Additionally, the time commitment is a shock. While each individual session is shorter than a typical leg day (45-60 minutes), you are training 5-6 days a week. For the average person with a 9-5 job, the cumulative logistics of warming up, lifting, cooling down, and showering daily becomes a second job. Reddit’s "busy dad" demographic often abandons the program not due to difficulty, but due to impracticality.
This is the heart of the Reddit critique. High frequency is not high intensity on every lift. Nippard explicitly programs using RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) , often keeping main lifts at RPE 6-8 (leaving 2-4 reps in the tank). Reddit’s horror stories almost universally come from lifters who ignored this. As one user lamented: "I thought ‘high frequency’ meant ‘max effort every day.’ By week 3, my CNS was fried. I couldn’t sleep, my elbows ached, and squatting 225 felt like 405. Read the RPE chart, idiots." high frequency full body program jeff nippard reddit
The rationale is rooted in muscle protein synthesis (MPS). Research, much of which is cited in Nippard’s own "Fundamentals of Hypertrophy" series, suggests that MPS elevations return to baseline roughly 24-48 hours after training. Therefore, spreading volume into smaller, more frequent bouts (e.g., 3 sets of chest, 3 times a week) may be superior to a single high-volume day (9 sets of chest, once a week) for maximizing growth, minimizing fatigue, and improving movement skill. Additionally, the time commitment is a shock