Pete Wright
Welcome back to Build for Health, where we pull back the curtain on what it takes to build a strong, healthy body and a fitness routine that actually sticks. I’m Pete Wright, and I’m here with Srdjan Injac of ELEV8 Fitness. Today we are doing Training Programming 101. How do you structure your week? When do you push? When do you back off? And what does periodization even mean — that helps you progressing instead of just collecting sore joints like souvenirs. If you have ever finished a week of workouts wondering, “Was that smart?” — this one’s for you. Let’s get to it.
All right, Srdjan, here we go. The whole reason I come to you is so that I can outsource the part of my brain that needs to do exactly this. I walk into the gym and I’m like, just point. Point at it and tell me what to do.
Srdjan Injac
Like, what do I do?
Pete Wright
So if our promise to people listening today is that we want you to feel organized and we want you to have a routine that’s sustainable and directional — what does it mean to talk about programming your training? What is the benefit of thinking through it at this level?
Srdjan Injac
Periodization matters. It’s coming up with the plan. You always have to have a workout plan and know what you’re doing and how to progress. That’s why it matters. It’s so you can progress slowly, avoid injuries, keep the motivation there, make steady progress, and build in recovery. You slowly move up and get better every week. You have to have a plan. And there are different types of plans depending on whether someone is a beginner, intermediate, advanced, or an athlete.
Pete Wright
Right, different types of plans for different levels. Makes sense.
Srdjan Injac
You have your goal, what you want to achieve, and then you set your plan — the first four weeks we’re going to do this, the next four weeks we’re going to do that — and keep going up. That way you never hit any plateaus.
Pete Wright
That’s the fight a lot of people have with their workouts, right? That plateau.
Srdjan Injac
Right. A lot of people will work out and then all of a sudden they’re like, “I just don’t see anything. I’ve been working out for weeks. In the beginning it was great, I was seeing results, and now it’s completely stopped.” They’re doing everything right but don’t see any results because they’re stuck in the same thing they’ve been doing since day one. They don’t have a plan and they don’t know how to break through that plateau. That’s why I always say: come up with a plan depending on where you are fitness-wise and what level you’re at.
Pete Wright
Yeah. What I’m hearing you say — and what I hear in your voice in my head all the time — is you’ve got to give your body a reason to change. What I notice when I stop seeing change in myself, I think, “I’ve been doing the same thing so long that my body has adapted and it’s going to be harder to give it an excuse to change.” Is that a fair way to approach it?
Srdjan Injac
Yeah, it is. That’s why when I feel like you’ve hit a plateau — you’re not as sore and you’re not seeing the results — that’s when I start changing things. Reps, sets, exercises, the order of the exercises, how we do them. You shock the muscle, you shock the body, give it something it’s not used to. If you don’t give your body a reason to change, it’s not going to change. The body will adapt to the environment, but you’ve got to push your limits. You’ve got to push your body to those limits when it’s going to start making change.
But you also have to be careful — you have to know when to draw the line and know when you’re pushing a little too hard. You have to listen to your body, otherwise you’re going to get hurt. I actually had a client this morning that I had to talk with because I’ve been watching him, watching his workouts for months, to tell him to tone it down and not force it.
Pete Wright
Okay. Let’s walk through the variables you’re thinking about when it comes to programming someone’s training. The things you push me on — I know — include the number, the volume of sets and reps. We’ve done a whole show on low weight, high reps versus high weight, low reps, and what each gives you. Volume is one variable. Intensity and load is another. What am I missing?
Srdjan Injac
So there are three different types of periodization: linear, non-linear, and what we call deload weeks. Let me explain what each means.
Linear periodization is a structured way of training where you gradually change the stimulus over time — usually by starting with lighter weights and higher reps, then slowly progressing to heavier weights and lower reps. The idea is to build a solid foundation first, to improve technique, muscle endurance, and work capacity before shifting focus to strength and performance. Each phase prepares your body for the next, allowing you to adapt safely instead of trying to do everything at once. This approach works especially well for beginners or anyone returning from an injury, because it’s predictable and progressive, it’s easier to recover from, and it helps you build strength with confidence without burning out or breaking down.
Pete Wright
Okay, so that’s linear. What’s next?
