Twelve weeks, written down.
Thirty-six lifting sessions, thirty-six intervals, twelve free days. Four sets per muscle group and four meals a day. Nothing about it is novel — it's the oldest working formula in the room, written down precisely enough that you can't drift.
Four programmes, one structure
Every one is twelve weeks and every one uses the same four working sets, so you can switch without losing the thread. What changes is how the days split, the rep scheme, and the calorie target — the levers that actually change an outcome.
Not sure? Run The Cut. It is the one most people should do first, and it is the one the rest of this page describes.
Three gradual. One intense.
Most programs that work run five or six sets per muscle group. Most people who start them do four sessions and stop. We cut to four sets on purpose: three climbing sets to prepare the tissue, then one hard push on a different movement where the adaptation actually happens.
The argument isn't that four beats six in a lab. It's that four gets finished, and a finished program beats an optimal one you abandoned in week three.
| Set | Reps | Intensity | Rest after |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12 | 60 sec | |
| 2 | 10 | 60 sec | |
| 3 | 8 | none | |
| Push | 12 | 2 min |
Three climbing sets, then the push
The fourth set is where the adaptation happens.
Intensity is how hard the set feels, one to ten. Ten means you could not have done another rep with good form. The push is a different exercise from the first three, run immediately after set three with no rest.
Upper and lower, alternating
The lifting days flip each week, so week two is lower / upper / lower. Over twelve weeks that lands on eighteen upper sessions and eighteen lower — even, without needing a fourth training day.
Upper day
Chest, shoulders, back, triceps, biceps. Five muscle groups, four sets each — twenty working sets in about fifty minutes.
Lower day
Quads, hamstrings, calves, abs. Four groups, sixteen sets, closer to forty minutes.
Exercise selection is yours. The app remembers what you picked and what you lifted, and hands both back next session as the plan.
Eighteen minutes, three times a week
Two minutes to warm, three climbing cycles of six-seven-eight-nine, a short ramp, then the peak at minute seventeen and a minute to cool. Pick one machine and stay on it — the intensity pattern is the point, not the equipment.
Eighteen rather than twenty because the last two minutes of a twenty-minute interval are where form goes and people start skipping the session entirely. Everything that matters happens before minute seventeen.
Four meals. Protein at each.
Around 180 g of protein a day across four meals, carbs paired to each, vegetables twice. Portions repeat all week so you can build a meal in a restaurant or a gas station without looking anything up.
The portions
7 oz of a protein. 1 cup of a starch. 1 cup of vegetables. 1.5 cups of dairy. Learn those four and you never need an app to order lunch.
The prep
Two hours on Sunday — eggs, chicken, rice, sweet potatoes, a pot of chili. Everything else that week is assembly. Skip it and you eat out by Wednesday.
The free day
One day, not one weekend. Keep breakfast the same so the day has a floor, then eat what you want.
Two hours on Sunday
Everything else that week is assembly.
Meal frequency does not change your metabolic rate. Total protein and total calories do. Four is a structure that holds protein high without turning your day into a series of interruptions.
If it isn't measured it didn't happen
Every session opens with what you actually lifted last time. You either beat it or you don't, and the app keeps the score. Weight and body composition come off a connected scale rather than out of memory.
What the app tracks
Plan versus actual per set, volume per week, adherence against what was scheduled, progression per muscle group, weight, body fat, lean mass, muscle, water and visceral fat.
What that tells you
Whether the deficit is the right size, whether you're holding lean mass, and which muscle group has stalled — three weeks before it would be obvious in the mirror.
Six things, honestly rated
The supplements are the smallest lever here. Training and protein do the work. What's in the stack is there because it has evidence behind it, and where the evidence is thin we say so on the product page.
See the stack →What this isn't
It isn't fast
Twelve weeks is twelve weeks. Compressing it doesn't work, and the people who try tend to quit in week four with nothing to show.
It isn't a bulk
You do not add meaningful muscle in a calorie deficit. You reveal what's there and you hold onto it. Anyone promising both at once is selling something.
It isn't a GLP-1 substitute
Semaglutide produces around 15% body weight loss in trials. This program doesn't match that and doesn't claim to. What it does that the drug doesn't is build and keep muscle.
It isn't medical advice
If you take prescription medication, have a cardiac or metabolic condition, or you're significantly deconditioned, talk to a doctor before starting. That's not boilerplate.
The supplements aren't the point
Cut every supplement and keep the training and the protein, and your results would be close to identical. Build the plan around the deficit and the lifting.
Week one is free
The app is free and works in your browser. No account, no card, no trial that expires.