Training Levels

Training Levels: What they are and why they matter

In this article we’re going to cover a few things:

• The different training levels.
• A few key considerations.
• How to lifters can utilize training levels to make rapid progress and good choices.
• How coaches should utilize training levels to help their clients.

Recommended Pre-Reading:

• What is Strength Training?
• What is the NLP?

“Training Levels” can also be referred to as “Level of Training Advancement” or “training stage”. There are broadly 3 stages of training that apply to 99.99% of the world. Simply – it’s a framework for illustrating how advanced someone is, or how far along they are in their development as a lifter or athlete.

A Very Important Note About Training Levels

What training level you are in, HAS NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING to do with how strong you are. You can be a novice and squat 400, and you can be advanced and squat 150. Your training level has to do with the type and amount of stress that you can recover from, adapt to, and ultimately what it takes for you to improve – or set a personal record (PR). Some gifted athletes will be able to take a Novice style of training to squatting 400 for reps. People that are older, smaller, and less athletic might require Advanced training to get to 150. This is often times a fatal mistake people make that significantly hiders their progress

Training levels also have nothing to do with how much you’ve read, how knowledgable you are, OR how long you’ve been in the gym. There are tons of 10 year lifters that are still beginners because they’ve never followed an appropriate diet and training plan for long enough to actually progress.

Training Levels: Novice (Beginner), Intermediate, Advanced

I’m writing this because there is almost zero understanding of the stages of training amongst lifters and coaches in the world at all, and this is the primary reason almost no one makes substantial, long term progress in the gym. There is also an epidemic of “Lifetime Novices” – no matter how long someone is in the gym or how consistent or how hard they try, 99% of people will be novices for their entire lives because they do not know about or understand how to train according to their training level.

To put it plainly: you will be at a beginner training level until you do a beginner program until that program will not produce further results for you, no matter how faithful you are to it, or how perfect you are with nutrition and recovery. Doing an advanced program will NEVER make you advanced. Doing a beginner program until you are an intermediate, and then doing an intermediate program until you are advanced is what will get you advanced. Doing an advanced program as a novice will ensure you stay a beginner for life.

Further complicating matters: ANYTHING works when you are a beginner… for a few weeks at least. This is why almost all exercise studies are bull shit (that, and often the methods espoused are done on not-naturals) – they very often test complete beginners for 6 weeks… and anything will work in the very short term for a novice. It’s about what happens after that that is insightful and important, and unfortunately, most studies lack the logistical support to do that. Luckily, there exist gyms like ours which function as practical studies for 10+ years.

Now that that message is out of the way… let’s really begin!

You can break each training stage into further sub-groups.

Breakdown of the “Novice” Category:

The novice category is further broken down into 3 sub groups. These are: Rank Novice, Novice, and Advanced Novice. A Rank Novice is a total complete beginner with zero experience at all – or a physical state that appears that way (ie a 90 year old that hasn’t trained in 60 years). This person probably cannot do an air squat without falling over or falling down. A “regular” A Rank Novice will advance to becoming a Novice with just a few weeks of proper training. Both Rank Novice and Novice are starting positions.

Novice is a typical beginner – maybe has some experience in the gym, and/or regular athletic ability. A Novice will advance to becoming an advanced novice with 6-12 months of proper training. (A fair range can also be 3-18 months, depending on numerous factors). Advanced Novice cannot be reached without proper training. An Advanced Novice is starting to need some changes in programming in order to continue making progress beyond the Novice Linear Progression (What is the NLP is recommended in the pre-reading).

All novice training levels all share a few very important characteristics:

1. They need regular coaching to keep form from breaking down and returning to pre-coaching levels. If they have proper live coaching and cueing, their form remains solid.
   • It’s very common for a novice to be corrected a few times during warm ups, but then can maintain good form throughout the session. If they go a session or two without immediate feedback, their form can digress considerably. Novices just don’t have the neural adaptations down to have correct form all the time without external feedback.
2. They can set PRs every time they train, up to 4x/week. If they squat 3×5 on Monday for 150 for a PR, they can recover and adapt and set a new PR of 155 on Wednesday. Intermediates and Advanced cannot do this.
   • This concept will be exp    anded on below; a short summary is this: if an intermediate squats a PR 3×5 of 355 on Monday, there is absolutely no possible way they could even squat again on Wednesday, let alone set a PR. They would be too sore, too fatigued – even with proper recovery. As a general rule, intermediates can only PR on a weekly basis, not a workout to workout basis.
3. Over-training is not a huge concern at this point because one or two days off will right the ship. Obviously, if a novice is over-training regularly they will not progress. Overtraining becomes a much bigger issue the more advanced you are. Additionally, for Novices, over-training is likely just under-recovering.
4. Depending on age, height/weight, and athletic ability, the ideal number of times for a novice to train per week is 2-3x for 30-60 mins.