Srdjan Injac
Then you have non-linear. This training approach is where intensity and volume change more frequently — often within the same week — instead of progressing in one straight line. Rather than spending several weeks in one rep range, you rotate the training focus. For example: a heavier strength day, a moderate hypertrophy day, and a lighter high-rep day. This allows you to push hard at times while still recovering, and it reduces mental and physical burnout. It adapts better to real-life stress like work, sleep, and schedule changes, because the stimulus is constantly changing and the body continues to adapt without feeling beat up all the time. This style is more ideal for intermediate lifters and long-term training.
Now, I also forgot to mention block periodization, which is another different type of training. It’s an approach where you focus on one primary goal at a time for a set period. Instead of trying to improve everything at once, each block is designed to build a specific quality — such as muscle, strength, or power — and then hand that adaptation off to the next block. For example, you might spend several weeks building muscle and work capacity, then shift into a strength-focused block, and later move into a phase that emphasizes power or performance. This method works better when recovery is well managed and is often used with more advanced lifters and athletes.
Pete Wright
You said deload as one of the options when we started. What is that?
Srdjan Injac
So about every four to six weeks you lower the weight — maybe thirty to fifty percent less than what you’ve been lifting. It gives you a little recovery so you’re not always pushing heavy weight all the time. It’s kind of a lighter week. You do that about every four to six weeks or every month. When you’re lifting heavy weight all the time, you’re putting your body through a lot of stress, so sometimes you need to deload and go a little bit lighter. Just focus on lower intensity.
Pete Wright
Okay. So all of this goes into the mental model of training programming. Given those foundational elements — intensity, volume, linear versus nonlinear — how do we go about building a training program? Let’s start for a beginner or intermediate. What should I be thinking about walking into the gym if I didn’t have you to help?
Srdjan Injac
Let me give you a simple 12-week example for general population. For weeks one through four, you do what we call adaptation. Higher reps — anywhere between 12 to 15 — with lower intensity. You focus more on technique and muscle endurance. After those four weeks, weeks five through eight, you focus on hypertrophy — muscle growth. That’s moderate volume, moderately high intensity, focused on muscle growth. Anywhere between 8 to 12 reps, a little bit heavier weight. Then you have another four weeks, weeks nine through twelve, where you focus on lower reps — 5 to 8 — with higher intensity and heavier weight. That’s more for strength. And then like I said, you have that deload recovery, maybe in that 12th week, with lower volume and lower intensity to allow the body to recover before starting a new cycle.
So that’s a simple example of a plan. Start slowly the first four weeks — focus on technique and muscle endurance. Don’t go too heavy. Keep it higher reps. Then weeks five through eight, go a little heavier, a little higher intensity, and focus more on muscle growth in that 8 to 12 rep range. After that, go for strength. Now you’re more secure in your technique and you have that foundation, so you can go heavier and do 4 to 6 reps. And then after those heavy weeks, you deload in week 12.
Pete Wright
How do you decide what specifically to work on — parts of the body, push versus pull, legs? How do you stage that?
Srdjan Injac
Everyone’s a little bit different. They start at different levels. What I usually do is give people their first two sessions for free — a full hour each. Those sessions are for me to do an assessment of their body and see what they’re capable of, to see if there are any injuries or muscle imbalances. Because usually people feel pain in their joints — knees, elbows, shoulders — and a muscle imbalance may be the reason why they’re feeling that pain. I look at their form, posture, and give them basic exercises just to see how they move and whether they can follow my instructions when I try to correct their technique.
That gives me a better idea of where to start them. For example, if I can go right away into deadlifts, or if I need to wait a few weeks to strengthen other muscles and build body awareness before I give them a deadlift — because you don’t want them to get hurt. Deadlifts are a little bit harder, a little riskier, and easier to hurt your lower back. So that’s kind of how I decide where someone starts and then slowly progress them.
Once I feel confident in their form — when I can see them catch themselves doing something wrong and modify without me saying anything — that’s when I put on more weight. Then we work on strength, going heavier where they can only do 4 to 6 reps with good form. Then I go a little lighter and we work on hypertrophy — 8, 10, maybe 12 reps. And after that they get burned out and we go a little lighter again to work on muscle endurance at around 15 reps.
Pete Wright
Got it.
