Intermediate workout routines

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Once you have the basic technique down and several months of training, progress stops being automatic. At this level the work is organised around weekly volume per muscle group and controlling proximity to failure (RIR). These routines spread the work across more sessions so each muscle is trained frequently enough without piling up unnecessary fatigue.

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Periodize or not: what you gain once you are no longer a beginner

The intermediate stage is the stage of plateaus: what worked in the first months stops working, and repeating the same routine no longer delivers. This is where periodization comes in, and the reasonable question is whether organizing training into phases genuinely helps or is just bureaucracy.

Williams, Tolusso, Fedewa and Esco pooled eighteen studies with 81 effect sizes on maximal strength in Sports Medicine in 2017. Periodized training produced greater gains than non-periodized training, with a moderate effect, and the authors conclude that varying the stimulus appears key to maximizing strength.

Periodized versus non-periodized training for maximal strength, in the meta-analysis by Williams et al. (2017) across eighteen studies.
Factor	What they found
Periodized versus non-periodized	More strength with periodization (effect size 0.43)
Periodization model	Undulating performed best
Training status	Larger gains in untrained people
Duration and frequency	More gain with longer, more frequent programmes

Two nuances make the finding more useful. First, the undulating model — changing loads and reps within the week — performed better than the others. Second, gains were larger in untrained people: the further you get, the more you need to plan to keep getting something out of it.

The conclusion should not be stretched: the work measures maximal strength, not hypertrophy. Even so, it fits how these routines are built: four-week mesocycles that accumulate volume with progressively more demanding effort and end in a deload, rather than the same session repeated indefinitely.

References

Williams TD, Tolusso DV, Fedewa MV, Esco MR. Comparison of periodized and non-periodized resistance training on maximal strength: a meta-analysis. Sports Medicine. 2017;47(10):2083-2100.

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