Have you ever asked yourself what skill level am I when it comes to workout programming for strength training and how many days a week should I work out to get the best results? We are covering all that and more on today's Quick Wits. Welcome to the Wits and Weights podcast. I'm your host, philip Pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset, with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Let's dive right in. What you are about to hear is an excerpt from a video in the monthly workout programs course in Wits and Weights Physique University, where I go over how to select what your skill level is whether you're novice, late novice, intermediate, how many days a week you might want to work to get the best results, as well as equipment and substitutions. The second part of the video will come out in the next QuickWits later this week, and the reason I'm sharing all this is because this week and next week, wits and Weights Physique University is open for enrollment and, as a thank you for listening to this podcast, I would love to give you a free month of workout programs from the program. All you have to do is click the link in the show notes and I will send it to you, no strings attached. You will get the exact Google sheet with all seven programs, that's three novice programs, one late novice program, two intermediate programs and a female lower body focused program. They're all focused on strength and physique development, and you'll be getting the exact sheet that I am dropping for the first month of Wits and Weights Physique University as a thank you again for listening to this podcast. So again, just click the link in the show notes to get your free physique focused workout programs. All right, welcome to the monthly workout programs course, which really is this introductory explanatory video and then a monthly drop of workout programs. You will get these each month as long as you are in the program and you can always go back and look at previous months. So you've got tons of variety and workout programs to choose from, and what I want to do here is walk through the sheet itself, but also the principles here of how to train, how to pick your programs and then what the sheet looks like, so you know exactly how to use it. We have the two novice three-day programs so and I'll walk through these in a second and those don't change because there's no need for them to change. The other programs are the four programs that will change every month, and that's the late, novice four-day, intermediate three-day intermediate four-day and female four-day. And who knows, maybe I'll add more in the future, but I think that's a good starting point for most people. So that gives you really six programs, technically seven, because there's two in this one to go for. And then you have this exercise substitutions tab, which we'll talk about in a second.

So just walking through this list here, um, first, how do you select which program you want to use? I would start with your skill level. You're either a novice, which is like a rank beginner, and that might be because you've never lifted before, because you've been doing bootcamps or CrossFit or going to the gym but not really progressing, and so you haven't really had that physique development you want and the results that you want. Despite working hard in the gym. You're still a novice If you used to train back in the glory days and you stopped training. You're a novice, so a lot of you are probably novices. It's kind of your first six to nine months of effective training and if you don't think you've been doing it effectively, treat yourself as a novice and see how it goes. A late novice is when you're starting to maybe miss some reps or plateau on some lifts and you can't necessarily increase the load every session and you need to spread out the frequency of how often you squat or deadlift or what have you. Then you might be a late novice and then intermediate is beyond that. So you can only increase your load, say, once a week, or less than that on particular lifts. It doesn't mean you don't lift more than once a week. You may do squats two or three times a week. You're just doing them at different volumes to allow for recovery and you're not necessarily pushing that top load, whether it's a single or a set of five, or eight to 12, uh, until the next week or maybe in two weeks, depending on how advanced you are. So that's how you pick your skill level, all right?

Um, the next thing is days per week. This is going to be based on your schedule. Now I have three, four and five days in here. I do not have a five day program in here. Um, I I might add one in the future. One way to make your program into a five day program is just take a four day program and separate out a particular area of the body from the other days and put it on the fifth day. So a good way to do that is to take, uh, all the back exercises and put them into your Saturday workout, for example, and that way the other sessions get shorter and you're now spreading out the volume and still getting the five days. All right, I may add a five day program in the future like a power building program or something like that.

Um, I want to see what the community thinks and who's asking for it and we'll go from there. But most of you are going to be perfect with three days. If you're a novice, even if you're an intermediate, three day can work, and then four days is good for a split Once you get to late. Novice or intermediate, even novices if that's just what the style you want to do, you could do the four days, but you don't necessarily need to. So that's how you pick your days per week. And then the equipment. So here's where, when we develop these programs, we could have either created programs with specific equipment or what we ended up doing is made it more flexible for you. So the programs assume access to a conventional gym barbells, dumbbells, cables, machines but if you don't have all the things that are required for all the lifts, it's okay. That's why we created this exercise substitutions sheet, created this exercise substitutions sheet, which is a really nice sheet of everything you could possibly imagine.

Where you go to a particular movement pattern, you find the lift that you're not able to do, for whatever reason. Let's say you don't have a barbell and it calls for a barbell bench press. All right, that is here. You can now pick anything from both columns as a substitution. You can either pick another, you know standard exercise If you you know you don't have a barbell but you have a dumbbell. So instead of doing barbell bench press, do dumbbell bench press or machine chest press or even a Smith machine bench press, right. But if, let's say, you just are super limited or you're traveling, well, then you could do a pushup or a decline pushup or throw a backpack on and do a pushup right. Most of these are pushups, there's also dips, because dips can often be done on just all sorts of random equipment out in the world.

And so this list is super valuable for you to substitute. And so it's very simple. You pick a program, you go through it before you do your first week and you look at everything. Yes, I'm good, good, good, good. Oh, I don't have that, oh, I don't have that. You come to this list, find something to substitute it with anything, anything goes, it's fine, okay, and you're good to go. Just substitute it. And now you've got your first week ready to go, and then you should be following the program for at least I'm going to say, six to 12 weeks anyway. So it's just rinse and repeat and progress over time. All right, so that's super valuable. That is how we made all of these very flexible to whatever you have. And let's say you're three weeks into a program and then you have to go on a trip and you're gonna bring your bands with you, or you're gonna have access to a limited gym in the travel, or you don't have anything, you're just gonna do body weight same thing. You can still get some of the stimulus you have from your normal workout, but just substitute it with other movements or take a break for the week.

What you just heard is an excerpt from the introductory course in the monthly workout programs within Wits and Weights Physique University, but again, if you want the full month of workout programs absolutely free, whether or not you are enrolled right now, go click the link in my show notes and, by the way, tomorrow for the full length episode. It is all about everyday bodybuilding. Check that out. There's very relevant topics in there about how to make the most of the bodybuilding lifestyle and then check out the next QuickWits as we conclude this video from the course and talk about how to train, principles of training as well as warming up and all of the things to look for to avoid missing reps so you can continue making progress. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them and make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.