Introducing The MHP Seasonal Method

Jacob Miller
Aug 25
8 min read

Intro

I am super excited to announce MHP Seasonal Method - The solution for all who seek to break out of plateaus and completely transform themselves both athletically and aesthetically over the coming year.

Why Many Programs Fail

Stop me if this sounds familiar… You have a wide range of goals; you want to be athletic, but also strong, muscular, and fit. You’ve been training for a long time, but are stuck in mediocrity which is the “intermediate zone.” Pretty good at most things, very good at nothing.

You’re training hard, effort is ever-present, but your various targets make your attention divided. This can make it difficult to find success, and it’s the thing that held me back for ages. It was either:

A random rotation of focuses - Spending weeks at a time on one quality before switching to something else that I feared was declining too far. The “fill a bunch of leaking buckets” approach.
Chasing a concurrent training model - You train everything, every week. Spending some time (but never meaningful time) on speed, power, strength, and hypertrophy. The “slow drip” approach.

I spent years of accumulated time in both lanes.

When I would cycle through speed/power phases, progress would be limited from the lack of strength and hypertrophy as a foundation. And I never spent too long on that foundation out of fear of watching my athleticism decline in the process.

When I trained concurrently, I never made enough strength and hypertrophy gains, again, to set the foundation for the speed and power work.

Does this hit close to home for you? Let’s figure out how to solve it.

The Solution

An answer isn’t a popular one right now, but it’s proven. Nearly as old as strength & conditioning itself, as Lindy as it gets… Block periodization.

Okay, don’t leave yet. I know its reputation is extremely unsexy, but hear me out.

The entire point of this program is to avoid the pitfalls described above. We will achieve this by:

Putting extreme emphasis on one quality at a time (”A man who chases two rabbit catches neither.”)
Stacking phases intentionally so that each enhanced trait contributes to the enhancement of the next (”The wider the base, the taller the pyramid”)

This gives you a 3-month runway to make a massive change to each quality, and a 12-month runway to completely transform your body and athleticism. It’s a long journey, but the payoff is large and guaranteed (assuming the appropriate commitment). AND you don’t have to worry about the things you aren’t training, because everything is carefully designed to ensure eventual all-time bests.

The thing is, athletic development has shifted away from this model because competitive athletes need to be able to perform year-round. This has given block periodization a bad reputation, like it’s “old and outdated.” But if you are in a place where you are no longer competing regularly, and you have some time and patience, I think this is the best option for you.

It’s been good enough for Olympians for ages, and was good enough to get me to my own all-time peaks in muscle mass, strength, and power (before my injuries, described below). So I’m here to share it with you.

I want to credit Christian Thibadeau for first introducing the idea of aligning the theme of your training to the theme of the season. That was the seed that developed into everything that this is.

What Makes This One Different

I am very excited about this recipe I’ve cooked up. See, I got really excited about this concept a year ago and committed myself to following it. Along the way, mistakes were made and lessons were learned, yet I still saw tremendous upsides.

The pros:

I had always struggled to gain weight. Thinking I was doomed to be <180lbs forever, the long runway focused on mass-building allowed me to scale up to 197lbs at my peak and become more muscular than ever. I give a lot of credit to the nutritional alignment with the program. I was no longer trying to stay “lean & fast,” but instead was optimizing for mass development.

And just as the program was meant to do, that extra muscle mass correlated to strength (and health!) that I have never seen before. I went through a proper powerlifting program, finishing with less knee pain than I’ve felt since I was 13 years old, no flare ups to my old lumbar disc herniation, and able to lift substantially more than I ever have before.

Finally, that added strength lead to me hitting old clean & snatch PR’s pretty quickly and easily at the start of the power phase. The reason I didn’t set any big new PR’s is as follows…

The cons:

As I said, I made a few mistakes along this journey. The first was doing zero impacts (plyos, throws, sprints) over the early phases. This led to a very low tolerance for the violent ground contacts involved with the Olympic lifting and jumping that entered in the power phase. Especially given that I was now doing these at a heavier bodyweight than before.

— Oh yea, I was also training for a 20km trail race around this time too, a little side quest. This certainly contributed to some of my problems, but that’s a very complicated rabbit hole. —

The result was a foot injury first, then a little while later a tibial stress fracture. Power phase (and speed phase) out the window. No good.

So, what you will find in my updated model of this program is one very subtle addition:

Micro-doses of the speed and power stimuli hidden throughout the hypertrophy and strength phases.

Now, I did not want to turn this into a disguised concurrent model, and the good news is I didn’t need to whatsoever. All this looks like is very small volumes of very moderate intensity exercises sprinkled into the warm ups.

Near-zero time investment, negligible energy investment, but a contribution to an impact-tolerance that will pay off later on.

For context, I’ll be about 10-weeks post stress fracture when I start this program alongside you, and I shouldn’t have to modify anything to accommodate that. So regardless of whether you’re rebuilding after an injury, or haven’t done much running or jumping in recent history, you’ll be just fine on this program.

By micro-dosing, we can get the bone density, tendon stiffness, and neuromuscular coordination we need without ever distracting from the main focus.

Who Is This Not For?

