The success of a prop challenge depends on four regular weeks instead of perfect months. The playbook provides a step-by-step approach to achieve this goal through fixed risk management and daily routines and weekly reviews that eliminate your main point of failure. You can establish rules-based systems during the execution of this plan if you need them, start trading with Funding Rock and put these steps to work right away.
Week 1 — Calibration and Clean Entries
Lock your risk per trade at 0.25%–0.5% (call it 1R) and cap the day at 3R. Put equity—not balance—front and center on your platform, with alerts at −2R and −3R. Create a one-minute preflight you speak out loud before the first click: symbol whitelisted, stop auto-attached, higher-timeframe level visible on the entry timeframe, news alarms set, equity alerts armed.
Trade only A-setups near marked levels (prior day high/low, overnight extremes, weekly open). Two attempts maximum in your first hour; if you’re down 2R, you slow down. The point isn’t to sprint—it’s to get through five trading days without breaking your own rules. End each session with a five-line journal plus a screenshot: context, reason, risk/stop, result in R, emotion tag. Notes should be short enough that you’ll actually keep them.
Week 2 — Consistency and Cushion
Now you’re aiming for small, steady progress. Keep the same risk, same preflight, same first-hour focus. Add one behavior: a 30-second micro-review between trades—Was that truly an A-setup? Was size = 1R? Were news windows clear? What’s the emotion tag right now? If you tag “rushed” or “euphoric,” stand up for two minutes.
If you post a strong green day, defend it. The next session, trade baseline size (or 20% smaller), take only two A-quality entries, and demand better location (second retest, tighter invalidation). Trailing drawdown punishes givebacks right after equity highs; you’re building a staircase, not a spike.
Week 3 — Precision Under Pressure
This is where most candidates wobble. The calendar gets busy, life intrudes, and averages slide. Your edge this week is subtraction. Remove B-setups entirely. If spreads are 1.5× normal after news, wait. If you slept poorly, drop to micro-risk or skip the session—bad days are not mandatory.
Start a tiny “leak list” from your journal: late entries, widening stops, trading into news, chasing the move you missed. Pick one leak and delete it for the rest of the week. When you kill even a single recurring mistake, your expectancy jumps without changing your strategy.
Week 4 — Finish Without Forcing
Avoid the temptation to rush to the finish line when you are near your target. The heavy work should be done by clean setups while you maintain 1R risk and limit your trading to three Risk units per day. You should move to micro-risk and A-setups only after reaching your profit target but before fulfilling the minimum trading days requirement. Your main responsibility now is to safeguard your trading performance.
Run your admin drill at midweek to prevent payout delays by verifying identity documents and recording the first eligibility date and creating a basic payout request template which includes payment period and preferred payment method. Payouts should be handled like regular invoices because they follow a predictable and uninteresting process.
Summary
The achievement of passing in four weeks depends on maintaining a peaceful daily routine which will lead to mathematical success. The path to success depends on controlling R risk while tracking equity levels instead of balance and setting a 3R daily risk limit to stop any single loss from wiping out weekly profits. The trading system requires traders to enter at specific points while using stop-loss orders and they should reduce their risk after major wins by protecting new price highs and by writing in a short journal to fix one trading mistake at a time. The system requires deliberate boredom to generate a stable equity curve which will help you pass and earn money and repeat the process during the next month.