OVERLOAD
Most people are familiar with the Principle of Progressive Overload, and know that's it's a principle that cannot be violated if you want to make gains of any kind long-term. However, due in part, I think, to Starting Strength's ultra simple (but good) approach and the popularity of powerlifting, most people haven't quite understood what overload truly is. See, most people think that overload is achieved by adding additional weight to the bar. While that's not technically incorrect, intensity is only one small variable of many factors that determine the training load (overLOAD). The training load is the combined impact of intensity and especially volume, along with other factors such as density, proximity to failure, need for psych-up, learning new skills, and even the need for tactical decisions - Essentially the total combined amount of stress induced by a workout.
So you see, aiming to use more weight from workout to workout is not only hard to accomplish, because your strength doesn't increase that rapidly, but it also actually doesn't impact the total training load that much. In other words, adding a tiny bit of weight to the bar only constitutes a very, very small overload. It's still important over time, but as a stand-alone factor it's NOT the most powerful way to overload. And overload is what we want.

An increase in training load over time is always going to be the main driver of progress. In this program, this load increase does not come primarily by frantically trying to keep adding another micro-plate to the barbell. Instead, overload comes mainly from a systematic increase in volume over time, which constitues a much more powerful overload.

PERIODIZATION
It's a fancy word but for all practical intents and purposes, periodization basically just means "plan". There are several different principles at play in this particular program.
We've already discussed the importance of overload and what it actually is, but how is it actually achieved? Gains in strength as well as size are an adaptation. Adaptation is the goal of any training program and is the last phase in a 3 stage process: Stress - recovery - adaptation. "Stress" is the training load of course. As a complete beginner, you can create enough stress/train with a sufficiently large load in a single session to spark this process. If you follow that up with a day of rest to allow for recovery, then adaptation follows (gainz). Thus, to the beginner, a single workout is what is called a "microcycle" (stress - recovery - adaptation). As you become more advanced however, things change. You can no longer achieve a meaningful overload in just a single workout - Instead, the impact of several workouts combine into what is known as a "cumulative effect". The microcycle becomes longer, and now consists of several days. In this program (and many others e.g. Texas Method) a microcycle is 4 days of training or a week long. As a result, we don't attempt to induce overload from workout to workout but from week to week, microcycle to microcycle.

In this program, when a new microcycle begins, several work sets are added to each days. THIS is the main overload. You're also supposed to do an additional rep on some exercises compared to the previous microcycle. Doing that 1 additional rep is fairly managable and it's supposed to be. There should never be any doubt that you will actually be able to accomplish what you're supposed to do in any program. The scenario where you go to the gym and are unsure of whether you can even complete the prescribed workout is all fucked up - You don't leave progression up to coincidence!

You will notice that you only increase the training load over the course of 3 weeks/microcycles (called step-loading), after which there is a week of unloading. The reason for this is that the load you keep increasing is per definition a stressor. You are stressing your body - Not just your muscles, but your whole body and nervous system on a systemic level. When you train hard, the cumulative effect of the workouts result in increased performance, BUT at the same time you also induce fatigue on a systemic level. We're not talking about the kind of fatigue that you feel when you say that you're tired (if it comes to the point where you FEEL chronically fatigued from training, a deload is waaaaay overdue!). Rather, it's a combination of different things happening to your physiology as you keep ramping up the workload. If you keep it up, at some point you'll have enough accumulated fatigue in your body that this fatigue actually "masks" any gains in performance you would otherwise have enjoyed. This is why we deload. One week of deloading allows for residual fatigue to dissipate and for supercompensation to really kick in. THIS is where the gains really come in and all that overload pays off and is what's called "delayed effect or delayed transformation". Thanks to that, we can begin the next mesocycle (next 4 weeks) of the program with a significantly higher amount of weight than last mesocycle, quite simply because we're now bigger and stronger.

Now adding 5 kg to your lifts in 4 weeks may not seem like an awful lot at first glance, but it's no different than many other succesful programs (e.g. 5/3/1) and remember: it's still more than 60 kg in a year, which means that if you came out of Starting Strength with just an 80 kg bench press, you'll be benching 3 plates just a year from now (if you can keep it up, which might be optimistic but that's another story).
A final note on deloading: If you ever feel like you need a deload, then you needed that deload long ago and have been pissing away potential progress. The practice of a 3 week build-up followed by a deload is a time-proven approach used by many, many coaches all over the World. Because it just works.