High school, collegiate, or professional athletes. This is not designed to suit the needs of a competitive sports season.

Those with limited lifting experience and zero Olympic lifting experience. You don’t need much, but you should at least be competent around a barbell and have some clean and snatch competency.

Those with commitment issues! This is a 12-month training cycle. Can you commit to that? You will be able to enjoy tons of small wins along each phase of the program (seeing muscle grow, strength gains, etc.) but the real athletic transformations will all come together 9-12 months from now. Are you built for this?

If you’re still eager to get started, you’ll find a sign up link below. Under that, I’ll break down the details of each phase.

How to Start:

Sign Up Here

Read on for more program information.

Phase 1 - Hypertrophy

Base - 3wks

Format: 4 days per week, full body, alternating push & pull.

Goal: Develop basic tissue tolerance and work capacity required to handle the higher volumes to come.

Nutrition: Clean up habits (Protein intake, food quality, etc.). Find maintenance calories are (via regular weigh ins).

Accumulation (1) - 4wks

Format: 4 days, full body, alternating work capacity and hypertrophy days.

Work capacity: Emphasis on density of work, metabolite build up.
Hypertrophy: Emphasis on time under tension, total volume.

Goal: Increase muscle size, increase muscular endurance, increase global work capacity.

Nutrition: Hit protein minimums + caloric surplus. Gain 0.5-1.5lb/week → Higher end if currently underweight/lean, lower end otherwise.

Deload - 1wk

Format: Reduce intensity & loading, more of an aerobic focus while maintaining some lifting.

Goal: Recovery from 1st accumulation phase and re-sensitization for next accumulation phase.

Nutrition: Hit protein minimums + slight caloric surplus. Gain ~0.5lb.

Accumulation (2) - 5wks

Format: Push/Pull/Push/Pull hypertrophy days.

Goal: Lay down as much tissue as possible, the lighter fuel for the coming strength phase, the protective armour for our joints, and the aesthetic enhancement, of course.

Nutrition: Hit protein minimums + caloric surplus. Gain 0.5-1.5lb/week → Higher end if currently underweight/lean, lower end otherwise.

Phase 2 - Strength

Base - 3wks

Format: Alternating lower and upper days, 4 days per week.

Goal: Become proficient at the primary movements (squat/bench/deadlift/pull up) while deloading from the high volume hypertrophy phase.

Nutrition: Hit protein minimums + maintenance calories or slight surplus. Roughly maintain weight.

Accumulation - 4wks

Format: Alternating lower and upper days, 4 days per week.

Goal: Build capacity for submaximal weights (5-8 rep range) through increased volumes, providing a base of strength while adding hyper-specific hypertrophy.

Nutrition: Hit protein minimums + caloric surplus. Gain 0.5-1.0lb/week → Higher end if currently underweight/lean, lower end otherwise.

Intensification - 4wks

Format: Alternating lower and upper days, 4 days per week.

Goal: Gain exposure to increasingly heavier weights, preparing for testing week to follow.

Nutrition: Hit protein minimums + caloric surplus. Gain 0.5-1.0lb/week → Higher end if currently underweight/lean, lower end otherwise.

Deload & Test - 1wk

Format: Alternating lower and upper days, 4 days per week.

Goal: Recover, establish new PR’s.

Nutrition: Hit protein minimums + caloric surplus. Gain 0.5-1.0lb.

Phase 3 - Power

Base - 2wks

Format: 5 days: Low-High-Rest-Mod-Low-High-Rest (Mon-Sun).

Goal: Build basic technical proficiency in the Olympic lifts, develop base for coming phases.

Nutrition: Reduce caloric intake to slight deficit, losing 0.25-0.75lb/week. Move majority of carb intake to pre-workout (where possible). Hit protein minimums.

Intensification (1) - 4wks

Format: 5 days: Low-High-Rest-Heavy-Low-High-Rest (Mon-Sun).

Goal: Develop maximal power output.

Nutrition: Reduce caloric intake to slight deficit, losing 0.25-0.75lb/week. Move majority of carb intake to pre-workout (where possible.). Hit protein minimums.

Deload - 1wk

Format: 5 days: Low-High-Rest-Mod-Low-TEST-Rest (Mon-Sun).

Goal: Recover, feel/surpass old maxes (without truly maxing out!).

Nutrition: Reduce caloric intake to slight deficit, losing 0.25-0.75lb/week. Move majority of carb intake to pre-workout (where possible.). Hit protein minimums.

Intensification (2) - 5wks

Format: 5 days: Low-High-Rest-Heavy-Low-High-Rest (Mon-Sun).

Goal: Introduction of “special strength” exercises - thinking about transfer to sprinting & jumping. Continue developing power output.

Nutrition: Reduce caloric intake to slight deficit, losing 0.25-0.75lb/week. Move majority of carb intake to pre-workout (where possible.). Hit protein minimums. (Final 2-weeks: Increase carb intake, reach slight surplus.).

Deload & Test - 1wk

Format: 5 days: Low-High-Rest-Mod-Low-TEST-Rest (Mon-Sun).

Goal: Recover, establish new PR’s.

Nutrition: Increase carb intake all week, reach slight surplus. Hit protein minimums.

Phase 4 - Speed