Hypertrophy Cycles – Spring 2025

When new cycles begin Monday February 17th at Paragon, you’ll be in a for a treat: Hypertrophy training cycles are backkkk! 

Hypertrophy means “muscle building” – and it’s how you want to be training most of the time if your goal is to look your best and to maximize your body composition (:

Hypertrophy training is also super flexible and can accommodate for a variety of goals, you just need to adjust your nutrition accordingly:

• Goal = fat loss (eat in a calorie deficit)
• Goal = muscle gain (eat in a calorie surplus)
• Goal = maximize health (eat at maintenance)
• Goal = improve performance (maintenance or slight surplus)

More About This Cycle

This is a 12-week hypertrophy cycle that will help you build muscle, get stronger, and improve your body composition.

If you choose to do the optional cardio sessions, you can expect to improve your endurance, engine, and cardiovascular health as well!

ps: if you’re someone who tends to get bored in the gym quickly, you’ll LOVE this cycle as there will be different weekly repeating movements for each 6-week block of the 12-week cycles.

Workout Splits

• 3-Day: lower, upper, full body
• 4-Day: lower, upper, lower, upper
• 5-Day: lower, push, pull, lower, upper 

Optional Cardio

• option to complete up to 3 programmed cardio sessions per week
• you can run, bike, swim, row, ruck, etc
• choose between zone 2 or zone 5

Detailed Cycle Notes

Hey all! Paragon Co-founder Bryan Boorstein here to discuss the Hypertrophy Cycle for Spring 2025

This cycle is part of the larger periodization model we follow:

• 12 weeks Hypertrophy
• 6 weeks Strength
• 6 weeks “Hybrid” (hypertrophy + metabolic conditioning)

The main focus of the training periodization is to optimize strength and hypertrophy outcomes across the year, without having to sacrifice conditioning levels.

You can think of these phases on a spectrum, with hypertrophy being in the middle and the most well-rounded stimulus. Strength is just slightly lower reps and longer rest periods. Metabolic is slightly lighter weights with shorter rest periods.

Hypertrophy is the place we should likely “live” majority of the time in the pursuit of optimizing body composition (aka building muscle and/or losing body fat).

This how it will look for the next 12 weeks:

• Pre-cycle Intro/Deload week
• 5-week Progressive Hypertrophy Phase
• Mid-cycle Deload week
• 5-week Progressive Hypertrophy phase (new repeating moves!)

After taking a poll in the Facebook group, it was overwhelming that the majority of you preferred to have new repeating movements after the first six weeks. Ask and you shall receive! (:

When we discuss hypertrophy training, there are a number of important factors that play into optimizing the results during this 12-week cycle. We will delve deeper into this in the sections below.  

Exercise Selection for Hypertrophy

When training with the goal to build muscle, it’s important to consider exercise selection and execution in the pursuit of optimality.

When training for hypertrophy, the most important concern is selecting exercises that achieve a high stimulus with a relatively low fatigue cost.

When we look at the Sumo or Conventional Deadlift, we can see an easy example to demonstrate why exercise selection matters.

These two movements are probably NOT the BEST choices for you to use in a hypertrophy phase. These exercises extend at three joints (ankles, knees, hips), which makes it extremely fatiguing, and also difficult to determine what muscles are actually receiving the primary stimulus. Is it the hams? The glutes? The low back? The quads? It’s kind of all of them, to varying degrees!

Instead, an RDL is a significantly better choice to target the musculature. It extends only at one joint (the hip) with partial bend from the knees (but no ankle movement). This directs the loading much more acutely into the glutes and hamstrings.

 The same idea can be extrapolated across all movements. For any hypertrophy cycle, the selection of exercises will take into account the stimulus provided by that exercise, as well as the overall fatigue cost associated with that movement.

 As a general example: if our objective was to target the quads, we would select a Heels Elevated Back Squat or a Quad Dominant Machine (such as Hack squat or leg press) instead of a heavily loaded Back Squat.

This is as much about refining execution to make it more specific (like with the RDL example above), as it is about abolishing the notion of “just move the weight from Point A to Point B.” 

When we focus too much on just moving the weight (with whatever muscles are needed to accomplish the job), we’re taking deep inroads into fatigue, while failing to provide a stimulus to the precise area where we want the stimulus to go.