Nutrition Considerations for lifters at novices training levels:

The diet for an overweight novice can be different from a skinny novice, but a skinny novice’s diet must be different from an overweight novice.

The Overweight Novice:

This is a point all too often misunderstood and misrepresented. An overweight novice can use their NLP to lose weight. They can eat in a caloric deficit, add weight to the bar to build muscle, and have tremendous success in weight loss. They can do this with very little effects to their strength gains because their body can use stored fat to make up the difference in the caloric deficit. This can continue until that lifter is no longer overweight. When they are of a healthy body weight again, they must change their eating habits to line up with gaining muscle in order to continue progressing.

An overweight novice can eat at a maintenance or a baby surplus; their body compisition will improve greatly from the quick addition of a bunch of muscle, which will in turn raise their TDEE making it easier to lose weight. This is up to the coach and the lifter.

Skinny novices cannot do this unless they want to make very slow progress, be very sore and tired all the time and not progress… which believe it or not, ends up being more people than you would think. I blame this on the idea that if you can just “cut” weight far enough, you’ll look great – and that couldn’t be further from the truth. The skinny novice needs to build muscle first and foremost, and this will help them the most with their aesthetics.

The Skinny Novice:

I used to be one, and I was determined to stay there (although I didn’t know it at the time). You need to eat more food than you want to in this case. This is what will allow you to build muscle (in many cases, causing you to get leaner), get really strong, and progress. Attempting to stay the same weight (or worse, cut weight) is a fool’s errand. You cannot reveal a physique you don’t have.

This is an important consideration for Intermediates as well, although less so. The reason for this is because most lifters are starting to find their frame through weight loss, or fill into their frame, although occasionally, weight will still need to be lost or gained. This depends on the individuals ultimate goals, height, weight, age, etc.

Ultimately, you become an intermediate by building enough muscle. It’s that simple – if you refuse to build enough muscle to advance, you won’t. Period. (I know “refuse” is a strong word – but that’s the reality – if you are scared to put on weight, then you are scared to build muscle, and you are, whether you realize it or not, choosing to be a lifetime novice despite all of your hard work.)

Breakdown of “Intermediate” Category:

The intermediate category can be broken down into: Beginner Intermediate, Intermediate, Advanced Intermediate.

Intermediates can only PR on a weekly basis. A Beginner Intermediate may be able to PR every 3-4 days, but can still set 2 PRs per week. A Novice can squat on M, W,F and set a PR each time. A beginning intermediate may find that they cannot recover from that workload, but can still set two PRs/week instead of 3. If that is the case, it is an indication that the lifter is now a beginner intermediate lifter and will require some programming changes to continue progressing maximally.

Eventually, the lifter will not be able to set multiple PRs per week on a lift, and but instead just 1x/week. This is the mark of a true intermediate lifter that requires intermediate programming. The intermediate may be able to set 1 weekly PR for years. An advanced intermediate lifter may not be able to set a weekly PR, but can still progress steadily with intermediate style programming setting a PR every 8-14 days. This doesn’t require a jump to advanced programming at this point – a very common, and often costly mistake.

Every single human being on earth can reach the intermediate training levels, but almost no one does….

