 Hey everybody, I'm Lance Coyke and today we are discussing picking the duration for your training program. So if you watched some of my previous videos, we talked about periodization and we talked about the word mesocycle or mesocycle, M-E-S-O cycle, all one word. So that stuff is the basically the month of training program that you write or the two months of training program that you write. And that's what we're talking about here. How long should I do it for a month? Should I do it for two months? How long is enough? Today, I want to talk more about choosing a four-week program. Now, I would say four weeks is probably a more standard duration for a program. It's a really good one because it gives you, you know, it gives you four weeks to practice something and to get better at it. But it also changes it up pretty frequently. Now as a coach that throws in a lot more work for me and as a trainee, I might not want to get rid of a program after four weeks if I'm still seeing progress. So I would, you know, I would be loose on your four-week restrictions, right? I think too many people just, they do what the program says because that's what the program says and they don't really maximize all of their gains out of a particular program. Having said that, I totally understand just wanting to automate the task and not really think about it. So if you want to just write it and then leave it there, then that's totally fine. And you know, that's why I start to write even longer, longer than four-week programs for myself even, even though I've been training for over 10 years. So keep that in mind. Now, four-week programs. Who's a good for it? It's good for people who are going to acclimate to the stimulus pretty quickly. Especially people who are a little bit more high-intermediate to advanced kind of trainee. So you already know how to squat. You have your squat pattern. You have your squat ritual. You have your ritual for your bench press for your deadlift. You have the right day set aside for your bench press and your deadlift. You have, you know, you've bought a powerlifting belt. You've bought squat shoes and, you know, you have everything dialed in as much as possible. Well, if you're doing that, then you probably only need a four-week program. And then you need to kind of change something up. You need to change the primary exercise. You need to change the set and rep scheme. And you need to not be afraid to try something new there. Four-week program would be it's not necessarily bad for a beginner, but I just I just think you're doing more work than you have to. It's better to stick with something that you're kind of familiar with and keep practicing it. And so that's why I write, you know, I only write six-week programs. Spoiler alert. That's what we're talking about tomorrow. But I, you know, I'm not afraid to let people do it for eight or even 10 weeks, especially if they're inconsistent with their workouts. Because if I just change stuff up, you're never going to get better at anything. You're just going to try a bunch of different stuff and not see any improvement. So four-week programs really good if you are a little bit more advanced and you could even go shorter if you are really advanced. Not necessarily a bad thing for beginners, but maybe you want to stick with something a little bit longer.