About this workout
This is a 16 week bikini competition prep training plan. Five lifting days a week, glutes and delts driven hardest because that is what the division is actually judged on, and cardio that starts low so you have somewhere to go later. Before anything else, understand what prep is: a temporary extreme. The stage look is not a year-round look and it is not a health goal. If you are going to do this, do it with a coach who knows the sport and a doctor who knows you. This page is the training half of that plan, and the training half is the part I can write honestly for a stranger.
Who This Program Is For
- An advanced female lifter with at least a couple of years of consistent training behind her, entering a bikini show with a date on the calendar.
- Someone who already knows how to squat, hinge and press without a coach standing over her every set.
- Someone who can train five days a week for four months and actually show up for all of it, including the boring weeks.
- Someone working with a coach on the food side and a doctor on the health side, using this as the lifting framework.
Who this is NOT for: beginners, anyone in their first year of lifting, anyone who wants to "get lean" with no intention of competing, and anyone who is currently at war with food. Prep is a bad first program and a worse coping mechanism. If your relationship with eating, your sleep, or your cycle is already strained, this plan is the wrong move and the right move is to talk to a professional. That is not me being soft. That is me telling you the truth about a sport I have watched chew people up.
What You'll Need
- A full gym: barbells, dumbbells, cable stations and the standard leg and chest machines.
- A cardio machine you can walk on at an incline, and a rower if your gym has one.
- A coach for nutrition and a doctor you can check in with. Non-negotiable for a 16 week prep.
- A logbook. Sixteen weeks is too long to run on memory, and in a deficit your memory is the first thing to go.
The Program
Five training days, run as glutes and hamstrings, delts and arms, back and rear delts, quads and glutes, then a second delt-forward upper day. Delts get hit twice and the posterior chain gets hit twice, because a bikini physique is shoulders, waist and glutes, in that visual order. Cardio is prescribed separately and it starts low on purpose. You do not open prep at the ceiling. Take two rest days, and if your schedule allows it, put one of them after the heavy glute day. Run the days in order. If you miss one, do it the next day and shift the rest, do not double up.
| Day 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Glutes and Hamstrings | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Hip Thrust (Weighted Hip Extension) | 4 | 8-10 | 120 sec |
| Romanian Deadlift | 4 | 8-10 | 90 sec |
| Dumbbell Bulgarian Squat | 3 | 10-12 each leg | 75 sec |
| Lying Leg Curl | 3 | 12-15, 3 sec down | 60 sec |
| Cable Pull Through | 3 | 15 | 60 sec |
| Cable Kickbacks (One Legged Kickback) | 3 | 15 each leg | 45 sec |
| Standing Calf Raise | 4 | 12-15 | 45 sec |
| Day 2 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Delts and Arms | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Seated Barbell Shoulder Press | 4 | 8-10 | 90 sec |
| Dumbbell Lateral Raise | 4 | 12-15 | 45 sec |
| Cable Lateral Raise | 3 | 15-20 | 45 sec |
| Reverse Flyes | 3 | 15 | 45 sec |
| Cable Preacher Curl | 3 | 10-12 | 60 sec |
| Tricep Pushdown | 3 | 12-15 | 45 sec |
| Hammer Curls | 3 | 12 | 45 sec |
| Day 3 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Back and Rear Delts | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Lat Pulldown | 4 | 10-12 | 75 sec |
| Seated Cable Rows | 4 | 10-12 | 75 sec |
| One Arm Dumbbell Row | 3 | 10-12 each arm | 60 sec |
| Straight Arm Pulldown | 3 | 15 | 45 sec |
| Face Pulls | 4 | 15-20 | 45 sec |
| Reverse Cable Fly | 3 | 15-20 | 45 sec |
| Cable Crunch | 3 | 15 | 45 sec |
| Day 4 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Quads and Glutes | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Barbell Squat | 4 | 8-10 | 120 sec |
| Wide Stance Leg Press | 4 | 12-15 | 90 sec |
| Dumbbell Walking Lunges | 3 | 12 each leg | 75 sec |
| Leg Extension | 3 | 15, 2 sec hold | 45 sec |
| Barbell Glute Bridge | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| Seated Calf Raise | 4 | 15-20 | 45 sec |
| Day 5 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Delts, Chest and Core | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Standing Dumbbell Shoulder Press | 4 | 10-12 | 75 sec |
| Seated Dumbbell Lateral Raise | 4 | 12-15 | 45 sec |
| Incline Dumbbell Bench Press | 3 | 10-12 | 75 sec |
| Pec Dec (Butterfly) | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| Lying Rear Delt Raise | 3 | 15-20 | 45 sec |
| Cable Upright Row | 3 | 12-15 | 45 sec |
| Rope Crunch | 3 | 15-20 | 45 sec |
| Cardio | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly Cardio, Start Here and Only Add Later | |||
| Movement | Rounds | Work | Recovery |
| Incline Walking | 3 per week | 25 min, moderate incline, RPE 5, able to hold a conversation | After lifting or on a rest day |
| Rowing | 1 per week | 15 min steady, RPE 5-6, smooth stroke rate | Not the day before a heavy leg day |
| Incline Walking | 2 per week, added only if progress stalls | 20 min, same incline and RPE as the base sessions | Non-consecutive days |
| Jump Rope | Optional | 6-8 min easy, used as a warm-up in place of a walk | Straight into your lifting warm-up |
| Sprints | 1 per week, back half only | 6 x 20 sec hard, only if sleep and recovery are holding up | 90 sec easy walk between efforts |
How to Progress
Sixteen weeks is long. Here is how the blocks are meant to run.