Lifters at the intermediate training levels all share a few key characteristics:

1. Their form requires minimal critique to maintain, and they can make form changes in the middle of a set, if necessary.
   • An intermediate lifter can train on their own with 95% certainty that they are retaining their hard earned, great form. They may need to make adjustments from time to time that require live feedback or video feedback, but they are capable of recognizing if they made a form mistake either kinetically or from watching a video of themselves. They also show the ability to have a bad rep 1, and improve it on rep 2 – often without a coaching cue.
2. They can only PR 1x/week.
   • They can only PR on a weekly basis – no matter how incredible their coaching, programming, and recovery. Their neural adaptations – i.e. their mental strength – are so strong that they can provide such a strong and intense training stimulus in one session that they cannot recover and adapt on less than 4-5 days rest, and up to 14 days of recovery.
     • Obviously 1 week is not a hard and fast rule – 4-14 days is a good indicator of intermediate status. Any less and they are either advanced novice, or under-recovering (lack of sleep, hydration, food, and too much stress) and any more – 14+ days is either recovery, or evidence of being at the advanced training stage.
3. Intermediates need significantly more rest between sets than Novices.
   • Intermediates need at least 5 minutes of rest to completely recover from a set of 5 – often times up to 8-10 minutes of rest. They have the form, mental strength, and physical ability to push themselves intensely in a set. Novices often remark they are ready to do another set in 60 seconds or less, or that a heavy set of 5 “isn’t enough for them” – they lack the physical or mental ability to lift something heavy enough and push through something difficult enough for it to be very stressful.
     • Often, novices opt for something that makes them “feel” like they did something harder and made them more sore. This is why almost everyone will remain a novice for life, no matter how much they train. They refuse to stick to the program that is best for their current training level.
   • Intermediates can get a significant cardio stimulus from their training – ask any intermediate that has done a heavy set of 5×5 squats or deadlifts with 5-8 minutes rest – they will tell you the cardio involved is tremendous. Again, this is because they possess the physical and mental capabilities to truly life weights that are extremely challenging – whereas the novice can’t yet trust that their form won’t breakdown and that they won’t get hurt, let alone push themselves to the point of exhaustion while under a PR set of 5 Back Squats.
4. Over-training is much more of an issue of intermediates than for novices. Becoming over-trained as an intermediate may take a full 1-2 weeks to fix and get back on track to making progress. While possible, it is still a possibility the intermediate lifter is not recovering off, vs. over-trained.
5. The ideal amount of time for an intermediate lifter to train is ideally 3-4x/week for 45-75 mins, depending on age, athletic ability, height/weight and athletic ability.

Breakdown of “Advanced” Category:

When you reach the advanced training levels – there is just “advanced”. Of course, there are better advanced lifters than others – but due to the asymptotic nature of progress in the gym (ie, the law of diminishing returns – you get less progress per amount of effort the more progress you make), there’s just not a big enough difference between advanced lifters to have separate sub categories. Advanced lifters are trying to get their last 10% of progress. 92% of your potential doesn’t require different training than 94% of your potential.

Almost no one will ever become advanced – even people that really want to. Life can just decide to have other plans for you. You need to have significant dedication in the long term to prioritizing sleep, hydration, nutrition, and stress management to even have a chance. And that’s not considering the impacts of getting an injury – not because training is dangerous, but because 10 or more years of consistent training opens you up to many opportunities to get injured, especially as you age.

Factor in some time off for work travel, illness, funerals, medical conditions, having children, going out occasionally and not getting enough sleep… these are all things that stack up against the odds of you becoming advanced. Impossible? No. Highly unlikely? Yes. The odds are even lower given that most of the people attempting advanced programs are novices. Obviously, this is a disaster for people. An advanced program will not work for a novice. It results in injury, incredible soreness and fatigue, plateau, and quitting – often times blaming genetics when it is either bad choices or bad coaching – or both.

The advanced training levels requires significant dedication to training – often times resulting in 8+ hours per week in the gym, on the low side. For most people this just isn’t practical, and not worth it unless they are a professional lifter. Notice how I said lifter, and not athlete. Almost ZERO athletes in professional sports will ever become advanced lifters. The stress of the lifting would be too much and take away from them being able to actually practice and perform their chosen sport.

