A training block is not four identical weeks

Most players who train on their own do the same session every week until they get bored, then change everything at once.

Both halves of that are wrong, and they are wrong for the same reason. Your body adapts to a stimulus that changes gradually. Something that never changes stops being a stimulus. Something that changes completely never becomes one.

What a block is

A block is a month, roughly. Four weeks that belong together, running the same exercises, with the demand rising across them and then dropping.

The exercises staying the same is the point. You cannot get better at something you did once. Four weeks of the same movement is enough to actually improve at it, and improving at it is what makes the load go up.

How the four weeks should look

Week one is deliberately comfortable. You finish with plenty in the tank and it feels like you undercooked it. That is correct. Week one is where you learn the movements and set a baseline you can build from.

Week two goes up. A little more weight, or a set more, or a repetition more per set. One variable, not three.

Week three is the hard one. This is the week the block is built around, and it should be genuinely difficult. You are finishing sessions properly tired.

Week four comes down. Roughly half the volume, weights kept respectable, effort noticeably lower.

The fourth week is not a wasted week

This is the part everyone skips, and skipping it is why so many players plateau in month two.

You do not get stronger during hard training. You get stronger while recovering from it. Three weeks of rising load builds fatigue that hides the fitness you just gained. The lighter week lets that fatigue drain away and what is underneath becomes visible.

Players who never take that week are permanently a little tired, permanently performing below what they have actually built, and eventually either injured or convinced that training does not work for them.

The lighter week is not time off. It is the week you find out whether the previous three worked.

Changing one thing at a time

When week two comes around, pick one variable:

• More weight on the bar
• One more set
• One or two more repetitions per set
• A harder version of the same movement

Change all of them at once and two things happen. The jump is too big, and you have no idea which change caused whatever happened next.

Between blocks

At the end of four weeks, change some exercises. Not all of them.

Keep the ones from the first rank of the exercise hierarchy, because those are the foundation and they should be there most of the year. Change the variation: back squat to front squat, Romanian deadlift to a Nordic progression, split squat to step up.

Enough novelty to keep adapting. Enough continuity to keep improving.

A worked example

Say your main lower body lift is a back squat and you finished the last block at three sets of five.

• Week one: three sets of five, comfortable weight, two repetitions left in you
• Week two: three sets of five, a small increase
• Week three: four sets of five at that same weight
• Week four: two sets of five, back to the week one weight

Next block starts at the week three weight for three sets of five, and it will feel easier than it did.

That is what progress looks like written down. It is unremarkable, it is slow, and it works.

Where in-season is different

In season, the goal changes. You are no longer building, you are keeping what you have while a match every weekend takes the top off you.

Blocks get flatter. Volume comes down and stays down, intensity stays respectable, and the fixture list rather than the calendar decides when the easy week happens. That is covered properly in training in season.

The mistake behind all of this

Players judge a session by how destroyed they feel afterwards, so they make every week the hard week.

A month of hard weeks is not four times the progress of one. It is usually less progress than three hard weeks and one easy one, because the last week of a block is when the previous three become real.