This guide will help you determine parameters for creating your meso.
Starting off, you have the option to select a premade template, build a template from scratch, or build one with the meso builder. (How do I build a mesocycle?)
Premade Templates vs Building Your Own Meso
The RP Hypertrophy App allows you to build your own mesocycles from scratch or with our mesobuilder, which is great for experienced lifters who know how to build training around their goals, but is not necessary. Our premade templates offer a wide variety of splits that will cover most lifters. The template goals range anywhere from 2 day full body to 6 day delt specialization. These can be customized before starting or you can pick one and go.
You can see we offer a vast library of template options, and we frequently add more!
Common training splits you may be looking for in our premade options:
- Upper/Lower - typically our 4 and 5 day full body templates
- Push/Pull/Legs - 6 day full body template
To find a premade template faster, use the template filter to break down your search.
To build your own click the + button in the top right and select to either build a meso from scratch or use the meso builder.
Guide For Template Selection:
Start with the number of days you can consistently train
Start with your schedule. Choose the number of days you can repeat consistently every week, even when life gets busy. A well-structured 2, 3, or 4-day plan trained consistently will usually beat a 5 or 6-day plan that you constantly miss, skip, or rearrange. You can use the filter to limit template selection from our premade options to your chosen number of training days.
What Muscle Groups Do You Want To Focus On?
Consider Your Current Diet Phase
- Are you trying to lose fat, gain muscle, or maintain?
Fat Loss Phase
Calories are lower and impair recovery from training and blunt tissue growth processes.
Select a template from the 'full body' options. This keeps volume distributed across all body parts while muscle growth is limited during reduced calorie intake to maintain muscle mass.
Whole body daily is different from the full body templates in that it trains all major muscle groups each training session.
Muscle Gain Phase
Calories are higher and support recovery from training to better repair and build new tissue. This is the best time to run a specialization phase for specific muscle groups.
Limit specialization to one or two muscle groups at a time for best results.
Select a template from any of the "Emphasis Templates" in the template filter or if building your own
Select grow for muscle groups being prioritized; Select emphasize for muscle groups treated as a secondary emphasis. Select maintain for anything you simply want to keep at baseline.
Maintenance
- Calories are about equal to your current needs, resulting in neither much tissue lost nor much muscle gained. Specialization is OK, but may sacrifice muscle in non-focused areas.
- A balanced setup is suggested similar to a fat loss phase, but template selection is much more open.
The app does not filter for diet phase, as the app will adjust your volumes based on your feedback to the training which is influenced by factors like your caloric environment. The above is only meant to help determine if you should select a specialization template or stick with a normal full body template.
These are our suggestions, but not everyone has the same physique or training goals. Someone may want to focus only on a specific body part, and some individuals with different abilities may not be able to train certain muscle groups. You can certainly select an arm focused template while in a fat loss phase, for example, but be aware there are tradeoffs in selections like this.
The Big Picture
The best template is not always the most intense one or the most customized one. It is the one that matches your schedule, your goal, your nutrition phase, and what you actually want to improve.