Srdjan Injac
So there are different ways you can structure training. Everyone knows about progressive overload — you start with lighter weight and every set you go up. That’s one way. But sometimes the way I do it is I’ll have you warmed up and then go right to the heaviest weight, because now you have all your strength. You’re just starting, you’re not fatigued, you haven’t done anything yet. You just warmed up. So we go right away to 70 to 80 percent of their one-rep max, and then every set we go a little lighter because now they’re more fatigued and I’m giving them less weight so their form doesn’t get compromised.
Because if they start at the lowest weight and go up every set, by the time they get to the third or fourth set, they’ve already done maybe 30 reps, the muscle is already fatigued, and now I’m giving them that heavy weight and asking them to push it while they’re tired. That’s okay — that’s fine — but sometimes I switch those two approaches depending on the goal.
One thing I also want beginners to understand: even when I talk about strength being in the 4 to 6 rep range, you have to think about the size of the muscle. For your quads, hamstrings, or back — huge muscles — you can load up weight where you can only do 4 reps. But for biceps or triceps, it’s a smaller muscle with a smaller attachment to the bone. If you put so much weight on it that you can only do 4 reps, you’re going to tear that muscle, almost tear that tendon. For the biceps, if you can’t do 8 reps, I wouldn’t go any heavier than that. For the back, it’s okay to load up where you can only do 4 to 6. For the bicep, I would never go that heavy.
You want to work on all muscles — smaller ones and bigger ones — and make sure there’s muscle balance. From quads and lats to rear delts, which are small muscles, you want to work on all of them. But that’s why you have to be careful when someone hears “strength is 4 to 6 reps” and tries to do that on a bicep or rear delt — you’re going to tear that muscle.
Pete Wright
It’s really helpful to hear you talk about it this way, because I sometimes think, “If I’m doing something at a weight I’m comfortable with and I can do 12 to 15 reps, maybe I’m losing ground because I’m not continually progressing to heavier weight.” What I’m hearing is that’s not always the case — and that the reps themselves mean something. Sometimes I need to let that go.
Srdjan Injac
Right. And people have different goals. Some people just want to work on strength. Some people want to focus on losing weight, some on gaining muscle and hypertrophy. So depending on your goal — I usually like to focus on everything with my clients. I want them to lose weight, gain strength, and have muscle, because it’s all important. So we work on all those elements and do different types of reps and sets — burnouts, drop sets, and other techniques.
For example, rest-pause sets — a lot of people haven’t heard of those. You do about 10 to 12 reps and stop when you actually have maybe two more reps left. You don’t go to failure. You stop, rest 20 seconds, then go again until failure at the same weight. Then stop again at failure for another 20 seconds and go one more time. You feel more muscle fatigue that way — not as much of a burn, but more of an emptied-out feeling.
Drop sets are different. You go until failure — maybe 12 to 15 reps — then immediately drop the weight and go again for maybe 6 to 8, and the muscle is just burning. You can’t wait to get off the machine. So those are two different approaches — one is more of a deep fatigue, the other is more of a burn.
And then there’s supersetting with another exercise for the same muscle group but a different movement. So many different ways to train.
Pete Wright
When you line up all these mechanics and align them with parts of the body — how do you think about building a week? What’s full body, what’s upper, what’s lower, what’s core? Is there any method to how you build a week and what you want to work first?
Srdjan Injac
You work on the bigger muscles first, then go to the smaller muscles. And depending on how many times a week someone is working out, I might split things differently. Beginners can do a full body workout one day, then a little cardio and rest the next, then come back for another full body. Or if you’re more advanced, you do upper body one day, lower body the next, rest and do some cardio, then go back to upper and lower. Or if you’re working out just three times a week, you do upper, lower, upper one week, then lower, upper, lower the next week.
The whole point is to get you a little sore, but not to kill yourself to the point where you’re sore for two weeks and can’t come back in. We want you to come back the next day or a couple days later and be able to do something else.
Pete Wright
What’s your recommended strategy? Three times a week?
Srdjan Injac
I would do at least three times a week. If you can do four, that’s great. But if you’re starting out, the first day do full body, give yourself a little rest, do maybe some cardio, then toward the end of the week do full body again. Just to introduce your body to the stress. Then slowly start adapting — maybe go upper, lower, upper, lower. And then when you’re used to that, you can start separating muscle groups — chest and triceps, back and biceps, legs — or split the legs. There are so many different ways. Just start slow and introduce your body to what it’s going to be going through.
