6.2 Designing a Mesocycle: The Six Levers

The first step in designing a mesocycle is to determine the primary goal. This could be a specific muscle group you want to prioritize, a particular movement pattern you want to improve, or a general focus on increasing overall hypertrophy or strength.

Once you have a clear goal in mind, you can manipulate the following six levers introduced in Chapter 5 to create a mesocycle that supports that goal. (Chapter 5 listed seven programming variables, progressive overload is deliberately ignored as it is not something you can intentionally manipulate, but rather a response to training.)

  1. Intensity: a sensible choice would be to keep intensity relatively high overall, with a specific focus on the muscle group or movement pattern you want to prioritize (however, recoverability is also a consideration, so the intensity of the non-priority exercises may need to be reduced to allow for sufficient recovery)
  2. Volume: the volume of the priority exercises should be higher than the non-priority exercises, but the exact amount will depend on your recovery capacity and the specific goal
  3. Rep Ranges: this is mostly a matter of personal preference
  4. Exercise Selection: possibly the most important lever, focus on selecting exercises that train the joint action of interest, possibly at different muscle lengths to ensure comprehensive development
  5. Frequency: the priority exercises should be performed more frequently than the non-priority exercises, but again, 2 times per week is a good starting point, 3 times per week can be done but may require more careful management of intensity and volume to avoid recovery issues
  6. Sequencing: possibly the second most important lever, the priority exercises should be sequenced earlier in the workout when you have more energy and can perform them with better form and higher intensity, while the non-priority exercises can be sequenced later in the workout when fatigue is higher

We will now try to put all of this together into a practical example in the next section.