Ten complete six-day training weeks for advanced lifters: how to pick a split by goal, fifteen intensity methods, and how to rotate protocols for a year.
30 min read
This is a library of ten complete training weeks for advanced lifters. Each is six days, sixty minutes a session, with every exercise, set, rep and rest period already written. They are not ten versions of one plan: every protocol uses a different split and a different signature intensity method, so you can run them back to back for a year without repeating a stimulus. You pick one by goal, run it for six weeks, then rotate.
What's Inside
Written for advanced lifters with at least three years of consistent training, no long recent break, technique that holds under fatigue, and the ability to tell one rep in reserve from three. It assumes six training days a week are realistic for you and that you sleep at least seven hours. It is not a beginner plan, not a menu to mix days from, and not a cutting programme, because this workload cannot be recovered from in a deep deficit.
By goal, not by mood or by what you ran last. The ten protocols sort into five jobs. If you want strength and size together, the options are a push, pull and legs rotation twice a week, an upper and lower split three times a week, or a four-heavy-day powerlifting structure with two volume days. If you want the most work per hour, there is an antagonist-superset protocol where every exercise is paired with its opposite, and a ten-sets-of-ten density protocol on one load. If you want to destroy one muscle a day, there is a body-part split with twenty-plus sets per target. For stubborn muscles, two protocols raise frequency, one training every muscle three times a week with every rep taken to full stretch, the other training full body six days a week. One protocol uses the fewest sets in the guide and takes every one past failure, and the last is the hardest week in the collection. Weekly set totals differ enormously between them, which is the point: the split, the frequency and the method all change together. The Workout Planner Engine helps match one to the days you actually have.
By building the session against a clock rather than a feeling. Every session follows the same shape: a warm-up and ramp block, then the lead lifts with long rests, then paired work with short rests, then a finisher taken to failure. Rest is timed in seconds from the moment the set ends, not estimated, and the order of exercises is fixed because the lead lift needs you fresh. Supersets and giant sets are marked so you move straight to the next movement and rest only at the end of the round. The most common reason a session overruns is not the programme but waiting for equipment, which is why the guide includes a swap table and why The Gym Swap File covers substitution in depth. Cardio sits outside the hour, as daily steps and short easy sessions placed away from leg days.
Not everywhere, and the rule is about the exercise rather than the effort. On free barbell squats, deadlifts, bench presses, rows and overhead presses you stop short of failure, with no drop sets and no rest-pause, ever, because the cost of a failed rep under a loaded bar is an injury rather than a missed set. On machines, cables, dumbbells and bodyweight movements the final set goes to failure unless the cue says otherwise, because failure there is cheap and recoverable. Fifteen intensity methods are named in the tables and each has an exact way it is run, applied to the final set or round rather than to every set. If you miss the bottom of a rep range, the answer is to cut the load, not to grind. That is also why the protocols are not a menu to mix from: the volume, the method and the rest periods were balanced together, so blending days from different ones breaks the arithmetic.
Six weeks, then rotate. Week one is an entry week run with reps left in reserve and the intensity methods switched off, because its only jobs are to learn the session, find your loads and hit the clock. Then come loading weeks where the methods come on and load or reps climb on every lead lift, two peak weeks where the aim is to beat the previous week outright, and a deload that keeps the same exercises and loads at half the sets. Progression is tracked on one number per day, the lead lift, because if that climbs the protocol is working and if it does not, nothing else on the page matters. Load goes up on a rule rather than by feel, with different triggers for barbells, machines and isolation work. This volume only grows you if it is paid for, so the guide sets daily recovery targets: use the Protein Calculator and Calorie & Macro Calculator to set them, and the Progress Bottleneck Engine if the lead lift stalls.
The full guide contains all ten protocols written out day by day, the selector, the 60-minute law and how to read the tables, the effort rules, fifteen intensity methods, the six-week wave, the swap table, recovery targets, the day scoreboard and a closing FAQ. Download the PDF for the complete collection.
This page and the full guide are for educational purposes only. They are not medical advice, physiotherapy or an individual training prescription, and they do not replace a coach who can watch you move. Training at this volume and intensity carries a real risk of injury, and the protocols assume healthy, experienced adults with no current joint pain. Get medical clearance before starting if you have any heart, blood pressure, joint or other health condition, and stop and seek care for chest pain, dizziness, fainting or sharp joint pain. This content is not for anyone under 18.
Yes, by running five days and carrying the sixth into the next week, so each cycle takes seven to eight days. Deleting a day instead breaks the balance of the protocol.
No. Free barbell squats, deadlifts, presses and rows stop short of failure, while machines, cables and dumbbells are where the final set can safely go all the way.
No. If you have energy left at the end of a session, the last set was not hard enough.
Six weeks: an entry week to find your loads, loading and peak weeks, then a deload, and then you rotate to another protocol.
This guide is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice.
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