Lifters at the advanced training levels all share a few key characteristics:

1. They can only PR 1x/every 4-12 weeks. They need to utilize periodization to get results.
   • Periodization is one of the most over used, unnecessary methods of programming in existence today. The range and scope of lifters/athletes that need it is extremely narrow. But of course, it’s complicated and “advanced” so everyone wants to do it. Lifters for the “fun” and ego boost, and coaches to seem higher quality.
   • For those unfamiliar – periodization is a programming methodology that involves a loading phase, a taper, and a peaking phase. This essentially takes the the two day cycle of beginners – a workout – building fatigue – and a rest day to adapt and set a PR, or the full week of building fatigue and recovering required for intermediates, and turns it into 4-12 weeks.
     • An example for Back Squats could be Heavy 5×5 Monday, Light 3×5 Wed, Medium 5×5 Friday for 4 weeks, a taper week for recovery of T/Th light squats for 1-2×5, a set of Medium Squats on the following Tuesday, and then a PR on Friday or Saturday.
       • That was 6 weeks (or longer) of training to set a single PR. The more advanced you are, the longer each “period” needs to be – potentially, 8, 12, or even 16 weeks to muster a single, small PR in that lift.
   • A side note on this – it has the potential to work for a Novice and an Intermediate – and result in a quarterly PR… when Novices should be PRing 3x/week, and Intermediates 1x/week. This is a TON of progress being left on the table. And “potential” to work – it’s extremely high volume at certain points, potentially resulting in extreme soreness (that can’t be recovered from) increased in injury risk, and a higher likelihood of falling off given a taper week is such low volume training.
2. Advanced lifters rest as long as needed to fully recover from each set – if cardio/endurance is the limiter in how much weight you can lift, then you are training cardio/endurance.
3. These are always competitive lifters with extreme amounts of dedication to their sport.
4. Over-training is extremely dangerous, as this could take an entire cycle of 4-12 weeks to fix. The likelihood that an advanced lifter is struggling with recovery due to lifestyle factors is very low.
5. Depending on age, height/weight, and athletic ability, most advanced lifters will benefit the most from training 4-5x/week for 60-120 mins.

Almost no one is taking into account Training Levels nearly enough.

Why am I not Progressing Training Levels?

Top 5 Reasons People Get Stuck

1. Recovery
   • Recovery at all training levels is important, but it becomes more important the more you progress through the training levels. It is extremely common to see a novice get stuck and hear “this isn’t enough training for me to improve” when so often that person is coming to the gym hungover, underfed, dehydrated, tired, and extremely stressed out. Do not advance training levels when this happens. Recover better.
2. Nutrition
   • Being in a caloric surplus is the most important aspect of getting strong; so nutrition doesn’t end up being as big of a deal for people with excess body fat (as far as progress is concerned) because they have additional calories on their body to use. It’s very common to see a skinny person complain about needing more advanced training when they aren’t improving, when the reason they’re not adding muscle is because they aren’t eating enough to actually build muscle… and that usually involves gaining weight.
3. Wrong Training Level
   • A beginner on an intermediate or advanced program will struggle mightly to progress – but often times this is what people think progressing is like, so they don’t change anything. Other times people are trying to skip being a beginner. Either way, skipping a training level ensures you will stay at that level forever.
4. Too Much Volume
   • This happens especially when people get stuck or they are on a cutting diet – they want to reduce intensity (total weight on the bar) and just do tons of sets and reps, when the reality is they should be doing the opposite. You can lift very heavy without shutting down your recovery. Say you build to a heavy single and have a total work set volume of 300lbs. Or you can do 5×5 @ 225 for a training volume (weight lifted) of 5,625lbs for the day. Which do you think is harder to recover from?

Top Reasons People Think They Get Stuck, but are BS.

1. Not intense or “hard enough”
   • You wouldn’t believe how many beginners/novices think this. It’s a lack of self-awareness. I’ve seen many lifters surrounded by people MUCH fitter than them that do less training volume, and the beginners often pronounce “this isn’t enough for me”. There’s a human physiological speed limit to progress, and when you are new you max that speed limit with VERY low volume training.
2. Too advanced/ego
   • This is similar to the first thing. Very often weak people with LOTS of exercise experience think they are advanced because they’ve been in the gym for 10 years. As I mentioned before, this has nothing to do with your training level. You can be a 10 year beginner, if you aren’t willing to go back to a beginner program you will become a 15 or 20 or 25 year beginner.
3. Genetics
   • Genetics certainly play a role. When I was skinny and working out 4 hours a day for 4 years and was still skinny, I came to the conclusion that it was genetics. It couldn’t possibly be that I was an idiot – it had to be something outside of my control. Overweight, skinny, weak – whatever the case is, it’s not your genetics. Genetics can determine if you can become “elite” or not – but they do not determine if you can become an intermediate, or even advanced. Sorry to say it – but it’s “you”, not your genetics.