Weeks 1 to 4. Build the base. Pick loads you can finish every prescribed rep with, add a small amount of weight to the first two exercises of each day whenever you hit the top of the range on all sets, and leave the accessory work alone. Cardio stays at the base three walks plus the row. Do not add cardio this block no matter what the scale says. You are early, you have sixteen weeks, and your only job right now is to get strong in the rep ranges.
Weeks 5 to 7. Add one set to the first exercise on Day 1 and Day 4, and take the last set of the lateral raise work on Day 2 and Day 5 to a genuinely hard stopping point. Keep adding weight where the reps allow it. Cardio only moves if the mirror and the weekly average of your morning weigh-ins have both been flat for two full weeks. If they have, add the first of the two extra walks. One change at a time.
Week 8, deload week one. This is a real deload, not a light week you talk yourself out of. Same five days, same exercises, two thirds of your usual sets and about 70 percent of your usual loads. Stop every set well short. Cardio drops back to the base three walks. Prep is a cumulative load and week 8 is where the fatigue from the first half either gets paid down or starts costing you strength for the second half. Take it.
Weeks 9 to 12. The hardest block. Strength on the barbell lifts will likely plateau here and that is normal in a deficit, so stop chasing it. Hold the loads, hold the reps, and let the quality of each set be the thing that improves. Add the second extra walk only if you have stalled again for two weeks. If sleep is going bad, training is getting worse week over week, or your cycle changes, cardio comes down and food goes up, in that order, and you tell your coach and your doctor.
Week 13, deload week two, then weeks 14 to 16. Deload again exactly like week 8. Then in the last three weeks the training does not get more clever, it gets more consistent. Same five days, same lifts, loads you can move well. Sprints come out if they are costing you recovery. Everything about the final week, and I mean everything, belongs to your coach, because it depends on your body, your division and your history. Anyone selling you a one-size peak week off a web page is selling you something.
Warm-Up and Recovery Notes
Five to eight minutes of easy Incline Walking or Jump Rope, then Cat Cow Stretch, Hip Flexor Stretch and Band Shoulder Dislocate before upper days, plus Worlds Greatest Stretch and Deep Squat Hold before lower days. Then two or three build-up sets on your first exercise, working up to your first working weight. On glute and quad days the build-up matters more than usual, because deep into prep your joints do not feel the same as they did in week one.
Recovery is the part of prep that people skip and then blame the program. Sleep is the single biggest lever you have and it is the first one a deficit takes away, so protect it: same bedtime, dark room, phone somewhere else. Expect strength and mood to dip in the back half. That is the deficit, not a character flaw. Walk on rest days if you feel like it, but rest days are for resting. If you are getting sick repeatedly, if your period stops, or if the workouts stop improving for three weeks straight, that is your body telling you the load is too high and the answer is less cardio and more food, worked out with your coach and your doctor, not more discipline.
Nutrition and Supplementation
Fat loss happens in the kitchen and prep nutrition is genuinely individual, so this is a framework and not a diet. Take the deficit small and slow so it lasts sixteen weeks instead of blowing up in six. Keep protein high and consistent day to day, keep carbohydrate around your training so you can still lift hard, and keep fats high enough to feel human. Eat mostly whole food you actually like, because in month four adherence beats optimization every single time. Food is not something you earn with cardio and a hard day is not something you punish yourself for. If you notice food starting to run your thoughts, that is a stop sign, not something to push through. Your coach sets your numbers, checks them against how you are training, sleeping and recovering, and adjusts. That is what a coach is for.
On the supplement side, a protein powder makes a high protein intake easy to hit when appetite is low, a solid multivitamin covers the gaps that a smaller food volume tends to open up, and a fat burner is, honestly, a marginal help at the edges and completely useless if the diet is not right, so treat all three as secondary to food and training rather than the thing that gets you on stage.
FAQ
Why are glutes and delts hit twice a week? Because bikini is judged on shape, and shape in this division reads as capped delts, a tight midsection and full glutes. Two exposures a week for those areas, with enough volume each time to matter, is the most efficient way to move the parts the judges are actually looking at. Everything else on the plan supports that or keeps you balanced.
Can I do this without a coach? You can run the training. I would not run the diet alone. Sixteen weeks in a deficit while training five days a week is a situation where an outside set of eyes catches problems you will rationalize away, and that includes health problems. Get a coach, and keep your doctor in the loop.
What do I do for peak week? Ask your coach. That is the real answer, not a dodge. Peak week depends on your body, how you have responded through prep, your division and your history, and anything specific I wrote here would be a guess about a stranger dressed up as a protocol. Nothing you do in the last seven days will fix a prep that was not done in the first fifteen weeks, and plenty of last-week gimmicks have wrecked good ones.
Questions and results
Ask a coach
Running this program? Tell us what week you are on and how the progression is going. A coach answers every question here.