Undulating Full-Body Micros

Rep ranges are all over the place during this 5-day program. But it's for good reason: to keep your muscles guessing... and growing!

Written By Jim Stoppani, PhD

Updated May 2, 2022

I covered linear and reverse linear periodization in the last two weeks of full-body workouts, so now it's time for the third major type of scheme: undulating periodization.

As the name implies, undulating periodization follows a non-linear scheme. With the linear full-body micros, you started off with light weight and high reps (16-20) and progressed every day to heavier weights and lower reps, reaching 3-5 reps per set by the fifth and final workout. With the reverse linear micros, it was the exact opposite pattern – you started off with heavy weights and low reps (3-5) and worked your way to 16-20 reps per set over the course of five workouts.

With the full-body undulating micros, you’ll still employ the same rep ranges as you did with the linear and reverse linear schemes (3-5, 6-8, 8-10, 9-11, 12-15) – just in a different order. Here’s how those rep ranges will fall from day to day over the course of the five workouts:

Workout 1: 12-15 reps*

Workout 2: 3-5 reps**

Workout 3: 9-11 reps*

Workout 4: 6-8 reps**

Workout 5: 16-20*

Note: You’ll do three sets of each exercise in all workouts.

*On the last set, after reaching failure, do one rest-pause set.

**On the last set, after reaching failure, do one drop set.

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. An 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,

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