Hello all,
I am new to the forum and pretty new to solely focusing on powerlifting although I have been weight training for years. I have attached a program I designed for myself after doing a lot of research. Please let me know what you think and if anything is confusing about the way I wrote it up please ask.
Current lifts are
Squat - 405 (belt)
Bench - 325 (wrist wraps, slight arch)
Deadlift - 445 (belt)
Thanks,
Matt
That spreadsheet is complicated…
Are you using a training max or your actual maxes for the weight calculation? What are you going to do if you can’t hit 104% or 108% of a lift in week 13/14? You’d be deadlifting 480 (108%), which is 35 pounds over your current max. Do you expect your max to go up that much?
Your plan looks similar to the Juggernaut method in some respects. I like that program.
Any reason you’re changing the assistance work every 4 weeks? Mixing it up is good but not keeping any of them constant for more than 4 weeks seems a bit silly, sure one way of telling if you’re progressing is looking at your main lifts, but another way is looking at your accessories, for example I know that if my stiff legged defecit deadlifts go up then my normal deadlift max is going up too.
Also just looking at your first few weeks with the sets reps bit on the left column, firstly why is week 1 and 2 the same? Secondly you realise that 8 reps with 73% is probably easier than 10 reps with 70%? Or is that so you can then do your 10 sets of 2-3 reps? And on that note, I’m no expert on speed work but I think most people perform speed work when fresh at the start of a session?
Why are you mixing conventional and sumo? I know some people do this, but I’m they normally have a good, well thought out reason, do you? For example I pull conventional in competition so that is my go to deadlift, I do throw in sumo’s now and again but as an assistance exercise.
What are you lifts like atm? This seems like a fairly complicated program which probably isn’t necessary, simple is almost always better IMO.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
That spreadsheet is complicated…
Are you using a training max or your actual maxes for the weight calculation? What are you going to do if you can’t hit 104% or 108% of a lift in week 13/14? You’d be deadlifting 480 (108%), which is 35 pounds over your current max. Do you expect your max to go up that much?
Your plan looks similar to the Juggernaut method in some respects. I like that program. [/quote]
I am using my actual maxes. I haven’t thought about not hitting the targets in 13/14 but since I am new I think I will make pretty good progress quickly with the intensity incorporated. I will definitely look into the juggernaut program. Thanks!
[quote]rusty92 wrote:
Any reason you’re changing the assistance work every 4 weeks? Mixing it up is good but not keeping any of them constant for more than 4 weeks seems a bit silly, sure one way of telling if you’re progressing is looking at your main lifts, but another way is looking at your accessories, for example I know that if my stiff legged defecit deadlifts go up then my normal deadlift max is going up too.
Also just looking at your first few weeks with the sets reps bit on the left column, firstly why is week 1 and 2 the same? Secondly you realise that 8 reps with 73% is probably easier than 10 reps with 70%? Or is that so you can then do your 10 sets of 2-3 reps? And on that note, I’m no expert on speed work but I think most people perform speed work when fresh at the start of a session?
Why are you mixing conventional and sumo? I know some people do this, but I’m they normally have a good, well thought out reason, do you? For example I pull conventional in competition so that is my go to deadlift, I do throw in sumo’s now and again but as an assistance exercise.
What are you lifts like atm? This seems like a fairly complicated program which probably isn’t necessary, simple is almost always better IMO.[/quote]
The reason I have accessories changing every few weeks is too work the muscle groups in many different ways. There are so many good compound movements that I hated leaving a bunch off so I thought to change it up every few weeks. All of these exercises are essentially a variation of the main lift anyway. Speed work is just to work on my form more so than my speed. Like I said I am pretty new and I plan to train to simulate the commands in a meet. Just want to mix in conventional and sumo to complement one another.
The percentages I found for the main lifts from this site How to Design Your Workouts
Are you peaking for a specific meet? If no I don’t really see much reason to do weeks 13 and 14 at all.
At this point in your training I’d suggest you implement the KISS principle more into your programming.
IMHO the best way to program is to first establish what you want the end goal to be.
