direct entry is gated behind the same two-tap confirmation the app uses for other one-way choices, with honest copy that entering here means skipping the guided novice and intermediate progressions entirely, on your own declared say-so.
Accumulation and Intensification alternate for as long as you keep training here — read the block structure above again: there's no third kind of block anywhere in it. A close competition date swaps the next cycle for a Peak and taper instead, but that's a temporary substitution, not a new stage — the week after the meet, training resumes at the same two-block rotation it left off. This is the phase's own real ceiling, not a page that stopped short of describing something further that actually exists in the app.
That's not a gap specific to this app. Undulating volume and intensity across repeating blocks is a real, established periodization method, used the same way at every level of competitive strength sport — and the training max's own two-way recompute (see above) is exactly what keeps a fixed-length cycle from going stale: real progress raises the ceiling every cycle without the program ever needing a new stage to keep asking more of you. Running the same two-block rotation for years, competing on whatever schedule you choose, is a completely normal, sustainable way to spend a lifting career — not a sign that the program, or you, has stopped working.
If it genuinely has stopped working — real recovery, real food, real consistency, and real technique already checked, not assumed (see common early mistakes and training around aches and injuries) — the standard next step in competitive strength sport isn't a longer app-built program. It's a coach: someone who adjusts your actual numbers to your specific week-to- week response, in a way no fixed template can, block system or otherwise, this one included. This program's novice/intermediate/advanced structure follows the same three-stage shape used across strength-training literature generally; none of it describes a fourth, app-buildable stage past advanced, because the honest answer at that point is a person, not a program.
Resolve does have a real coach-athlete tool — shared logged sets, a meet-day roster, session booking — once you already have a coach using it with you (see coaching on Resolve). It isn't a way to find or hire a new coach from inside the app, and it doesn't plug into this page's own block/week/day mechanics at all: a coach working with you would build around whatever you're already running, this program included, not through a feature this program exposes for that purpose. If you've genuinely outgrown what's on this page, a coach is the real next step — this app isn't it.