This heel elevation (or more acute stimulus from the machine variation) will increase the range of motion at the knee and ankle, while decreasing the movement at the hip (more quads, less systemic fatigue per unit of stimulus).

And remember that it is not “bullseye or bust” with these things. It’s a constantly evolving process of getting better at performing movements, through consistent execution of quality repetitions.


Progression Through A Training Cycle

At Paragon, we program with an “increasing effort” approach, purposefully working closer to failure each week.

There are a few great elements that this approach provides:

1. It makes progression an expectation each week. You need to add weight or do more reps to ensure that you get closer to the failure than the prior week. It also has the side benefit of creating “mini wins” each week, in which you leave the gym feeling accomplished; that you did something productive!

2. It ensures you have a self-test each cycle. As you add weight or reps each week, you will inevitably butt up against failure in the final week. If you far exceeded your prior weeks’ performance in this final testing week, then you know you were sandbagging (and you adjust by increasing loads the next cycle).

3. A large part of this philosophy revolves around there being a different progression model for the demanding LENGTHENED COMPOUND movements (squat, RDL etc…), and the less demanding SHORT OVERLOAD movements (often isolation movements, but not always).

Learn Move About Short and Lengthened Movements Here

As far as how this relates to progression, it mostly comes down to the fatigue cost of performing these exercises.

Due to how fatiguing (and complex) the “Lengthened” movements are, we will often begin cycles at around 4 reps from failure.

The lengthened movements will often progress like this:

Week 1: 4-5 reps from failure

Week 2: 3-4 reps from failure

Week 3: 2-3 reps from failure

Week 4: 1-2 reps from failure

Week 5: 1 rep from failure

Week 6: to technical failure

We do not need ALWAYS need to hit failure on these big movements to see maximal gains. Studies have shown that maximum stimulus can be achieved at around 1-2 reps from failure for sets that are heavy (at 5-8 Reps). As the reps get higher, there is increasing benefit in training closer to failure.

For the “short” movements, the fatigue cost is so low, we can often begin a cycle at ~2-3 reps from failure.

The short movements will often progress like this:

Week 1: 2-3 reps from failure

Week 2: 1-2 reps from failure

Week 3: 1 rep from failure

Week 4: to technical failure

Week 5: failure + intensity techniques

Week 6: failure + intensity techniques

The specific intensity techniques are meant to help us “get more” from these less fatiguing movements, and the specific details of each will be explained within the body of the programming in the latter weeks of each training cycle!

How to Know How Far From “Failure” You Are

First let’s define failure: We should assume that taking a set to failure means that you can no longer perform a rep with the same technique.

This does NOT mean that you contort your body to achieve another rep. That is beyond failure, because the intended musculature is no longer the one moving the weight.

Your first rep should look the exact same as your last rep, just a slower grind through the concentric (lifting) portion of the rep.

I understand the sentiments of those that don’t necessarily feel comfortable with projecting their “reps from failure” very accurately and worry that you might short-change yourself.

The model described above (increasing effort week to week; adding load or reps) is very effective at ensuring we ultimately get to “failure” at the end of each training cycle.  

This approach is a “fail-safe” of sorts.

As you add weight or reps, you will get closer and closer to failure, and ultimately you will feel what “tough reps” feel like towards the end of the mesocycle.

In the final week of each mesocycle (before deload week), even the demanding “lengthened” movements will be taken right up to the point of technical failure. This then provides you the tools to re-assess your effort and weight selection as you head into the subsequent mesocycle.

To provide a little general context around “failure,” I want to introduce a term “Maximal Concentric Intent.”

This means you are trying to lift every rep as fast as possible (control the descent… explode the ascent). This is performed without LAUNCHING from the bottom, but to assertively try to move the weight quickly.

*Note – while we want to lift as quickly as possible in a controlled manner, we recommend doing a controlled 2-3 second descent.

Example: in a Back Squat you would take 2-3 seconds to get to the bottom range of motion, and then QUICKLY stand back up.

Think about the difference between flooring the gas pedal on your car versus pressing it confidently to pick up speed quickly.

If you lift every rep by confidently pressing the gas pedal, you will eventually feel the concentric speed slow, even though you are exerting maximum effort.

This first “slower” rep is usually 3-4 reps from failure (a great place to begin week 1 of the cycle).

