How to plan a strength microcycle

A microcycle is the smallest unit of a programme that means anything: usually a week, the block you repeat and adjust until the mesocycle ends. Planning one well is not writing a list of exercises; it is making five decisions in the right order, because each one constrains the next.

1. Start with weekly volume, not with exercises

The usual mistake is picking exercises first and counting sets afterwards. Do it the other way round: decide how many hard sets per muscle group the week will hold, and distribute from there.

A reasonable starting point for an intermediate lifter in an accumulation phase:

Muscle group	Weekly sets
Chest, back, quadriceps	10-18
Hamstrings, shoulders, glutes	8-16
Biceps, triceps, calves	6-14

These are not magic numbers: they are a range most people progress in without accumulating more fatigue than they can recover from. The exact figure comes from your own history, not from a table.

What matters is that the total is written down before you start placing exercises. If the split only appears at the end, in practice it never gets reviewed.

2. Spread the frequency

With volume decided, the question is how many sessions it gets split across. For most muscle groups, two exposures a week let you spread the sets without endless sessions, and without a session so long that the last sets are done with broken technique.

Three makes sense for small muscle groups that recover fast, or for volumes that simply do not fit in two days. One is enough in maintenance phases, or for athletes with little availability.

3. Choose exercises to serve the split

Now, exercises. Two practical criteria:

• One main lift per pattern and session (push, pull, knee, hip), where load actually progresses.
• Accessories that fill the gap the set distribution left, not the ones you enjoy most.

If an accessory does not cover a muscle group that is short on sets, it is competing for recovery without contributing anything.

4. Prescribe intensity and effort separately

Load (the weight) and effort (how close to failure you get) are two different variables, and both have to be written down. A 4×5 at 80 % can end at RIR 3 or at RIR 0 depending on the day, and that is neither the same session nor the same fatigue.

A template that works in an accumulation phase:

• Main lifts: 3-5 sets of 3-6 reps, RIR 2-3.
• Accessories: 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps, RIR 1-2.
• The last week before a deload, one RIR lower across the board.

If RIR sounds like a guess you cannot possibly get right, there is a whole article about it: what RIR is and how to use it.

5. Decide how the next cycle progresses

A microcycle on its own means nothing. Before publishing it, decide what changes in the next one:

• Load progression: same scheme, +2.5 kg on the main lifts.
• Volume progression: same weight, one more set for the muscle groups that lag.
• Effort progression: everything the same, one RIR lower.

Pick one. Moving all three at once makes it impossible to know what worked once progress stalls.

The three most repeated mistakes

1. Counting sets from the main lift only. Incline press also hits the chest, and pull-ups hit the biceps. If you do not count them, real volume is higher than planned volume.
2. Swapping exercises every week. Change the exercise and the weight stops being comparable, and you lose the only objective signal of whether you are progressing.
3. Planning the perfect week nobody can follow. A five-day microcycle the athlete completes three times is worse than a three-day one they always complete.

Where a tool fits in

None of the above needs software: it can be done on paper. What a tool changes is that the volume split stops being computed by hand. In Tandivia, weekly sets per muscle group update while you build the microcycle, so step 1 stops being an intention and becomes a number you watch while you decide.