RP Strength (Hypertrophy)

How it works

RP Strength is a hypertrophy framework: instead of a Training Max and a heavier bar each week, it programmes how many hard sets each muscle gets per week. You pick a split and how many sessions a week you can train, work each muscle in the 8–12 rep range on compounds and 12–20 on isolation, and stop each set a target number of reps short of failure — you choose the weight that makes that land. Volume climbs for 4 to 6 weeks, then a deload week clears the fatigue and the next block starts.

Here's the thing about building muscle: across every honest study we have, the single variable that tracks growth best is how many hard sets you do per muscle per week. Not the magic exercise, not the perfect rep tempo, not which split has the coolest name — weekly volume, taken close enough to failure, recovered from, and repeated. That's the whole game.

So RP doesn't programme a Training Max and chase a heavier bar like the strength programmes do. It programmes volume per muscle, ramps it up over a few weeks until you're doing about as much as you can recover from, then backs off and does it again. Strength comes along for the ride — but size is the target.

Volume landmarks

Every muscle has a working range of weekly sets, and we mark it with three landmarks:

• MEV — Maintenance/Minimum Effective Volume. The fewest hard sets per week that still grows the muscle. Below this you're just maintaining. This is where a mesocycle starts.
• MAV — Maximum Adaptive Volume. The sweet spot where most of your weekly sets should live for most of the block — enough stimulus to grow well without burying your recovery.
• MRV — Maximum Recoverable Volume. The most you can do and still recover. Push past it and you accumulate fatigue faster than you adapt — that's junk volume, and it costs you. A mesocycle peaks just shy of here.

These numbers are individual — your back's MRV is not your neighbour's — so the app stores them per muscle, per user and tunes them over time from your feedback. Don't agonise over the exact starting figures; the autoregulator's job is to dial them in.

How the volume goes up

A mesocycle runs 4 to 6 weeks. You start each muscle at its MEV and add a little volume each week, climbing toward MRV — something like 12 → 14 → 16 → 18 sets across the block (illustrative; your real numbers are per-muscle). Week by week the work piles up and so does fatigue, which is exactly the point: you're driving a bigger and bigger stimulus right up to the edge of what you can recover from.

Then the last week is a mandatory deload — volume and intensity drop hard so fatigue dissipates and the gains you earned can actually show up. Skipping the deload doesn't make you tougher; it just digs a hole. Ramp, peak, deload, repeat.

At the end of each week you fill out a quick per-muscle survey — pump, soreness/disruption, and performance, across all the muscle groups. The autoregulator reads that feedback and nudges next week's volume per muscle: a muscle that's barely pumped and never sore gets more sets; one that's beaten up and under-recovering gets held back or trimmed. This is how the generic landmark numbers become your landmark numbers — the programme meets your recovery where it actually is instead of where a textbook guessed.

How hard each set is

You don't take every set to failure — you leave Reps In Reserve (RIR): the number of reps you could still have done with good form. RIR is how RP manages intensity alongside volume, and it drops as the block goes on. Early weeks sit around RIR 3 (volume is climbing, so keep effort honest but submaximal); by the last hard week you're near RIR 0–1, grinding. As volume ramps up, proximity to failure ramps with it, then the deload resets both.

Judging RIR honestly is a learned skill — most newer lifters call "RIR 1" when they had four reps left. If your RIR estimates are wild, your whole block drifts. That's the main reason RP rewards a couple of years of training experience.

Sessions and splits

Within a single session there's a point of diminishing returns per muscle. Roughly: ~3 sets is a minimal dose, around 8 sets is about optimal, and by 10–12 sets in one session it's junk — more fatigue, no more growth. So the app caps per-muscle work in a session and spreads the rest across the week. If you want more weekly volume, the answer is almost always another session, not cramming more into today.

Once weekly volume gets meaningful, you can't pile it all onto one day — the per-session ceiling won't allow it and the quality craters. You add volume by adding frequency. Pick a split (Upper/Lower, PPL, Bro, or Full Body) and a sessions-per-week count; each split only offers the frequencies that actually distribute the work sensibly, so the picker hides the rest.

High-frequency setups rotate emphasis — you don't blast every muscle maximally every day. Full Body here trains each muscle about twice a week with the emphasis moving session to session, rather than 14 muscles every workout. The split you choose matters far less than hitting your weekly volume with enough frequency to keep each session productive.

How a session looks

A workout is a list of exercises grouped by muscle (a Push day might be chest / front delts / triceps). Every set runs at this week's RIR target — no AMRAP — in a hypertrophy rep range: 8–12 reps on compounds and 12–20 on isolation work. The programme controls sets, reps, and RIR; you pick the load. The first time you train a movement the weight field is pre-filled with a suggestion from your history (scaled to the rep + RIR target); after that it carries your last weight forward. Treat it as a starting point and adjust at the bar so the prescribed reps land at the prescribed RIR.

Rest as long as you need to keep quality high: roughly ~5 min on heavy compounds, ~2 min on moderate work, ~1 min on isolation. Rushing rest just lowers your reps and muddies the stimulus.