Custom Training Templates (FAQ)

These templates were created to let you quickly and easily design customizable weight training programs for muscular development. In plain language, it’s a program generator designed to get you one of two things:

     More muscular all around (or just in places where you need the most work)

     Save your hard-earned muscle while losing fat

The design of the templates is such that you can use them while gaining weight (for maximal muscle growth), while maintaining weight (for some muscle growth and fat loss at the same time), and/or while losing weight (to save your hard-earned muscle while you chisel away the fat)

If you compete in bodybuilding, classic physique, or men’s physique, this template is going to generate some of the most advanced and effective training around. But if you’re just interested in putting on some muscle or keeping your muscle while you lose fat, this template is right up your alley as well!

Can you train via this template if you do functional fitness, MMA, or any other strength sports? You bet. Our best advice when mixing training is two-fold:

• If you do functional fitness or another sport, choose the 3 or 4 day training options and not the 5 or 6 day training options. This lets your body have the room to recover from both of your training commitments.
• When you rate your soreness and strength on the template, it adjusts the volume and gives you more or less work depending on how you’re recovering. Be very honest in filling out the ratings and if you’re sore from functional fitness or any other training. And if you feel it during your physique workouts, rate that accordingly! This way, your training of both can remain balanced and you won’t find yourself beat up and under-recovering.

These are big recommendations because if you try to add too much stuff to one program, you’ll fatigue much more than you can handle and you might find yourself overreached and with worse performance in all areas. As long as you make sure to effectively balance your workload and your recovery (by being honest with yourself and properly rating the physique template workouts), you can use these templates to build muscle for many other endeavors. Just be logical and don’t try to triple up on everything! If you have a coach/coaches for other sports, our best advice is to talk over your physique template use with them.

Good news!  You can use these hypertrophy templates during any dieting phase (to gain weight, to lose weight, or maintain weight). If you want to do a fat loss phase with the templates, we recommend only or mostly choosing the "growth" options and training all of the muscles you want to prevent from losing during your fat loss phase. We recommend saving the "specialization" choice mostly for when you are gaining weight, not losing it. On maintenance, choosing growth and perhaps choosing on the lower side of number of training days (3 to 5 vs. 4 to 6) can let you keep your muscle, get stronger, and reduce fatigue for when you're ready to do another round of muscle gain or fat loss dieting/training.

Absolutely! Just choose the gender you identify as, and you're good to go! 

The minimum equipment requirements are:

* A barbell

* Adjustable Bench

* Squat Rack

* Free weights (Both Plates and Dumbbells) 

(all of which are / can support weight that will challenge you after 10 reps). 

If you have that basic equipment at home you can train there and skip the gym. There is no need for machines or any other “fancy” gym equipment. You also can use these with only dumbbells, but their use would be pretty limited, and for that we'd better recommend our purpose-built Gym Free Training Templates.

If you compete in powerlifting, you want the PL Hypertrophy templates. If you compete in weightlifting (or want to get better at weightlifting) you want the Weightlifting Hypertrophy templates.

If you don’t compete in a specific sport, these physique templates are right up your alley. These can be used by physique competitors, regular fitness enthusiasts, or CrossFit athletes looking to add in hypertrophy training to their regimen.

Of-course while choosing more days will yield better results and recovery, we recommend choosing the number you are realistically able to stick with. You will get worse results by choosing a training day commitment you can't be consistent with than if you choose a lower weekly number of training days but make all of the sessions every week. 

You can get great results just by choosing the "growth" options on all muscle groups, giving you tons of room to train a lot of them at once. However, you can specialize, but specialization will limit how many muscle groups you can focus on with all of your efforts at the same time. If you're really serious about focusing on lots of muscles at the same time, a 5 or 6 day option will make that much more doable than a 3 or 4 day option, so please keep that in mind.

Quite simply, if you pick a muscle group as "specialization," it gets two exercise slots per day instead of the one slot "growth" gets. This doesn't automatically mean it will grow faster, but if you've trained that muscle before and more than 5-7 sets per session grows it even better than 5-7 sets or fewer, specialization probably will grow more muscle for you. If that's the case, choosing specialization for a few muscles ("growth" for the rest) and running that program for two whole mesocycles (re-using your program twice, 12 weeks in total) is a wise practice. After those two mesocycles, it's probably a good idea to do a program that has no specialization selections and only growth selections, or, to choose different muscles than last time to specialize on. This will promote the highest rates of long term growth and lowest rates of wear and tear injury. Please keep in mind that specialization is best done when gaining weight, and not ideally chosen during maintenance and especially not fat loss.

For as long as you like! We recommend you save a blank copy of the template, and then "save-as" every time you choose exercises for your next mesocycle of training (6 weeks each). After each meso is complete, you can create (save-as) a new program again, keep the exercises that are feeling great, replace the ones you didn't like as much, and do another 6 weeks of productive training! The reason to buy another program would be if you need a change in the number of training days or if you'd like to re-prioritize some muscles over others. If neither is the case for a while, your single order will let you train well indefinitely! 

You can use these templates at a CF gym or a “globo” gym. If you use a CF gym for these, your exercise selection is limited due to lack of machines, but they’re still very effective without machines. If you work out at a “globo” gym, the templates will provide more variation of exercise selection. 

By “globo” gym, we mean most traditional gyms that have free weights and machines (think 24hr Fitness).

All digital RP products can now be downloaded at the time of purchase, we no longer email them to you.

Confirmation emails are sent out shortly after your order is completed. Please be sure to check your spam, promotions, or updates folder as sometimes our emails are sent there.

Fun fact: You can re-download any product you've previously purchased from the Downloads page of your RP account portal (accessible once you log into your account).

It might work in other programs, but we can only guarantee full functionality in an updated version of MS Excel. NOTE: On Apple products (iPhone, iPad, etc) full functionality may require an Office 365 subscription, as the free version may not render template contents as expected. 

There are no refunds on our templates or ebooks. All sales are final. No exceptions.


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