Troubleshooting

#"I'm not progressing"

Check in this order — the order is the point:

1. Sleep. Under 7 hours consistently is the most common cause of a stalled program by a wide margin.
2. Food. Are you actually in a surplus? Weigh daily, read the 7-day average. Most people who think they are eating enough are not.
3. RIR calibration. Take one set to genuine failure. Compare it to what you have been calling 1 RIR.
4. Logging. Are you certain you are not progressing, or does it feel that way? Feelings are unreliable; the log is not.

Programming is fifth. It is almost never programming.

#"It feels too easy"

Two possibilities.

Your RIR is off. Most likely. Recalibrate.

It genuinely is — sessions are short and the sets are few. Add one set per exercise, up to five per muscle per session, before adding anything else.

Note that "feels easy" is not a stimulus measure. A set that delivered five stimulating reps and left you fresh did its job.

#"I'm sore all the time"

Soreness is a poor proxy for stimulus — it tracks novelty and eccentric damage more than growth.

Constant soreness usually means volume is too high for your recovery, not that training is working. Deload.

#"I have no time for 55 minutes"

Cut the last exercise from each session. Six exercises to five, five to four. Keep the compounds and the stretch-loaded movements.

A 40-minute session done four times beats a 60-minute session done twice.

#"My gym is too busy"

Substitute freely — see the substitutions table — and change the order if you must. Order matters less than doing the work; if the squat rack is occupied, start with the RDL.

#"Something hurts"

Joint or sharp pain: stop the exercise. Substitute using the "if it hurts" column and see a physio if it persists past a week.

Muscle discomfort in the stretched position is usually just an unfamiliar range. Reduce load, build into it.

Never train through joint pain to finish a program. No block is worth a year of shoulder rehab.

#"I missed a week"

Come back at the same loads, reduce to two sets per exercise for one session, then resume normally. You lost almost nothing in a week.

#"Should I add arms/abs/anything?"

Arms already get direct work twice weekly plus substantial indirect work from every press and pull. If they are a genuine weak point, add two sets to each of the two upper sessions and watch whether your pressing progress stalls — that is the signal you have exceeded recovery.

Abs: add weighted cable crunches and hanging leg raises, 3 sets each, twice weekly. Abs respond to load like any muscle; bodyweight-only work stops progressing quickly.