Undulating Mass Program Overview

This month-long, 4-days-a-week program will help you build big-time mass by way of undulating periodization and constant muscle confusion.

Undulating periodization mass-building program

Written By Jim Stoppani, PhD

Updated March 2, 2022

Confused muscles tend to be growing muscles, provided proper nutrition and supplementation are adhered to for adequate recovery. There are myriad ways to keep your muscles guessing and on their toes, so to speak, but where systematic program design is concerned, few approaches beat undulating periodization.

Follow the undulating scheme as outlined in the following 4-week program, and your muscles will be so confused they’ll have no choice but to adapt to the ever-changing stimuli… and grow bigger.

Undulate to Annihilate

As the name implies, undulating periodization follows a nonlinear scheme, unlike the classic linear and reverse linear periodization schemes. With linear periodization, generally speaking, you start off with light weight and high reps and progress every phase (or microcycle) to heavier weight and lower reps; with reverse linear, it’s the exact opposite pattern – starting off heavy and going lighter each microcycle.

With an undulating scheme, the rep ranges are seemingly all over the place – going from high to low, back to high, then low again, etc. But it’s not exactly a haphazard type of thing, at least not the way I design it. My Get Bigger undulating program is controlled chaos, if you will.

Undulating models have gained popularity in recent years among strength and conditioning programs due to their convenience, effectiveness, and flexibility. Instead of sticking with one training phase for several weeks or more, the lifter can change intensity and volume from one workout to another.

For example, an athlete might perform a strength/power workout (2-6 reps per set) on Monday, then an endurance workout (15-30+ reps per set) on Wednesday, followed by a hypertrophy/muscle-building workout (8-12 reps per set) on Friday. The following week could entail a switch in the order of workouts – say, endurance on Monday, hypertrophy on Wednesday, and strength on Friday.

One of the great things about undulating periodization is the fact that it requires less organization and planning than do linear and reverse linear periodized programs. For instance, if the individual felt tired or sick, or just the opposite and they felt exceptionally motivated and strong one day, the workout could be changed for that day to better suit their mood and

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