Here's the uncomfortable truth about most people's fitness routine: it's not a routine. It's a vibe. A loosely organized collection of exercises they kind of remember, performed at an intensity that feels appropriately unpleasant, repeated until boredom or injury ends the whole experiment. That's not training. That's just being tired on purpose.

This week, Pete and Srdjan get into what separates people who actually progress from people who have been "getting back into it" for the last four years. The answer is periodization — which sounds like the kind of word a personal trainer uses to justify charging more, but is actually just the radical idea that your workouts should have a plan. A real one. With phases. And a reason.

Srdjan walks through the three main approaches — linear periodization for beginners building their foundation, non-linear for intermediate lifters juggling real life, and block periodization for more advanced athletes chasing specific adaptations. He also explains the deload — the week where you go lighter on purpose, which feels like cheating but is actually the thing that lets you keep going.

They also get into the mechanics of how a real program is built: why you start with higher reps and lower weight before you ever touch anything heavy, what progressive overload actually looks like in practice, and — crucially — why loading your biceps the same way you'd load your back is how people end up hurt and confused.

Pete has questions. Reasonable ones. Like: does more sweat mean a better workout (no), do you have to change exercises constantly to keep making progress (also no), and does every set need to go to failure (please, no). Srdjan dismantles all of them with the patient authority of someone who has watched a lot of people make these mistakes in real time.

And at the end, Srdjan shares what actually makes him feel like the training is working — and it's not a personal best on an app. It's a stranger at a grocery store. Which turns out to be the most unexpectedly useful piece of advice in the whole episode.

Links & Notes

• Submit your questions to the show!
• Looking for a Trainer? Reach Out!