Understanding Mastery Templates and Training Cycles

Hey guys. I just bought F1 this week and excited to begin on Monday. I've been scouring the forums and reading all of the published material on the site but I still can't wrap my head around a few things. It's taken me a while just to get comfortable with the acronyms lol. Hoping you can help demistify the mastery templates and the training cycles for me.

Basically from what I've read it will take 12 weeks to move from one PE to the next based on the 12 week training cycles/mastery templates. If that is the case then wouldn't it take 360wks/7yrs to complete HBP which has 30 PE's (30x12=360)? What am I missing here? I'm assuming that it's just a baseline and will vary from person to person how long it takes to progress from one PE to the next. But wouldn't that suggest or imply pushing yourself to do more than the recommendations in the cycles/templates? If so, then how do you gauge when you're pushing yourself too far?

Try to keep it simple, in your first workout test for mastery on the respective elements of that session, then if you can complete the prescribed reps or hold time for an element and you mobility match the mobility showed in the video, you pass the element, and next workout you test the next one. But in the other hand if you fail, based on your result look at your template and start at week 1,5,9, and in that way you keep your deload weeks on sync.

 

Example: Think about I'm a newbie, I'm doing my first workout session and these are my results

FL/PE1: Set 1: 60s, Set 2: 60s, Set 3: 49s, Set 4: 40s, Set 5:40s

I was not able to complete the prescribed sets and reps so based on my results I'll start pretty much at week 9 which is 4x48s. Supposed I hit 60s in all set and my mobility is good, next workout I test mastery for FL/PE2. Hope that helps

That definitely helps. Thanks so much for the feedback. In no way am I trying to get around the time or complexity this will take. I am very much a disciplined person and look forward to the challenges ahead. I have a deep respect for Coach Sommer and the GB program. He's done a fantastic job providing a program that from what I can tell guarantees results based on biological evidence as showcased in the athlete's he's trained. I'm very impressed that this feels more real than something like a P90X without all the marketing and infomercials.