How to Know if You’re a Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced Lifter

How do you know what “level” of training advancement you are? The short and simple answer is the length of time it takes for you to recover from training. The better answer follows.

Training advancement in lifters can be organized into beginner, intermediate, and advanced.

Beginners:

  • Make progress every workout e.g. can squat 3 sets of 5 reps 2-3 times a week and add 5-10lbs every workout.
    • 24-48 hour recovery times between workouts
  • Strength and size gains come very quickly
  • Can lose fat and build muscle at the same time
  • This period of a lifter’s career is short. Lasts anywhere between a couple weeks to 9 months depending on nutrition and sleep.

Intermediates:

  • Progress is made every week or two
    • 48-72 hour recovery times between workouts
  • Programming incorporates more advanced techniques for progress to be made
    • load and exercise variations
    • block periodization i.e. separation of training into periods or “blocks” focused on specific adaptations like hypertrophy (muscle size), strength, and peaking (competition prep if applicable).
  • Due to the length of recovery, strength and size require more time to see results
  • Periods of “bulking” (muscle/weight gain) and “cutting” (weight/fat loss) required to make improvements in body composition
  • Generally, most of a lifter’s career is spent as an intermediate

Advanced Athletes:

  • Progress is made every handful of weeks to years
    • 72+ hour recovery times between workouts of the same movements and intensities (weight)
    • Can have multiple workouts a week but longer time spans between high intensity training sessions
  • Programming incorporates all of the techniques of an intermediate
    • Generally less volume (sets and reps) than an intermediate due to the higher intensities used in training
      • Avoiding excessive fatigue is of utmost importance as an advanced athlete
  • “Bulks” and “cuts” continue but more fat is gained than muscle as advancement progresses
  • Very few lifters make it to this level of training advancement
    • Those who do are usually competing

These levels of advancement can guide an athlete and coach in determining their programming. For example, depending on what a lifter has done in the past, I’ll give them a beginner program to run until progress stops. This can be a couple workouts or several months. This will give me a baseline. After the beginner program stops working, it’s time to move into intermediate programming. There’s no need for a transitional program. The athlete can jump right into an intermediate program calculated from the previous program’s weights. From there programming is fine tuned with trial and error. As they get stronger, programming adjusts for volume and intensity until they reach advanced programming. The realization that they’re an advanced athlete will come in hindsight. No lifter makes perfect linear progress. There are many ups and downs, however, as long as the general trend line is going up, progress is being made.

As you can see, training advancement takes time. Recovery is the main difference between varying “levels”. However, there are many other factors which describe what “level” a lifter is at.