This video by Jeff Nippard is extremely well done. He demonstrates what failure looks like on a number of different common movements. You can see how the rep speed slows despite the hardest effort to move the weight.

How to Build to Working Sets

The reps may differ, but this is a common way we will conduct our repeating movements:

RDL or Back Squat (or any large compound movement) you may want to do the OPTIONAL sets. For a less demanding movement, you can prob do just 1-2 warm-up sets then get into work sets.

Warm-up sets:
OPTIONAL 30-50% of working weight x 10-15 reps

50% of working weight x 8-12 reps
75% of working weight x 4-6 reps
OPTIONAL 85-90% of working weight x 1-2 Reps

It’s important to understand that the “warm-up” sets are low-fatiguing. The earlier sets of higher reps are meant to be a super easy effort in which you are just beginning to prepare the muscles for the work ahead (less than 50% of the weight you’ll use for your first working set).

As the weight increases, we continue to prepare (but not fatigue) by lowering the reps. Even the FINAL warm-up sets are for lower reps than the work sets (and with less weight).

This will allow the body to FEEL the heavier load, such that there is a psychological and physiological adaptation that occurs, ensuring that the “work sets” don’t feel overwhelmingly heavy.

If you are stronger, you may need 1-2 additional preparatory sets.

If you are not as strong, you may need fewer prep sets; but the principles all still apply!

You also will not need nearly as many warm-up sets for smaller muscle groups. For curls, shoulders, triceps and the such, I usually just implement one “feel it out” set, then jump into work sets.

This means I may use 25-30# DB’s for 6-8 Reps before my work set with 40# DB’s for 10-12 Reps.

Rest Periods Between Sets

Rest periods are ALWAYS important. For a long time, the research was overwhelmingly in agreement that more rest is better than less rest for hypertrophy and strength.

These studies generally demonstrated that resting 2-3 minutes between sets produced superior results to 60-90 seconds of rest.

More recently, some studies have shown that you can “make up” for shorter rest by doing more sets; such that maybe 3 sets with long rest would be equivalent to 5 sets with shorter rest.

In our programming, we use the extremes of both ranges of the spectrum.

We use longer rest for a lot of the repeating movements and the larger compound exercises.

For the smaller movements, we realize that you don’t need to sit there and rest so long between sets, and we incorporate a lot of “short-rest” sequences into the programming.

Example:
4 total work sets:
Start with 1 work set x 10-12 Reps
Rest only 20-30 sec between sets
Expect reps to drop set to set due to incomplete rest
Maintain 1 rep from fail each set

This approach allows us to achieve 4 “fatigue” points, as we would with 4 straight sets, but we get to skip the early reps and get right to the reps that are close to failure and matter the most for results.

Working to Failure / Testing Week at End of Cycle

Throughout the first 5 weeks of a training cycle, we have increased weight and/or reps week to week to meet the demand of “getting closer to failure.”

We don’t want to actually go to the point of failing something like a squat or an RDL.

When you look at the failure spectrum, it can be ambiguous for a large compound movement like a squat.

First you might fail to maintain the exact same position as a prior rep (regarding torso/knees/hips).

Second you might sacrifice position by leaning forward more at the hips.

Third you might let your knees shoot back, letting the butt/hips rise too fast.

Fourth, you might actually fail a rep (or round your back and let the bar roll forward over your head).

I would encourage you to look at FAILURE as the first example.

When positioning is compromised in any way… when a rep looks different than the prior reps, that is failure.

Taking this approach to big compound movements will keep the stimulus where we want it and reduce injury risk. 

If you compromise position, you are in effect asking other muscles to HELP!

You’re saying “my quads can’t do this anymore.”

So if you then bring the hips/glutes in to help, you are working beyond failure for the muscles you are attempting to target.

Increased fatigue cost and increased risk of injury for almost no return. 

One other related concern is in regard to resting at the top of the rep. 

Much like execution, which needs to be standardized rep to rep, we need to do the same for resting at the top of reps.

If you are able to increase your squat reps because you stood there at the top, with your joints stacked, for an extra few seconds, that is not identical performance to the prior week.

For this reason, we encourage a “one breath” rule on any of these movements where there is a resting place.

Hopefully this can help cement the way you should be thinking about failure as it relates to these big demanding compound movements.

Anyway, new cycles are gonna be fun. Cheers to another 12 weeks of getting strong together!

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