Instagram reels show exercises. What actually makes a plan work is a handful of rules about how much, how hard, how often and how you add to it. Here they are, each with what it means for your week.
Your muscles adapt to exactly what you ask of them, then stop. To keep growing you have to ask a bit more over time: more reps, then more weight. If you lift the same 10 kg for 10 reps forever, your body has no reason to change.
Example: your Romanian deadlift (numbers are illustrative). Small steps, not every week. When you stall, an easy week lets fatigue clear so you come back stronger.
Every exercise in your plan has a rep range, like 3 × 12–15. Keep the same weight and try to beat your reps each week. Once every set hits the top of the range, go up to the next weight. Your reps drop back to the bottom of the range, and you climb again.
Lateral raise, 3 × 12–15. A real week-1 log might look like 12, 11, 10. That's fine: the bottom of the range on the first set is enough. Move up only when you get 15, 15, 15.
Log every lift in the "Last:" box on the plan (e.g. 40 × 10,9,8). Next week, beat it by one rep somewhere. That box is progressive overload. Without it you're guessing.
A set only builds muscle if it's hard. The last few reps, when the bar slows down, do most of the work. A 2024 meta-analysis found muscle growth rises the closer you go to failure. Strength gains, though, barely depended on it. Going all the way to failure on every set mostly adds fatigue.
"2 reps in reserve": you stop when you're sure you could do 2 more with clean form, but not 4.
The best single number to count is hard sets per muscle per week. More sets give more growth, but every extra set adds a little less than the one before. Even 4 sets a week builds muscle. You'll often hear "10–20 sets is optimal". Greg Nuckols (Stronger By Science) traced that number back: it came from how one meta-analysis grouped its studies, and there was "never a long period of time where there was a strong empirical case" for it. His practical advice: about 10 sets a week is a good starting point, then add sets if you're recovering and progress stalls.
Your plan (version 2), counted by a script so it always matches. A row or press counts fully for its main muscle and half for helpers (a bench set gives triceps ½ a set). Front delts are lower because every press already hits them.
Back and side delts get the most (12 and 10 sets) because your goal is a V-taper. Everything else starts at 5–9 sets, which is plenty for a beginner. From week 6, if you're recovering well and lifts keep rising, the plan adds sets to the muscles you care about most.
Once your weekly sets are matched, how you spread them out barely matters for growth. Twice a week is still the smart default. Doing 20 sets of chest in one session means the last 10 are junk, because you're too tired to make them hard. Split across two days, every set is good quality.
No more than about 8–10 hard sets for one muscle in one session. If you need more, spread them over another day.
A split is just how you divide the body across the week. None is magic. A 2024 meta-analysis compared splits with full-body training at equal weekly sets and found no real difference in muscle or strength. Pick the one that fits your week and that you'll actually turn up for.
Push = chest, front shoulders, triceps (pressing things away). Pull = back, rear shoulders, biceps (pulling things toward you). Legs = quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves.
| Split | Days | Each muscle | Good for | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full body | 3 | 3×/wk | Beginners, busy weeks | Long sessions; the last exercises get a tired you |
| Upper / lower | 4 | 2×/wk | Beginner to intermediate; the classic next step | Upper days get long |
| Push / pull / legs | 6 | 2×/wk | People who love the gym daily | Miss one day and the whole week shifts; 6 days is a lot alongside swimming |
| Bro split | 5 | 1×/wk | Advanced lifters who can handle huge single sessions | Each muscle waits 7 days; mostly junk sets for beginners |
Your week decides it. Gym and pool are both at 4 PM, so you can only lift on Mon, Tue, Thu and Sat, and Tuesday is your fast day. Squatting and deadlifting after ~20 hours without food is asking for dizziness, so the heavy work goes into three full-body days (Mon, Thu, Sat), each muscle trained 2–3 times a week. Full body is also what Eric Helms (PhD, natural pro bodybuilder) offers beginners as his 3-day option, and the 2024 meta-analysis above found it builds as much muscle as a split at the same weekly sets. Tuesday is a short, optional machine session for shoulders and arms.
Training is the signal; muscle is built in the 24–72 hours after, if you give it materials and sleep.
| Lever | Target for you | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Protein | ≥ 112 g/day | Research shows gains level off around 1.6 g per kg of body weight a day (70 kg × 1.6). Your plan's 120–140 g gives margin. |
| Calories | About maintenance | Skinny-fat beginners can gain muscle and lose fat together (recomp). A big deficit would stall the muscle side. |
| Sleep | 7½–8 h | Short sleep lowers your training quality and shifts weight loss toward muscle instead of fat. |
| Deload | When stuck, not on a calendar | Half the sets, same weights, for one week, when several lifts stall or joints ache. Deloads are common practice but barely studied (a 2023 expert survey called them "under-researched"), and Helms says beginners don't need them on a schedule. |
Spot reduction, burning fat where you exercise, doesn't happen. A 2021 meta-analysis of studies that trained only one limb found the trained and untrained limbs lost the same fat. Your belly fat leaves when your overall body fat drops, from food and total training.
Ab training still matters: it makes the muscles thicker, so they show sooner once the fat is gone. That's why your plan has ab work three days a week, and why the reels promising "no belly in 30 days with 100 crunches" were left out.
Check lifts, waist and weight average against the rules on your plan page, and adjust only what the rules say. Photos every 4 weeks in the same light.