ADAPTATION VS ACCOMMODATION
As mentioned above, we're training to achieve adaptation. What we don't want though is accommodation. Accommodation is the gains goblin. It means that the body has gotten so used to whatever kind of training we're subjecting it to and therefore it no longer provides a stimulus to start the recovery-adaptation cycle. The best way to avoid accommodation is through variety. But varying your training without varying it so much that your body doesn't know what the fuck to adapt to (muscle confusion!?) can be a delicate balancing act. The better job we do at this, the longer the program will keep working before we have to abandon it and do something completely different (that will happen sooner or later though).

A well periodized program does a number of things to avoid or at least postpone accommodation. The constantly fluctuating load in this program helps a lot in this regard, since the body doesn't really get used to doing a certain amount of work because it keeps changing.
You will also notice that you almost never do the same amount of reps on any given exercise. This is called undulating periodization and has been shown to work really well in this regard, too. As a bonus, research is showing pretty conclusively at this point that in order to see maximal gains in hypertrophy, one MUST work in other rep ranges than the classic 8-12 "hypertrophy range".
Lastly, the planned cycling of new exercises, and in particular the assistance exercises, is also important for avoiding accommodation. Additionally, changing out your assistance exercises on a regular basis helps ensure complete development of all muscle groups.

Could some things be done differently? Absolutely! There are literally endless ways to set up a program. There are also many other factors that can be taken into account, such as MRV or RPE, but one most try to find a balance between effectiveness and simplicity. My program is not "the best" intermediate program or even "the perfect" intermediate program. No such thing exists, unless it's been made specifically for the individual. But it's good and it'll work well.

How about you hypertrophy this dick

>>37313974
/thread

Going to bump this in the hope that it reaches its intended audience.

Let's see if I understand this correctly, I'll use horizontal (80 kg) and vertical push (60 kg) as an example:

Week 1 D2
Horizontal: 3x7 80 kg
Vertical: 3x8 60 kg

Week 1 D4
Vertical: 3x7 60 kg
Horizontal: 3x8 80 kg

Week 2 D2
Horizontal: 4x5 85 kg
Vertical: 3x9 60 kg

Week 2 D4
Vertical: 4x5 65 kg
Horizontal: 3x9 80 kg

Week 3 D2
Horizontal: 5x3 90 kg
Vertical: 3x10 60 kg

Week 3 D4
Vertical: 5x3 70 kg
Horizontal: 3x10 80 kg

Week 4 D2
Horizontal: 3x3 ?? kg
Vertical: 2x10 60 kg

Week 4 D4
Vertical: 3x3 ?? kg
Horizontal: 2x10 80 kg


This seems extremely wrong, like why is W1D2 vertical 3x8 60 kg, and then W1D4 it's 3x7 60kg? Can you use my template and give a correct progression as an example? Increasing 5 kg week to week, even when reducing reps feels way too much.

>>37314910
You're on the right track but you misunderstood one thing.
You do the same exercise twice per week, but you don't use the same weight these two times, because the prescribed number of reps is very different. It would look something like this:

Week 1 D2
Horizontal: 3x7 80 kg
Vertical: 3x8 55 kg

Week 1 D4
Vertical: 3x7 60 kg
Horizontal: 3x8 75 kg

Week 2 D2
Horizontal: 4x5 85 kg
Vertical: 3x9 55 kg

Week 2 D4
Vertical: 4x5 65 kg
Horizontal: 3x9 75 kg

Week 3 D2
Horizontal: 5x3 90 kg
Vertical: 3x10 55 kg

Week 3 D4
Vertical: 5x3 70 kg
Horizontal: 3x10 75 kg

Week 4 D2
Horizontal: 3x3 90 kg
Vertical: 2x10 55 kg

Week 4 D4
Vertical: 3x3 70 kg
Horizontal: 2x10 75 kg

And then the next mesocycle begins like this (provided you keep the same main lifts)

Week 5 D2
Horizontal: 3x7 85 kg
Vertical: 3x8 60 kg

Week 5 D4
Vertical: 3x7 65 kg
Horizontal: 3x8 80 kg

If a 5 kg jump is too much for you even though you're reducing the reps by 2, then just make a smaller jump that's more appropriate for you. Not a problem.

>>37315055

It's only the first week that's confusing since the exercises are swapped. In W2 it gets clear what to do since the rep schemes changes dramatically. Like you said, "when reps go up you don't add weight" but if you use that logic for W1D2 to W1D4 it's not actually true.

Maybe make this clear in the image? I think a lot of people would start the program like I did.

>>37315885
Good point, I'll make an updated version at some point.