Pete Wright
You already debunked one myth I wanted you to address: if I deload, I’m losing progress. That’s not the case. But I have a few more. Number one — more sweat equals a better workout.
Srdjan Injac
No. I have clients that don’t sweat at all, which drives me crazy. I’m like, “We did all that work and she’s like, I don’t sweat.” Meanwhile I’m sweating just watching her.
Pete Wright
That’s right. Okay, number two — I have to change exercises constantly to keep making progress.
Srdjan Injac
No. The way I do it — if I did a workout one week and it was great, I felt sore, I feel great, I keep it until I don’t feel sore anymore and I feel like my body’s getting used to the same routine. Then it’s time to shock the muscle. You don’t have to change. If you want to, you can — but you don’t have to.
Pete Wright
Okay. And here’s another one I think you sort of already debunked: every set has to go to failure.
Srdjan Injac
No. I don’t do every set to failure. Like I said, you go lower intensity, higher intensity, because sometimes if you’re trying to push to failure, you’re going to cross that line and get hurt. Now you’re pulling with other muscle groups that aren’t supposed to be involved in that exercise. Sometimes I’ll stop before I think I have one more rep, because that next one probably isn’t going to happen and I’d rather not risk an injury. If every set is to failure, you’re also going to forget that we have two more sets coming, and two more exercises for that same muscle group. So you’re going to do plenty of sets — you don’t have to go that hard every single time. You’ll just set yourself up for injury and eventually it’s going to happen.
Pete Wright
Okay, last question — this is a personal one. I think about this all the time, especially because you put me on the Trainerize app. I’m logging my stuff, and at the end of the workout it says “You’re awesome” with a little cartoon high five. And one of the things it reports is how many session personal bests I’ve achieved. If I push the weight up a little bit or push the reps up a little bit, I get this list of personal bests. And honestly — it makes me feel good. I’m a simple monkey.
Srdjan Injac
Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Wright
You’ve been doing this your whole life. How do you know when you are making progress in your own lifts when you’re presumably not getting personal bests anymore?
Srdjan Injac
It’s kind of become my lifestyle. And I’m really hard on myself all the time. In my mind there’s always room for improvement — I can always do better, push a little harder, do something different. I just keep pushing. Okay, last week I did this — let’s try to do better this week. Some machines I’ve maxed out, and then I’m like, okay, now I have to do something else because this machine doesn’t give me enough weight anymore. So I find different ways to burn out the muscle.
But what made me feel really good recently — I was at the grocery store and someone gave me a compliment about my posture and my physique. And I’m like, “Oh, thank you.” I always consider myself just an average normal guy. So when someone says something like that, I’m like, you know what? All this stuff I’ve been doing — it’s actually paying off. It’s working. It made my day. Those little small compliments outside the gym — that’s what makes me feel good.
Even if I had a bad week where the workouts weren’t on point, I felt tired, couldn’t push the same weight, and I got frustrated — and then I get a compliment like that and I’m like, just keep pushing. Just keep going. Stay persistent and consistent and things are happening. We just don’t always notice it ourselves because we look in the mirror every day and we don’t see those small wins. Until someone gives you that compliment and it makes you feel good, and you’re like — this works. I love it. Keep going.
Pete Wright
I love that. And it’s great advice that applies to everybody. Whether you’ve been doing this for 25 years and feel like you have it down, or whether you’re just starting — it feels really good to listen to the world around you as it reacts to the changes you’re making in yourself. That’s pretty special. Thank you, Srdjan.
I feel like this might be one where folks could listen to it a couple of times and take some notes. Because some of these strategies are really going to help you when you get to the gym and wonder, what am I going to do today? This can help you strategize your next four weeks. Good job.
Srdjan Injac
Yeah, and if you have any questions about setting up a program, there is so much more I haven’t even tapped into — it’s such a broad topic.
Pete Wright
If you have more questions about what to do, how to do it, which muscle groups, when, and which muscle groups not to combine — send us a question. Head over to the show notes, just swipe down in your podcast app and tap the link that says “Send us a question.” We will answer it on an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear your specific questions about training programming. We talked about 101 today — maybe you’re ready for 201. We’re happy to go there. Thank you so much for downloading and listening to the show. We appreciate your time and your attention. Don’t forget to subscribe and share the show — it’s how we grow stronger together. Thanks for listening to Build for Health with Srdjan Injac. We’ll catch you right here in the gym next week.
