As far as cowslip's article's here is what you need to be concerned with to start:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Cowslip
Beginners
No matter what your goals are, you need to build a strong base and acclimate yourself to resistance training before you apply more advanced techniques. Your routine should be simple, comprised of almost purely compound movements, plenty of implementation of free weight exercises, and a little more streamlined overall. Periodization is probably not necessary just yet. Consider yourself a beginner for the first several months that you are resistance training properly, or as long as you see gains like this:
Type of Training: Repeated effort method.
Frequency: Train each type of movement or major muscle group 1-3 times per week.
Intensity: 60-70% should be sufficient for both structural and neural adaptations for a beginner.
Volume: 20-40 repetitions is pretty good for each exercise for a beginner. 1-3 exercises per major body part is most likely plenty.
Rest Intervals: 60-120 seconds should be fine; there is no need to kill yourself just yet.
Exercise Selection: Exercise selection needs to change very little if at all. Movements should be virtually all compound and free weight (Assuming you have learned proper form), although a bit of machine work and isolation work is acceptable.
Tempo: Don't concern yourself with tempo. Just lower and raise in a controlled manner.
Training Split: I think a full body routine 2-3 times per week is great, but a bodybuilder split or upper-lower split is perfectly acceptable as well.
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This is the general idea and what is open to interpretation is the number of reps (keep it to 24 to 30 range) and the idea of percentage. If you read over what I listed and keep in mind what I've said then I gurantee you there will be no need to keep at the twelve rep range for one or two months and then call yourself "intermediate". What is missing here is intensity cycling, as I've said before, and the realization that training stages, i.e. beginner, intermediate, advanced are not set on some time schedule.
People resist it like the plague thinking that they will lose strength or will be stopping and starting. However, this is the danger of looking at each workout as a be all and end all with the idea of always training at maximum intensity instead of progress as a long term goal. As far as how long you can progress in this way before turning to periodization or anything else...it's totally up to you. The prescription of one to two months and then periodize is ungrounded and the fact is people progress for one or two years doing the kind of thing I've suggested.