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H.I.P.E. Program Overview

H.I.P.E. Program Overview

High Intensity plus Pre-Exhaust: Six weeks to your most efficient muscle gains ever.

Written By Jim Stoppani, PhD

Updated March 12, 2024

H.I.P.E. Program Snapshot

Length: 6 weeks
Workouts per Week: 4
Training Split: 4-day split
Equipment: Commercial gym or well-equipped home gym.
Featured Techniques: High-Intensity Training (HIT), pre-exhaustion, drop sets, rest-pause
Rep Ranges: 12-15 reps on isolation (single-joint) exercises, and 6-8 reps on compound (multijoint) exercises.
Rest Periods: Within working sets, you won't take rest periods, since drop sets are incorporated; the one exception to this is rest pauses (if applicable), where short breaks of 10-20 seconds will be taken. Between exercises, rest for 1-3 minutes.
Cardio: cardioacceleration between working sets, or HIIT cardio at the end of the workout or on rest days.
Meal Plan: Muscle-Building Rules to maximize mass-gaining; Dieting 101 or Intermittent Fasting to maximize fat loss.
Summary: The 6-week H.I.P.E. program incorporates two classic training techniques — High-Intensity Training and Pre-Exhaust — to deliver efficient gains in muscle mass and strength. Each muscle group is trained only one time per week, and most muscle groups are trained with only four working sets per workout. Mind you, the working sets are pretty intense, as all of them incorporate three drop sets.
Note: If you’re a beginner or just getting back to the gym after an extended time away (months or years), this program will likely be too intense/advanced for you. If you’re a beginner, consider my Beginner to Advanced Program before doing this program.

What if I told you that all it takes to build serious muscle is four days of training per week and only four working sets for most muscle groups every week?

Perhaps you'd say, "Not enough volume." But in the case of my 6-week H.I.P.E. workout program, it is enough volume because of how intense each set is and the training techniques I've incorporated.

This could very well be the most time-efficient muscle-building plan I've ever created. Here are the details of my H.I.P.E. plan...

How H.I.P.E. Workouts Will Build Muscle and Blast Bodyfat

The acronym H.I.P.E. stands for High-Intensity Pre-Exhaust, as those two training techniques will be implemented into every set in the program.

As I alluded to above, you’ll do only one set per exercise in this program, but that one set will be pretty demanding. That’s the hallmark of the High-Intensity Training (HIT) protocol first made famous in the 1980s by legendary professional bodybuilder Mike Mentzer, then carried on by 6-time (1992-97) Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates and other prominent competitors like Mark Dugdale (NPC USAs overall winner in 2004) thereafter.

HIT is not to be confused with HIIT (high-intensity interval training). These are two different things, though both are highly effective. HIIT is the popular form of cardio involving all-out work intervals alternating with rest or low-intensity activity to maximize fat burning. HIT, on the other hand, involves high-intensity sets of resistance training exercises with the specific purpose of maximizing hypertrophy (muscle growth).

Pre-exhaustion (aka, pre-exhaust) is a training technique where

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