For example from the lifts you listed as your starting maxes you seem pretty balanced as far as strength is concerned. However you didn’t list your perceived weaknesses or post any videos to show your technique and the where and how you fail. You also didn’t state what you wish to push up the most.
IE do you want all three lifts to improve equally? Squat more so than bench and dead? Dead over bench and squats? Bench?
At bare minimum your core programming seems to resemble Ed Coan’s offseason peaking style programming and it has been known to work. But it is just that, a peaking program so your strength is guaranteed to improve, but the question is will you just be peaking strength that is already there or did you actually bring up your weaknesses to improve your lifts.
That is next addressed by looking at your weaknesses. You picked alot of quad dominant work to bring up your lower body lifts, but is that your weakness? And even further than that will it actually carry over to your squat.
For example you may think your legs are weak, but in reality it could be any one of these:
-you may just lack the body awareness to stay braced under heavy loads
This could mean the difference between picking an exercise that will properly fix your weakpoints and picking one that may just boost your squat without really fixing the underlying issues and putting a limit on your actual gains.
Once you establish your true weaknesses, you than have to develop a plan to properly attack those weakpoints. The trick with this is to fix your weak areas so that they carry over to the competition lift.
Even trickier than that is understanding your body has a limited capacity to take this abuse and keep building. So you than next have to distribute the workload in order of importance. And there are various ways to accommodate this.
Since this is turning into a beyond lengthy post Ill just wrap it up and say the things that IMO are the steps you need to take to setting up your program.
Length Strength
Core strength
Technique
Are you explosive or a grinder?
What exercises I want to push harder than others during different phases
Are muscles firing at the right time ?
Are muscles firing at the wrong time to compensate for a weakness?
Are you someone who loses groove fast or manages to keep a good idea of your groove after periods away fro a lift
What are the accessories/assistance work you know drives your lifts up
When to start bringing focus back to the main lifts
expounding further on the above one
Are you prepping for a meet
How far away is the meet
How long does it take you to get groove back
Is your rep strength disproportionate to your max strength
What rep strategies/periodization have actually worked for you in the past
And so on.
Sorry for the VERY lengthy post. And this is just how I do it for me and other people, so its only my opinion not fact. Just hope it helps.
PS Im sure there is some grammatical errors, I typed this fast so try to look at what I posted, and not the way I posted it.
[quote]mswiatek wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
That spreadsheet is complicated…
Are you using a training max or your actual maxes for the weight calculation? What are you going to do if you can’t hit 104% or 108% of a lift in week 13/14? You’d be deadlifting 480 (108%), which is 35 pounds over your current max. Do you expect your max to go up that much?
Your plan looks similar to the Juggernaut method in some respects. I like that program. [/quote]
I am using my actual maxes. I haven’t thought about not hitting the targets in 13/14 but since I am new I think I will make pretty good progress quickly with the intensity incorporated. I will definitely look into the juggernaut program. Thanks![/quote]
Juggernaut 2.0 is geared more towards athletes, but the blocks look similar to what you have in your spreadsheet. There’s 4 blocks (10rm, 8rm, 5rm, 3rm). Within each block the first 2 weeks are basically to prepare you for the third week. That’s what the author calls the realization week where your hard work is supposed to pays off. The 4th week is a deload.
It’s not the same, but similar.
[quote]kjmont wrote:
Are you explosive or a grinder?
[/quote]
What changes would be made when he knows what kind of the two he is? I’m very explosive, fast twitch dominant and I basically shoot my lifts up or miss them completely. Do you think I would be better off doing RE instead of DE since I’m explosive already? I have a 1377 raw total if that helps.
[quote]DaneMuscle wrote:
[quote]kjmont wrote:
Are you explosive or a grinder?
[/quote]
What changes would be made when he knows what kind of the two he is? I’m very explosive, fast twitch dominant and I basically shoot my lifts up or miss them completely. Do you think I would be better off doing RE instead of DE since I’m explosive already? I have a 1377 raw total if that helps.[/quote]
Hmm that might help, do you have any videos of your lifts?
I have a few ideas but I don’t wont to steer you in the wrong direction…
